"How did she get there?" Etinnei leaned forward and bit her lip instead of a pillow.
"I don't know," Tuot answered. "She just appeared in my dream."
"What?"
Etinnei jumped on the bed.
"That doesn't happen," the Arctic fox girl continued. "If she lives in the game, then she must have been transported from there into the dream, don't you understand?"
"Etinnei, have you ever dreamed?"
"I dreamed about it, of course," the animal girl twitched her ears. "But there weren't any characters. There were pillows you could eat. They were tasty."
"Do you really believe these pillows came from this world into a dream?"
"No. I don't have such pillows here. They only exist in dreams."
Etinnei grabbed the pillow and pressed her cheek against it. Tuot was delighted and began searching for a camera in his inventory to take a photo of his favorite character, but soon heard the most terrifying sound that could ever exist...
...the sound of the front door opening.
Tuot turned to the corridor. The dinosaur expected to see a terrifying doll with glowing horns and eyes that took up half its face, but instead he saw only his owner and childhood friend.
Halankuo stood at the threshold of the apartment and blocked the door behind her. Tuot didn't even have time to get scared, so he didn't scream, but he still didn't take a picture of his beloved little animal.
"Who is this?" Etinnei leaned over to peer into the hallway from her bed.
"It's not scary," Tuot answered. "I wanted to say, it doesn't matter."
Halankuo entered the room and saw a strange sight: her pet and childhood friend was standing next to his own bed in front of an open virtual camera, and next to him sat a female arctic fox, hugging a pillow.
"How cute," Halankuo thought out loud.
"Are you... already here?" Tuot asked.
"Can't you see it?"
"I see."
"Did something happen while I was gone?"
"Yup," Etinnei answered. "Tuot saw the sheep girl from the game."
"Where did you see her?" Halankuo fell to her knees in surprise.
"In my dream…" Etinnei placed the pillow between her thighs.
"Was it some place?" Halankuo looked at Tuot.
"I didn't understand where it was," the dinosaur answered. "I jumped over a wooden fence, and there were big rocks on the riverbank. One of them turned into a stone barrel. Then a girl with sheep's horns crawled out of it."
Tuot told his owner and childhood friend what he'd recently told his beloved little animal.
"There was a fence," Halankuo tilted her head. "And a river and rocks."
"What's wrong?" Tuot asked. "Did you see her too?"
Halankuo didn't answer. Her brain was occupied with a multitude of thoughts, which sometimes collided with each other, sometimes ran in parallel.
"This is my former village. It's definitely her. But this sheep girl... I need to write to Itinit. What if it's not just any sheep girl? What if it's that very sheep girl...?"
Halankuo ran out of the room.
"She knows something," Etinnei squeezed the pillow with her thighs and bit her lip again.
"You just imagined it," Tuot looked at the wall and saw a girl with cow horns. "It's just a dream. A character from a game can't enter this world. Tell me, Halankuo, am I telling the truth?"
"She's not here."
Only after this phrase did Tuot finally notice that his owner and childhood friend was no longer there.
Meanwhile, Halankuo was sitting on her bed in her room, typing a message to Itinit on a virtual screen. After a few sentences, consisting of black circles, curves, and straight lines on a white background, all she had to do was press a large yellow rectangular-oval button for the text to appear on her interlocutor's screen…
But Halankuo doubted it. Something inside her was bothering her.
"Someone's watching me."
The girl looked under the bed and discovered the cause of her concern. It was the head of a creature with metal horns and gray hair.
"Kyotyoryon, I told you not to hide under the bed. You might get stuck there."
"Sorry, creator," the tip of the character's tongue fell out of her mouth, causing her to stop speaking.
"If I'd chosen a different kind of spirit, Kyotyoryon might have had a normal language, like Itinit's dog girls or the arctic fox girl," Halankuo looked at the pillow. "But I couldn't choose a character with ears and a tail because of Tuot... Aaah, how complicated it all is."
While Halankuo was tormented by thoughts, Kyotyoryon somehow emerged from her hiding place and looked at the screen.
"My creator, have you seen the sheep girl?"
"What?" Halankuo winced in surprise.
Kyotyoryon repeated her question, and the creator was forced to reveal almost everything she knew about this mysterious creature.
"I saw her too," the spirit of metal said.
"Where did you see it?" Halankuo wasn't surprised by the phrase anymore, but the character's words struck her as suspicious.
"Kyotyoryon can't sleep. She can't dream of this creature."
"I was walking through the forest and came to a place similar to where we were," Kyotyoryon said. "I felt metal and went where it should be. But when I arrived, there was no metal there."
