this twilight feels like an afterlife [calico jack]

darkness falls as she picks her way across the land, skirting a clump of fern. the sky has deepened from a heather grey to a bruised purple, and Dulla watches as the sun slips below the horizon, its light waning to make way for the first scattering of stars. its cooler at night, the air refreshingly sharp in her lungs as she sucks in a deep breath. she exhales, and imagines how it will look in winter, when she can expel plumes of frost from her mouth and watch it hang in the hair like a wisp of silvery cloud. she recalls winters with her family, huddled together with siblings and cousins in a desperate attempt to preserve warmth. if she remains in this strange new land, will she be alone as the cold sets in, shivering beneath the naked boughs of some foreign tree?

it is a miserable thought, one she banishes with a flick of her tail. as dusk turns to night, and the moon crawls up the sky to hover above the treetops, she leans against a nearby tree trunk and hums a faint tune under her breath – something her mother may have sung to her as a girl, perhaps.