Poor Darling - Tumblr Posts
Ooh, I'd like to know about "My soul to keep"
So for a long long time I told myself I wouldn't write this one, but the past week or so it's been stuck in my head so I've resigned myself to it. This is a sequel to "Now I Lay Me" and it explores the immediate aftermath of Dream's awakening. I worry that it'll be redundant, cause it'll be a similar format with Dream interacting with each friend/family member/etc... but I guess we'll see lol.
This is the first scene I wrote, and the one that more or less got me to decide to actually do this one:
Dream blinks slowly, like his eyelids are weighed down, and he’s looking in Despair’s direction, but she doesn’t feel like he’s really looking at her. It’s been weeks, and his eyes are open, and his wounds are bandaged, and he still looks so much like a corpse.
“How do you do it?”
His voice is still rasping and weak. She’s not sure if Dream is really looking for an answer, but she shrugs anyway, pressing her hook into her palm shyly.
“Mostly I hold someone’s hand.”
Silence stretches between them, and she wonders if she’s somehow chased Dream back into his head, wonders if he’s somehow found a corner of her own realm that even she can’t reach. She wouldn’t put it past him.
But maybe that’s unfair of her. Because some time later, maybe minutes or maybe hours, she hears the faintest rustle of fabric, and when she turns her head, Dream is holding a hand out to her.
He is shaking, like it’s a struggle to hold the bony limb up, and he’s pressed his face into the pillow, and she can taste his fear in the air. His hand held in a fragile question, a tentative plea, bracing to be pushed away like he always has been before.
Despair laces their fingers together without hesitation.