... Kyotyoryon stood on a path in an abandoned village, looking at a large stone near the remains of a wooden fence.
"Hey, my metal, come out! Or are you on the side of this hard ally of the dolls?"
The stone did not answer.
"If you don't come out, I'll take you myself."
Kyotyoryon pointed her hand at the stone, but it only moved slightly. Then the metal spirit approached the "enemy" and noticed that it wasn't just a stone...
It was a yellow-brown barrel with yellow patterns, sticking out of the ground.
"It's like that thing they used to lock me in, and then I'd end up in a place where there's nothing," Kyotyoryon no longer thought about the metal, so she jumped back a few steps.
The barrel no longer attempted to disguise itself. It stirred, and then its lid, covered in yellow glowing patterns, began to open...
A metal spear appeared above Kyotyoryon's horns, and short blades extended from the bracelets on her arms. Her mouth too "didn't stand aside" and released a blade the length of a short sword...
...The lid flew out of the barrel, as if under pressure, and then fell onto the cobblestones right in front of Kyotyoryon's feet.
"Oh…" a muffled voice came from the barrel.
The metal spear flew at the potential enemy before it could appear, so it missed and pierced a layer of moss.
"Aaah..." The sounds of some creature continued to come from the barrel.
Kyotyoryon raised her hand. The metal spear rose into the air, hovered over the barrel, and then fell tip-down.
A metallic clang, amplified by the echo, emanated from the barrel, but quickly ceased. This alerted Kyotyoryon. She transformed her blades into wings to rise above the ground and see what was inside this strange thing. Fortunately, she didn't have to take that risk.
The part of the spear without the tip appeared from the stone barrel. The weapon moved quickly upward, and soon emerged completely, but not just one. This time, black metal horns, twisted in a spiral, emerged from the barrel. They were adorned with yellow veins in rings reminiscent of the pattern on the barrel.
"What is this?"
Kyotyoryon's tongue returned to her mouth. The metal spirit realized she no longer wanted to cut this thing inside the barrel. Now she simply wanted to know what it was.
And soon she found out. Yellow hair followed the horns, and then eyes of the same color, but with black rectangular pupils.
"Who are you?" Kyotyoryon asked.
The head emerged completely from the barrel. The spirit of metal recognized in this creature a girl with the horns of a sheep, to which the tip of a metal spear was "stuck".
"I am the spirit of a stone sheep, not a goat."
"She's like me, only made of stone," Kyotyoryon thought.
"I'm not a goat," the sheep girl repeated.
"I know the difference between goats and sheep," Kyotyoryon said. "Sheep have twisted horns, while goats have normal horns."
"I have normal horns, but the goats have horns like yours."
After this phrase, Kyotyoryon noticed that the tip of the spear was still held by the spirally twisted horns.
"My metal, you have betrayed me again."
Kyotyoryon stood before the strange creature in the stone barrel and watched as the metal object created with her mind failed to return "home."
"Why won't my metal come to me? I should be the only spirit of metal."
A cloud of metal needles rained down on the stone sheep spirit...
"And then all the metal stuck to her horns," Kyotyoryon finished her story. "They grew big, bigger than your hair before, creator."
Halankuo imagined a creature with a pile of metal objects on its head, sitting in a stone barrel, and didn't react at all.
"She also did this," Kyotyoryon stretched her mouth with her hands, causing her tongue to fall out again and nearly injure her creator.
"Then I need to write something else," Halankuo typed a few characters on the virtual keyboard and then pressed the send button.
Itinit was sitting in his room, about to open a game, when a blue energy speaker suddenly appeared in the air.
"Master, what are you going to play?" a growling voice came from the virtual object.
"I'm already playing. Don't disturb me, Noru."
"How did you guess I was Noru?" the dog girl's voice, now normal, asked. "We sound the same."
"I'm not sure right now. But if I guessed correctly, you'll be playing the doll-smashing mission in the north."
"You want to send my big sis somewhere?" the voice became plaintive, more like a moan or a howl.
"You guessed it, Kimchan. But this time, you'll go there together. You wanted to be together, didn't you?"
"Aw-aw… But food... Who's going to feed us?"
"You'll hunt. There are plenty of tasty animals in the north."
A groaning sound mixed with barking emanated from the speaker. Itinit reached for the strange device to turn it off, but suddenly heard the sound of an incoming message...
"Uh..."
The creator of the dog girls was no longer interested in the curses in dog language coming from the virtual speaker. He was worried about something more important.
"I thought that sheep girl was a dream," Itinit thought. "I didn't play the game Tuot plays much, so I didn't know that this character was from there. But why is she in the real world?"
Itinit began to recall the details of his encounter with this strange character, and soon discovered something important.
