I walked.forever it seemed like. On a flat lay of land, just sand, cracks, rocks and dust dancing around my bare feet. The amazing thing about this is, nothing seemed to affect me. Everything my body came in contact with was soothing, comforting. I was in a perfect world where nothing could hurt me, only comfort me. I felt so protected, shielded by something I couldn't see, but trusted. And I let it lead me wherever it was I was going.

I reveled in the pink that the sun was tinting on my cheeks and shoulders. Everything around me was undisturbed, natural. Like I was the first person to have even been in this undiscovered place. Like this place was mine, only mine.and his. But I still had to find him, tell him that it was ours together.

I looked down at my body. White silk flapped fluidly around me. It looked tight, but it held me in comfortably. And when I turned away from the sun, the silk turned black. I liked the sun, it's intensity. And I liked the white, so I turned around again, making my wrap its original color.

The land that I hadn't been able to recognize before became immediately familiar when I lifted my head upward again. There was the cliff that I had seen.in a vision.in a vision I had once a while ago. And then, I don't know how it happened, but the sun.it just exploded all around me.made me see things under the blackness of my closed eyelids. I didn't know it was possible to have visions *in* a dream, but I was having one. It was of Maria and Michael, then Isabel and Alex immediately after, lying together on the extreme tip of a cliff. Holding each other like they had nothing else to cling to but their bodies. And then, god, then I saw *him*.and every ounce of security and comfort that I had trusted in this dream left me. It left me when I saw him, Max, standing at the very same edge that I had just seen in the vision. Except now, my eyes were open. And in my dream, I was standing at the foot of this enormous rock formation, with him, standing over the ground and the earth, looking over the edge of the cliff aimlessly. He was wearing silk too, but black. It ripped against him in the harsh winds of his altitude but he didn't seem to notice. As far away as I was, I could see him with such clarity I doubted if I was sleeping. He was standing at the very edge, his back turned from a cave.with a huge boulder in front of it.with his handprint still illuminated on the front. And I then realized his erratic breathing. His dusty feet. He had tried to close the cave, but couldn't.he couldn't close that part of himself off.no matter how much he wanted to.

My comfort was destroyed. I was hit with the burden of not being able to love him anymore. But it was all still so.surreal. Obviously because it wasn't really happening. But my heart heaved with a tight ache that I seem to get whenever I'm around him.because I love him so much. I turned around, not thinking I was emotionally stable enough to even approach him in my dreams. And when I did, my silk turned black immediately. And the wind, it started violently whipping my hair around my face, blinding my path.pushing me in the opposite direction. Pushing me back to him. Making my dress clean and white. And when I succumbed to this *force* that was urging me, my hair.it just fell back into place. The sun hit me like a million warm memories and my chest clenched again as I looked at him. I didn't understand how I could feel such a desperate need to be held by him, and at the same time, painfully afraid of what would happen if I let him touch me, even if it was just a dream. Because if he touched me.I would lose it all again. Everything. Everything that I had spent our time apart healing. And the solitary sight of him tore all of that down around me, and formed into a path up the cliff. So I followed it.

The climb. My heart wasn't constricting because of the lack of oxygen or being tired. My body was incapable of being physically hurt in this new plane of existence. But it clenched tighter as his figure became closer. As his scent that was so vivid.too vivid for a dream, slid down on the shoulders of warm desert wind and hit me with a strong remembrance of reality. No matter what I did, where my mind took me, he remained the one real thing constantly.

I reached the top. The sun so close I felt as if I could reach my hand out and wrap my fingers around it. So close to the galaxy and infinite expansive spaces in my dream it was unreal. I could feel tears but ignored them. Sound just.disappeared around me. I couldn't hear anything. I slowly.timidly, extended my bare arm and hand toward his back that was clad with black silk, so dark it hurt like looking at the sun hurts.

My fingers and expanded palm were inches, centimeters away from him. Heat was radiating off of his body, coursing gently into my fingertips. But that wasn't close enough. I walked up, until I was right behind him. I leaned my entire body into his back, my palm cupping his tender spot right below his ribcage, my face warming on the curve of his shoulder blades, legs flush against his. Small beads of perspiration from his back.from the sun beating down on his back, soaked through his shirt and touched my cheek. I reveled in being in contact with him so intimately. He was so soft.so soft and beautiful.