As the music reached its crescendo, the ballroom floor was awash with the swirling of dresses, glittering and swaying, and Willow was drawn into a sweeping dip. Willow, pulled into the arms of a fox whose face she could not see, found herself embraced against his chest, his grip almost crushing, as the music came to an abrupt stop. The room was deathly quiet, its vibrant colours muted to grey, and Willow stretched and wriggled to see the face of the man holding her, even as the others in the room began to turn towards her. The embrace became a strangling hold that squeezed the breath out of her lu-

Willow woke with a jolt, sitting up in bed, gasping for air. A small cloud of pillow stuffing was falling slowly around her. She groaned. Somewhere during the dream, her cybernetic claws had activated, no doubt reacting to her state of panic. Two of her pillows lay as a shredded testament to the theory. As her claws retracted slowly into her hands, she found she was covered in a thin film of sweat, her body felt burned and tired, like she’d run a marathon. That dream again. The dream about another life, and another girl. Her cybernetic eye blinked an angry red as it began its wakeup cycle. It felt like its mechanical gears were whirring inside of her skull. Her thoughts turned back to the ballroom, the familiarity of the dance, the music - almost like a lullaby. No, she told herself, that life was far away. Nothing more than a dream. Or maybe, a nightmare.

With her bed nothing more than a nest of crumb covered pillows, it took the vixen a couple of moments to woozily pull herself up and stagger across the room, to where her servers hummed and moaned in the darkness. Her left eye saw only blinking lights in the dim, but her right eye and AR overlays showed a much different picture. With infrared vision she could trace every edge and corner in the gloom, and with AR overlays her internal computer sent her real time updates on the health of the servers. She gave one an almost affectionate pat. They all seemed to be chugging along just fine. As the morning news scrolled across her feeds, Willow saw an update on a contract she’d signed a couple of days ago.

“Xixi huh...?” The old goat’s picture was blurred, and she could swear she saw three eyes instead of two. The contract specified she meet up with the goat in some transit station or another, and Willow wasn’t really feeling up for the idea of going out just yet. Her muscles still felt sore, and her head was swimming with half remembered imagery. Whilst the contract offered good money, it wasn’t the financial gain that roused Willow from her laziness, it was curiosity. The contract said something about working offshore, with exotic machinery. “Worth a look, I guess. Who knows, maybe today’ll be interesting after all.” She mumbled, pulling on her hoodie and sliding into a pair of jeans. Maybe today would be the day that changed her life.


OOO

A lil' something I drew just for fun, basically a what-if, of this Willow ( http://www.furaffinity.net/view/23929842/ ) but instead of being a fay, she was born into a cyberpunk/vaporwave world. I really enjoyed drawing her, I hope you like her too!