"I'd sure hate it if I could see more than a few steps ahead of me." Henry grumbled to the dark sunless sky and the branches it hid behind. His breath was heavy and his body felt deflated by exhaustion as he stumbled clumsily through the dark woods. "Yep, nobody bring me a light now, it just might ruin my day."

The night air was thick with humidity and the itermittent rolling sounds of thunder had slowly grown as time passed. Henry didn't know how long he had been here, but he was certian it had been a few hours. It certianly was the longest dream he ever had and it was the most uncanny by far. It was too coherent, too solid it didn't have that hazy slowness and confusion that blanketed dreams. And that was mentioning nothing of the senses that had been sharpened where they should have been dulled...

Currently he was trying to outpace his imagination with all this walking. Often in dreams if he went too far the dream would suddenly change, but Henry had no such luck. There were no flaws in the dreamscape he could find, gravity worked correctly, the number of fingers he counted stayed the same, if he turned around quickly the area behind him was still there.

Besides himself, the dream mirrored reality to the letter.

Henry huffed and brought his attention back to tge four legged march. At least walking like this was fairly intuitive, it was weird yes, but this body's locomotion came to him by some strange instinct.

Said instinct might have taken an hour of cursing and stumbling to process. He couldn't quite make heads or tails of the tail though, but that was besides the point. He was fairly certain it was tails anyway.

He was annoyed to find the ground under him now featured stray rocks that were uncomfortable to walk on. He started to complain to himself about the new inconvenience, but his grumbleing was stopped with a sharp gasp when his front legs suddenly found no ground to stand on. He felt weightless for a cruel instant before he fell forwards, his forebody dragging the rest of him towards the unseen ledge as Henry panicked and reached for anything to stop himself. His claws scraped and scrabbled painfully agianst hard stone and his tail lashed blindly, he struck some small tree behind him, his tail wrapping around it and stopping his descent with a forcefull tug that ran the length of his back..

He went still then, feeling stone and dirt under the skin of the wings, and the same stone scraping unpleasantly against his stomach.

He held his breath for a long time and didn't dare move a muscle.

"Holy shit", he finaly managed to squeak out between quick breaths, his heart thundering in his chest as he dangled there. He could faintly see the brush covered ground where it met the ledge, and the forest that lay just beyond the clearing that lined the stone wall.

His whole body trembled as he tried to pull back with his tail and push his hindlegs agianst the brink of the ledge. Henry felt the stone scrape agianst his chest and stomach, those scales protested being pulled agianst the grain while pebbles and rocks fell past his face.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

He pushed the rock face with his forelegs trying to lift his chest over the ledge. Hope bloomed in his chest as he pulled himself halfway up the ledge, and it died as his right hindleg lost it's footing.

He slid forwards then, and there was a series of snaps and a woody crunch as the poor tree henry clung to broke under his shifting weight. Henry screamed as he fell over ledge and into a tumbling free fall. Time seemed to slow to an agonising pace as he flailed about in the air, his left wing slammed into the stone face painfully and sent him away from it as the ground drew nearer.

Alien instincts seized Henry by the bones and his wings fanned wide, he felt them cup the air and beat hard once. Twice. Each beat slowed him further, but not fast enough. Branches whipped his his wings and face as his legs sprung out to absorb the impact but it wasn't enough. He slammed into the short bushes covering the ground with a whump that stole his breath, and turned his scales turned white like snow as pain shot through his body.

Henry cried out soundlessly while coiling in what was probably a dragons equivalent of the fetal position, hugging himself with his wings and folding his legs tightly against himself. His breath came back slowly in short raggety puffs between whimpering groans. His thoughts felt like tv static as he lay there breathing raggedly and deeply, the tension in his stomach and chest slowly ebbing away with each exhalation.

I just fell off a cliff...

It hurt... A lot...

...That should have woken me up...

He felt scratches all over from the braches, a throbbing ache in all his limbs, and a number of bruises from the impact.

That was scarier than the time my 12 gauge exploded! Why am I still here!?

His breathing quickened and watched himself slowly turn green again, starting from his extremities and spilling over the rest of him.

He trembled there as he closed his eyes and balled his hands, his feet followed suit curling their digits inhumanly. He squeezed tighter then, he felt the pressure from four sets of claws pressing agianst thick soles grow quickly from discomfort into pain.

He felt the teeming aches and fatigue he gathered during the past hours of wandering in the dark. Now supplimented by bruises from his fall.

It's a dream.

Don't think about it, it's just a dream.

It's just a VERY detailed dream with a weird point of view.

His mind wandered to the things he remembered before waking up here. The strange room at Rachel's place, and the ring he found within.

That was a dream too, don't think about it.

Don't think abo--

Henry was shaken from his fuge when several small cold somethings bounced off his wings, then more, and more. He had only just shaken off the confusion and stood up again when it started properly raining. He jumped and fell painfully on his stomach again as a bolt of lightning arced across the sky and lit the world below.

It was storming, of course it was, why wouldn't it be?

Henry was getring soaked by the now pouring rain, he felt the water run in rivulets off his wings as the storm picked up speed and more jagged lightning flashed across the sky. At the very least they would light up the world for about a second, each flash bringing the world into color and clarity.

He used these brief periods of visibility to assess his current location. His breath caught as he looked to the cliff and saw just how far he had fallen. It had to have been at least 400-500 feet, at least that's what he thought. Measuring things had become hard after his point of reference changed.

The trees on top of it were much the same as the trees below, minus the crooked and snapped one Henry had clung to.

On the next flash something else caught his eye. There was a cave entrance slightly above ground level, and beneath an outcropping in the stony face of the cliff wall.

He stood and dragged himself out of the foliage then, squelching a trail of prints in the now muddied ground as he stumbled on shaking legs towards shelter.

The cave wasn't the respite had hoped for. He could only fit in most of the way, and what he could fit in was often pressed on uncomfortably by the cool stone.

He settled in and laid down as best he could, hissing and standing up again to throw an offending stone that had pressed into his bruised underside.

He couldn't shake the feeling it was going to be a long and miserable night.