The dream is fading from memory even before she wakes. Zora noses her muzzle deeper into the cradle of her paws tucked around her face and feels the deepness of sleep begin to close around her again.

A smack barely stings her cheek. A silver eye blearily peels open, baleful venom flickering in its depths as it roves across the foreign sky and unusual dunes until it rests upon the girl. The knight. The dog. The first that belongs to Zora, and Zora alone, equal parts gift and burden and test and friend.

The princess wrinkles her muzzle in a grumpy 'why did you wake me up' sneer at the girl. Laying paws on royalty, now? Zora uncoils from her nest in the sand, sits up, peers around herself. She didn't go to sleep here. Did she? She has never been here. Has she? What the hell?