She's come this way before several times but she hasn't come this way with Cloud. The magic loop of the Forest doesn't hold him because he knows what the real Forest feels like deep in his bones thanks to the way it's used him for so long and so he doesn't rely on sight or feeling, on outward appearances to know his way to its edge. The landscape around them jumbles, stretches and seems to tear, like ghosts caught in sharp wind, smearing and remaking itself with a sudden snap as they're past. Eyes that glow blue don't even seem to notice it, bent on the border of his worlds influence.

It comes up faster than would seem natural. One moment there's the thickest of trees and no end in sight and the next there's a sudden nothing. Nothing but grass and a small dirt path leading up and over star painted hills and, perhaps, something that glows in the distance at the end of that path like a welcome light home. Cloud's paws hit that invisible border and it snaps him to a stop as hard as if it had been a brick wall. He's lived too long in the Woods. It own his body now. But it has no such hold over the girl on his back and even as he crashes to an ungainly stop, he twists his body so that the force of it will throw her clear of the tree line and out into the safety of the meadow beyond.