The tabby bolted nervously after her friend, pausing to lap fervently at a mark on her muzzle where a stubborn twig had clawed her. Dang bushes – oh god oh god, please let Stella be okay… Much to her relief, upon breaching the mass of bushes, Micheala could see that Stella looked… fine, for the most part, save for the dazed, dissociative look on her face.

She gulped. “Stella? Are you okay…?” She paused for a second, looking out towards the empty distance. “D-did… did he follow us…? I don’t think I see him…”

Silence crawled under Micheala’s pawpads for only a few seconds, until Stella’s voice cleared the panicked quiet. “He didn’t,” she clarified in a tight tone, taking a deep breath. Relief flooded through Micheala’s pelt as a result, and she clambered gently over to Stella, trying to calculate what exactly the she-dog was thinking of.

“Thank you for pulling me away,” Micheala squeaked, looking nervously up at the she-dog. “I mean, I tried to do the same for you of course, but you’re sooo much bigger and stronger than me, so it didn’t… do much good.” Her gaze flattened as she looked at the ground. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no no,” Stella corrected softly, her gaze still clinging to the distance. “You did great, Mich. I just … didn’t know that was going to happen, but luckily, we managed to get ourselves out of there without any pain and suffering. But hey, of course – friends help friends, y’know?” She paused, passed a breath through her nose, and then looked down at Micheala. “We’ll just… go back later. When the truck’s not there.”

Micheala smiled awkwardly. “Oh, thank you…!” But the thought of going back made her stomach lurch and wriggle with a sea of nervous tension, her organs twisting in her stomach. She frowned. “But… I don’t want you to get hurt…”

“I’ll be fine,” Stella snorted, a smile returning to her face once again. “You don’t need to worry about me all the time. I’m tough, remember? I can handle myself perfectly fine.”

“…Right.” Micheala said uneasily, while worrying about Stella. Dangit.

“But,” Stella continued, returning her gaze back to Micheala with warm, adventurous eyes. “When I was searching around the front of the house, and the back, and all around … y’know what I saw?”

The tabby’s eyes suddenly glinted with shared curiosity, and she perked her ears. “Oh, what?”

“A doggy-door,” the she-dog grinned, her eyes lighting up as she detailed her newfound possibilities. “Which meeeans, I could sneak you through there, since it’s pretty small, and you like, volunteer to do kinda stupid stuff with Catty, so I’m guessing you’d be totally fine with doing that for me? And then, you could bring her out and we could all talk to her and make a new neighbor-friend!”

Micheala’s ears burned with shame a bit at the word ‘stupid’ being tied to her, but she quickly shook it off. No bad thoughts, none at all – but dangit, now that makes her think of whatever icky dream she had that left her feeling so gross upon awakening, and now she felt like that again, and was ruining her own day, and—god. Micheala frowned and let out a soft irritable whine, before she met Stella’s now-confused eyes again.

She sighed.

“Hey Mich, you okay? Does the plan, like, not sound good to you or something?” Stella quirked one eyebrow, her voice stern and puzzled.

Micheala hesitated. “No, no, no, it just, I’m just…” she trailed off, her gaze breaking and drifting off into the horizon. “Um… I, it’s no big deal, don’t worry about it.”

However, Stella seemed insistent on finding out what was going on. “No, c’mon, Mich – I gotta know if you don’t want to do something. What’s up?” As if trying to stubbornly force the answer out, the she-dog plopped herself in the tabby’s line of vision, her face focused and determined.

“Oh, no no no, it’s nothing to do with that! I just—um, I-I…” Micheala mumbled, before taking a deep breath, holding onto it, and squeezing her eyes shut for a few, tender seconds, and opening them with another sigh. “I just… um, I don’t know. I’ve been having – or, well I had – this weird dream… I think, at least. I like, woke up… feeling gross and scared for no reason. And I guess it kinda stuck with me.” She frowned, and looked boldly at her own paws, as if staring at them long enough would temporarily throw her out of existence.

Stella was silent for a bit, as if brooding over what Micheala had said. Finally, she spoke, her tone caring but firm like a mom giving advice to a kid – however, she seemed… oddly positive still. “Well, Micheala, you don’t need to… worry about that, okay? Good thing is – dreams aren’t real! You’re here, with me, in this grass and outside my home – not in some nightmareish dream land. Alright?”

The tabby shuffled her paws and nodded her head softly. “Thank you… Stella,” she said, though she didn’t really feel much different. I can’t just… make it go away, but I don’t know how to make her understand that, or anybody understand. Jeez, I guess I really am just crazy, if Stella can deal with her problems that easily. She dug one paw into the dirt. I wish I could just… make my problems go away like that. Poof.

I guess I’ll just… force them away. Somehow. If I can.

“I still feel… icky, but, I guess that’ll just…”

“Go away, eventually! Exactly, so no worries at all!” Stella beamed, her good intentions appreciated to the tabby but… not exactly helpful, nonetheless. Micheala managed to give a tiny smile, lucky for the fact that at least she felt more dull and sad than anxious. That sort of nervous energy just… drove her a bit crazy.

Suddenly, Stella’s eyes lit up and she gave Micheala a jab in the side. “Oh, Micheala! You know who we should visit that’ll make us both a bit calmer?”

Micheala met the she-dog’s eyes, happy to take her ruminating mind and throw it away for as long as she could. “O-oh, who?”

The spaniel gave a big, wide smile.

“Catty!”