"She was able to pass through the energy barrier, but she wasn't surrounded by an energy aura. That's not possible, but it's normal for sleep. The walls of the energy barrier can only be broken by an energy skill. Elemental attacks simply repel her. But this sheep girl simply rode through on a stone barrel, as if she were covered in a very powerful layer of energy."
The sounds from the speaker stopped, after which the speaker disappeared. But Itinit didn't notice, though his thought process sped up considerably.
"She was sitting on a stone barrel... Exactly… the stone barrel is connected to the ground, and is partially there. But that's still not enough to penetrate the energy barrier. It's some kind of new mechanic."
Itinit looked at the ceiling. Although there was nothing on it except round light bulbs, it was thanks to these objects that an idea appeared in the guy's brain.
"The horns! They're twisted. Of course, signals don't travel well through horns like that, or maybe the signals aren't getting through at all, but they can be useful for penetrating another space."
Itinit looked at the screen and decided to search for images of this character on the network. It turned out to be difficult. Instead of images from the game itself, the search turned up drawings created by anyone but the developers.
"I need to write to Tuot."
Itinit sent a message to his feathered friend and was about to go outside (the creator of the dog girls had completely forgotten about his enraged pets), but the reply came too quickly.
"This is what happens when it comes to animal girls."
Itinit opened the message and saw the same sheep girl sitting on a stone barrel among the columns. The background was foggy, making it invisible, but at the bottom was a text framed in blue.
"Imerii," Itinit read. "According to the artwork, that's the character's name. That sheep girl didn't know her name and wanted to find out from me."
Itinit lay down on the bed and looked at the yellow-brown wooden door, which stood out against the stone wall. A few moments later, the door "transformed" into the sheep girl, and the wall became a stone barrel.
"Promise me you'll come back, and we'll continue the fight for the memory card."
Itinit jumped off the bed and onto the floor. An energy ball with lightning inside it appeared in his hand. Only then did he realize the sheep girl wasn't actually in the room.
"Uh... I imagined it. But that sheep girl actually said something like that. That battle was for a memory card. It was a really weird memory card, one that showed everything but what a normal memory card should show."
Itinit turned to the screen and started texting his friend.
...At this time, Halankuo lay on her bed, almost asleep. She had forgotten everything that had happened that day. Ahead of her were only images, replacing each other.
…From the top of the cliff, a wide river valley opened up, formed by two low, hill-like mountain ranges. Their slopes were covered with mixed forests, among which the yellow, red and blue roofs of houses stood out.
"Where's the river?" Halankuo heard the sound of water below. "I was so hoping I'd be able to see it from here, at least."
The river flowing along the valley floor was indeed hidden by the dense forests. But even the densest leaves and tree trunks couldn't hide the sound of the water, which over the years had become a common background sound for the villagers, like birdsong.
But the sound of the water wasn't enough for Halankuo. She looked for a place where the river would be almost completely visible. And soon, she found such a place.
It was a yellow-brown rock jutting out from the mountainside. Halankuo climbed it and saw a thin blue ribbon, interrupted by green treetops.
"Is that... a river? It is so small, yet so noisy."
The girl didn't notice the bright yellow lines on the rock, which grew brighter and brighter...
"Hey, cow, get off my coffin," a muffled voice, like a bleat, sounded from somewhere below.
Halankuo, of course, didn't hear that voice. She had finally seen the very river view she'd dreamed of all her childhood, so nothing could distract her from her dream come true...
...except returning to reality.
Halankuo woke to the sound of an incoming message and didn't immediately realize where she was. Only the open screen in a blue energy frame reminded of the existence of this world.
"I sent a message to Itinit," Halankuo thought, frightened.
She tapped the chat with the red dot, and a reply from her friend appeared before her.
"Let's find that animal. Tuot will like it."
Attached to the message was an image of a girl with sheep's horns sitting on a stone barrel.
"I think I saw something like that, but I'm not sure about it," Halankuo thought and grabbing a strand of her hair.
After a few dozen moments, the answer was found. Halankuo remembered a dream she'd recently had.
"There was a cliff like that. In my village which was alive. There were rooftops there. And the river, which I hadn't yet seen from above, was there too. Itinit, wait for me!"
The girl typed a few characters, minimized the screen, and then ran toward the room's exit. She didn't notice Kyotyoryon standing in the hallway with her shoe in her teeth and her stockings on her horns...
Only after Itinit smiled as he opened the cafe door did Halankuo look down and see what she had always feared.
"Now I recognize you," Itinit said, turning away into the room.
"Welcome back, sis," the head of a blue-haired doll appeared from the doorway.