A light breeze flew throughout the land.  Bits of ash and sand were carried along with it, flying so well with the air that it eventually dissolved into it as if it were never there in the first place.  A silver wolf's nose inhaled some of this ash as it sniffed at an item on the ground, barely noticing the minutely toxic atmosphere as it picked up the scent of something living underneath the black moon hoodie.  The beaten-up animal would've found it odd that it had smelled the scent of a dead person just before this had it not known the rules of nature in this world. 

Suddenly, the person twitched, groaning at the feeling of regaining her consciousness after such a fall.  A bright blue eye opened to a dark grey land, her other eye being covered in the ashy ground and requiring a good arm wipe before it could look around with the other.  She observed the burnt up surroundings, having seen nothing like this from where she was before.

Wait... where was she before? Her memory felt like a fragile glass pane that shattered into bits after one fatal drop, only a few large pieces being salvageable and the rest being broken too small to ever put back together. She desperately grabbed at any of the comprehensible shards that she could, figuratively using tape and luck to reform the broken window that was her memory.

Her name is Pearl. She comes from somewhere else. She came to escape a great danger. She left her friends behind.

And that was it. That was all she had.

Pearl's own wolf ear flicked as she heard a soft bark from behind her, making her jump out of her skin, not because of the potential danger of a wild beast, but because she was so lost in her own thoughts that she had stopped paying attention to anything around her. The fear of a wild beast came after that.

She rolled around to face the silver wolf, jumping up to her feet within the same movement. It looked like a normal forest wolf, only it had half of its right ear missing, a slightly shorter tail than usual, a t-shaped scar across the left side of its face, and a much bigger scar going all the way across its back. It moved closer to her as she moved backwards, a little jingle ringing out as it stepped. The noise made Pearl notice the collar on its neck, bright green and somehow feeling as if it were more full of life than the living animal itself.  Finally taking it upon herself to conclude that the wolf was domestic and therefore of no harm to her at the moment, she kneeled down to its level and let it walk up to her.

She originally had her hands rested on her knees, but she flipped out the palm of her left hand when the wolf nudged its snout against it, assuming it wanted to smell her, which it did. Slowly and carefully as to not scare it off, she grabbed the golden charm on the end of the collar hoping to see the name of the creature. The front of the tag was blank and nameless, however, the back read: "If found, return to Joel".

Pearl read the message aloud to herself, looking back up at the wolf.

"Is Joel around here somewhere?" She asked it. "Where is he?"

The wolf just stared up at her, taking a seat and effectively covering its rear end in black soot.

"Come on little fella, where's your owner? Wolves like you don't just go very far away from their owners," Pearl tried again, but to no avail. She tried standing up and gently nudging it with her foot, but that didn't seem to get it going either, it just made the animal scoot back a little bit to avoid said nudging.

"Ok now you're just being weird," said Pearl, placing her hands on her hips. The wolf barked, but not in a realistically defensive way, more like in a way that it was trying to talk to her, but as a wolf couldn't put anything into actual words.

"Fine, you don't wanna lead me to him," Pearl sighed, walking away from the creature and along the border of the desert to scope out the area she was in. She would've walked straight into the forest across if not for the extensive wall of cacti encompassing the dry lands, so instead she took to finding an opening she could leave out of. However, as a surprise to her, the wolf stood up, shook what it could of the ash off, and proceeded to follow her.

"What?" Pearl questioned, hearing the footsteps and turning around to witness the wolf. "No, get outta here! I know I probably smell like a distant cousin of yours or something, but I'm not that, and I'm not your owner so just... go away,"

Despite the statement and her efforts, the wolf continued to stay on her tail. She tried getting it to sit down and stay, but it stood back up and went on. She tried running to lose it despite the very open and impossible to hide in lands, but nothing threw the animal away from her.

Finally, after one last attempt to get it to stop by finding a bone on the ground and throwing it as far as she could, only for the wolf to come bolting right back way faster than any living thing ever should've, Pearl sighed in defeat.

"Alright, alright you, you can come with me!" She said, kneeling down to give it a pat on its head. "But we're finding this Joel person first and foremost, as soon as we can, you got it?"

The wolf, of course, didn't answer, but it did give another bark as it enjoyed the head pats. 

"Good.  C'mon then," said Pearl, walking ahead without worrying about the wolf this time. It followed her as she continued to make her way around the cacti fort, studying the wall of prickly plants in somewhat awe. Was this a natural wonder of the black desert, or did someone plant this here? If the latter was so, was that person still alive and about?

Scratch that, was anyone still alive and about? Pearl heard about worlds like these before from somewhere she couldn't remember, and they called them "Hardcore" worlds. She was never the type to travel across the realms, but from what she'd been told, they were all the same as the world she came from, with the catch that the lives they had were finite, usually limited to just one. It was such a strange concept to her, for death to be permanent when she vaguely remembered having such a fun time being careless with herself.

There was yet another odd feeling. She could recall the joy she felt in whatever world she left, but the joy of doing what? What was she doing that made her happy? Was she with her friends, or was she by herself? How could she be joyous when her only clear memory was of the threat that caused her to leave?

The questions kept flooding in, and soon, she stopped dead in her tracks, no longer focusing on her unspoken pathway.  She had already picked up the obviously large shards of her memory, but now a force was pressuring her into putting back the tiny bits as well.  It was overwhelming, and her inability to do it was like being crushed by a weight she couldn't hold up. Even in a literal sense there was some kind of weight, because her legs suddenly felt so much weaker and it sent her stumbling to the ground.

Her arms trembled in her efforts to hold herself up, the force still not caring to cease.  She almost felt on the verge of tears until something soft and slimy lapped across her face.  She sat back up to avoid her new wolf friend's tongue giving her kisses as a successful attempt at cheering her up.

"Ah- blegh! Ok, ok!" Pearl exclaimed, wiping the spit off of her face with one arm while using the other to make sure the ball of silver fur didn't try that again. As she freed up her vision (for the second time mind you), she looked up and got to witness the sun setting over the horizon. Swirls of pink and orange and purple populated the once blue sky, slowly but surely turning it to the dark navy blue of the night. It amazed her for a moment, almost like she had never seen a sunset before. The other feelings she felt over her lost memories were of a sort of nostalgia, a familiar feeling she simply couldn't pinpoint, but this was more like deja vu, like she actually hadn't seen a sunset in a long, long time, maybe not ever.

"Oh no..." muttered Pearl to herself. It was then that she remembered the threat of the night creatures, and remembered that she had to either find a weapon and hope for the best, or find a place of shelter. Or die. That was another option, but it surely wasn't the option she was willing to take. She quickly scanned the area, looking around before spotting a tall, sandy hill with what looked like a building standing on top of it. Well, hopefully it was a building, because from the distance Pearl was at, she couldn't tell wether it was a tower or a really messed up birthday cake.

She began trekking towards the unknown territory right away, her and her wolf leaving behind 3 sets of footprints in the black desert.