Nani slept so deeply that she honestly couldn't remember if she'd had her usual dream--she thought she had, but it had been more as though she was searching a single house for someone rather than wandering endlessly in a great wide world. The sense that she was close, if she could just reach out and knock on the right door...
The rooster's crow dragged her back into the waking world, and the dream dissipated quickly, leaving only fragments of sensation in her memory. She blinked, reorienting herself to the world around her.
She was in barn. Right.
"Oh!"
Brunhilda the dairy cow had shuffled closer to her sometime in the night, and was sniffing at her white-streaked hair curiously, clearly wondering if it was edible. A surprisingly long tongue lolled out of the animal's mouth and began lapping at the side of her head.
Nani blinked, still half-sleep, then burst out laughing. "Cowlick," she realized with a giggle, remembering one of the trader's she'd traveled with briefly had used the word. "I get it."