Skeleton Trees

There was a bitter loneliness that knotted in my core. It was unmistakable, unrelenting, and oh, it was brutal. It was pit in my stomach that I was able to suppress most days, but something inside me still gnawed away at my soul. There was much to explore in these lands, much to do, but it was not always enough to suppress the waves of self-loathing and existential dread that rolled over me and threatened to suck me into the current.
The orchard was a lovely place, if not slightly overwhelming. I had ventured here more than once, the rotting fruits a putrid but somehow enticing scent, but at the frost solidified and the cold weather settled on the lands like a bird back in its roost, the smells slowly dissipated, and he haunting rows of barren trees, lined at attention like soldiers, became a more bearable place to escape the cold.
There was not much fat on my body, not much muscle either, and I had found that the winter months were particularly hard on my rapidly-aging joints.
I was moving in between the trees as the smell struck me, but at first, it didnt register. It was an instantaneous deja vu, but more intense. It wasnt just a familiar smell. It was more than that. It was...it was the scent of a knight I once knew. A knight I loved as a friend, as a brother, and as a piece of my soul. A knight I had abandoned.
I froze, pausing mid-stride with a forepaw hovering above the snow, a precarious position for a woman with only two remaining legs on the ground, but my brain had shut down for the moment. Lids squeezed tightly over emerald orbs. An illusion.
There was no way Arborick could be here. I had run and I had run and I had run and I had launched into the sea and I had selfishly fled my old life in the pursuit of... well, in the pursuit of anything. Anything had to be better than the mess I was trapped in.
An illusion, but the smell had not faded. My own breath had paused, leaving a deathly silence. But that silence was filled with the muffled sounds of paws sinking into the snow, and warm snorts of breath in the cold air.
With a start my eyes snapped open, and skull swung wildly as my body bounced and heaved in and effort to pivot to find the source of the smell, of the sound.
Arborick...
Against the snow, my russet and cream pelt was a far cry of camouflage, and I would stand out like a neon sign, but then again, so should the gray man I was searching for.
He was a good distance away from me, making his own way through the orchard. An apparition of muted gray and tawny tones; from this distance I could make out the vague shape of his partially missing ear and his black collar marking, and I nearly wanted to cry.
I was swallowed in a wave of emotions; jubilance, indescribable happiness, confusion, and also.... guilt. The guilt settled in like a boulder and for a moment I thought that I would retch.
"Arborick..." I breathed out, the words rolling off my tongue like it was the only word in the world.
"Arborick?" I spoke again in the next breath, a question this time. A small voice, but it was loud enough for the male to hear. His senses were as sharp as anyones, even if I hadnt spoken, he would have found me.