I WILL NEVER FORGET [amali]

[Luca]

[div style="margin: 0 auto; border-width:0; width: 70%; text-align: justify; line-height: 1.5; font-family: arial; font-size: 9pt;"]Darkness washed over him again and again, calming waves of an endless ocean. There was something therapeutic about being surrounded by absolute nothingness, caressed by what he couldn't see. He was overcome with such calm, such peace, he couldn't quite figure out why he had a nagging sense that he was leaving something behind. Faint voices floated about around his head. Snippets of conversations he couldn't remember having, voices that he couldn't quite place. His heart rate quickened, and the volume increased. More than quiet whispers now, the disembodied voices circled him like vultures, layering again and again until he could barely make out one word at a time. Louder, and louder still, a deafening whirlwind of noise. There was screaming, birdsong, laughing and cheering, the faint sound of leaves rustling in the wind. He wished he could lift his paws up to block it all out, but his limbs felt like lead, and the sounds were more than just that. They were in his head. Memories blocked by an unseen force. Things that would soon be lost forever.

Everything swelled into a mighty crescendo, and then with a suddenness akin to a bird flying into glass, it stopped. His eyes were no longer met with the calming nothingness of the dark. Red burned into his gaze, and it took him a moment to realise that his eyes were still closed. Slowly, they fluttered open, allowing the light to enter without barrier. With the light came beauty. Grass swayed around him as it was pushed by the cool breeze, flowers displaying their petals in a gentle dance. The sun was warm on his fur, and he could hear a melodic tweeting coming from somewhere on his right. The air was sweet, slightly perfumed. He could stay there forever.

He looked down at his paws. This wasn't his first life. Everything felt so strange, so new, but there were things he could almost grasp. Fleeting images, names, the face of a pretty pale feline. These things were important, he could tell that much. He heaved himself to his feet despite his sleepy body screaming at him to rest longer. He could lie in the sun later, there was something he had to do. Seashell pink nose twitched in the air, and he could pick out the faint scent of vanilla between the flowers and pressed grass. There, that's it. That's what he needed to find. His eyes followed the invisible trail to an unfamiliar body, a pale off-white against the lush green of their surroundings. They were already close enough to touch, if he reached out. He stepped towards them and the world around him blurred from the effort, but that didn't seem to stop him from moving to the side of the unconscious animal. A canine of some kind, he could tell that much.

He lowered himself back down, and then found himself nuzzling their neck before he could stop himself, closing his eyes as the smell of freshly baked sweets encased him. There was something about this animal that filled him with such an odd warmth, a fuzzy feeling in his heart that he had never quite experienced before. This was right, they were right. He couldn't remember who he was, or the identity of the canine beneath his affectionate touch, but he knew that they were meant to be together. A pleased hum buzzed in his throat, and he fell limp, smothering the other body beneath piles of silky fur.

[JUNJI]

[align=center][div style="width: 600px; padding: 10px; height: auto; overflow: auto;"][div style="width: 550px; padding: 0px; line-height: 13px; text-align: justify; font-family: arial; font-size: 9pt;"]The darkness scared them in the beginning. It was sudden, and yet they could not recall what had come before it. A panic, gasping for air in the dense, dark mass that surrounded them. Eventually they settled. They let it wash over them, wrap its arms around them in a comforting embrace. For a while, they stayed like that. A voice in their mind repeated a mantra of I love yous to them, soft and loving, a warmth that felt vastly different from the cold that encompassed them. It wasn't an unpleasant cold. Something akin to sad contentedness, satisfied and yet not quite happy about it.

They couldn't know how much time had passed. The darkness hummed around them, soothed them and urged them to sleep, but somewhere in the pitch black they saw a flickering light. Curiosity fluttered; they ignored the soft tugging that told them to simply let it be, floated on. As they neared the bright the voice echoing in their head grew louder. Still soft, but the closer they came, the more distressed the voice. They came to stop before the hovering light.

They lifted a paw. Hesitated. Glanced back into the empty darkness, then back to the light; they touched it with a toe, surprised that it was similar to water. Their paw dipped in, and without a second look back, their body followed.

Expectation was to wake to light, not more darkness. Some leaked through, but it blurred, and something above him shifted so he was in the dark again. Seemed he also woke to suffocation. Ah, but what was smothering him? A quiet whine breathed out of his nostrils and into the mess of softness surround him. He twisted his head slightly and managed to free his muzzle from it, jaws opening slightly to inhale the most air he could.

It took a few moments for him to process everything. His mind was hazed and clouded, slow in everything it tried to do. He wasn't completely sure of what was going on, but he felt warmth within him, swelling and making him feel as though he might burst. The smell of strawberries with an underlying hint of smoke filled his senses; in that moment, though he knew not who he or this being on top of him was, he decided he loved strawberries. His paws that held stiff in the air relaxed and slowly settled into the satin fur wrapped around him, and with a sigh, he closed his eyes and pushed his nose into the other's neck fur. Words weren't needed then, not yet. He was sure they could both feel the strange connection between them. A string that tugged, held them together, the feeling of love so strong between them it almost didn't feel real. But for now, he was okay with this. He was okay with setting aside what problems of identity crept into the back of his mind, if he could only have a few more moments wrapped in the other's warm embrace.

[Luca]

[div style="margin: 0 auto; border-width:0; width: 70%; text-align: justify; line-height: 1.5; font-family: arial; font-size: 9pt;"]For once, his embrace was returned. With it came that familiar energizing rush that all affection gave him, freeing his body from some of its tired weight. It was odd, the sensation swelling in his chest, the tiny tears of joy that wet the fur of his cheeks. He felt relieved, although he couldnt quite place why. Never before had he felt such a connection, such a pure and beautiful love, and it was with someone whose face was missing from any of his memories. Surely they knew one another, there must be history between them, but at the moment all he could think about was here and now. The feeling of the other hound's paws in his fur, the cool grass beneath them, the gentle brush of petals against his pelt. Everything else didn't matter nearly as much as the long embrace they shared. It was hard to tell how much time passed. It could have been hours, or mere minutes, but eventually he found it in himself to break the relative silence. He took a shaky breath, and exhaled into the other's fur. "Who are we?" He heard himself say, although his words were slightly muffled by the fur of the one below him. He pulled his head back and stared down at the pale one with his dual-toned eyes. "I don't know your name. I love you, I love you so much but I don't know who you are," he said softly, his words gentle and hushed as they fell from his lips.

Memories. The ocean washing over his paws, a basket of freshly baked muffins, the dense foliage of a rainforest. He squeezed his eyes shit again, panting out a quick breath of surprise. He didn't know who he was either. This body didn't feel familiar, and the name that danced on the edge of his mind didn't feel fitting. He was beginning to piece together his earlier days, cold grey streets and dark rooms, but those memories were void of the warm light that he now associated with his sole companion. He was something dark, sent to consume the light and convert it to what he was. That couldn't be right, though, this relationship was clearly far from the realm of predator and prey. Red, so much red stained the hazy memories of his past, but the thought of harming the other canine filled him with an icy wave of fear and disgust. This was the exception, he came to discover as he delved deeper into his mind. An oddity, a mistake. But oh, how beautiful of a mistake it was.

He bit down gently on his lip, lashes falling half-closed over unfocused eyes. His past intentions may have been dark, but none of that mattered now. Every brush of the other's fur against his made his skin tingle and face grow warm, and the once overwhelming lethargy that had overtaken him faded into a plesant sleepiness. His body was warm, relaxed and heavy, but he couldnt quite being himself to ignore the strange island that wouldn't quite leave his mind. That beach, it reappeared in his thoughts with every breath of vanilla scented air.