Sunlight pooled in the back of the sheer curtains and a small streak of golden ichor seeped through its small gap as if the sun bled onto someone's skin. Sage stirred in her sleep as the budging brightness kept her away from sleeping. The bed was extra soft today, she didn't even remember if her back had ached the night before she even starts drifting away to sleep. Still, Sage payed no violent reaction as if it's just another normal thing to see. She even ducked her head low back to the pillow that was so comfortable it's lulling her to drift back to sleep.

If only the sun wasn't too much of a bother, she would've surrendered to the temptation that was this bed. She swears this thing has never been this comfortable before.

Her hands then stretched out to every space it could reach waiting to hear the cracking of her joints, but that was easily set aside when her left hand collided with something that was somehow occupying the remaining side of the bed. A strong feeling of confusion started growing inside Sage's awareness, colliding with her bones as it aches to discover what kind of situation had she gotten into now.

"This is not my room," it's when Sage has finally realized everything that she abruptly sprung up the mattress. 

"This is not my bed," her trail of thoughts flowed rapidly as anxiety creeps inside of her. 

"I shouldn't be here," The initial action someone would've done if they were left clueless in a room they couldn't recognize was to leave and yet Sage chose to bury herself more in the uncertainty that the situation carries.

"What are you awake so early for?" and if it couldn't be more surprising, someone had started pinning her chest down gently with a warmth so familiar it radiates comfort forcing Sage to be left with no choice but to lean towards it. "Just stay, we don't have to do anything." 

Sage complied without the slightest of doubt. As her head collides with the soft material of her pillow once again, she was welcomed by the sight of a face that was so familiar, her heart aches through just looking at it.

They looked so peaceful. The way there are strands of hair lying atop of a face that has no signs of worry. Sage tried so hard not to tear up because of the sight. Not because it's overwhelming but because this was the face, she had prayed for in the past few months to finally see, again.

 "Are you really here?" her whisper was so inaudible it's almost impossible to be noticed if one wasn't paying attention. But the eyes that are inches close to her slowly fluttered open the same time Sage's tears started rolling down her cheeks. 

"I can be anywhere you want me to." 

There was something omniscient about how her words echoed around Sage's mind, but that would be the last of her worries. Heck, she wasn't even past the realization that she could see this face once again.

But Sage, as much as how desperate she is was no stranger to deceit. 

"You're not real," she exclaimed as she pushed herself back from the being that was everything that someone who was so dear to her looked like. The clock not so far beside the bed, has its hands rotating rapidly as the numbers swirled into her vision. 

"This is not real," Sage repeated like a mantra but it was as if she was convincing herself more than the person she was talking to. 

"But I can be," Sage aches for every syllable that was sliding down the tongue of whoever it is that was in front of her. Her hands are slowly inching towards the crook between the person's face and neck as Sage witnessed how she melted upon her touch.

"If this isn't real then I don't want it to end," Sage whispered. Her hands slowly tightening upon the feeling of someone slowly leaning into her touch. 

"It doesn't have to end, Sage. Just stay here with me." 

Sage is no foolish person but if it for this being who was so keen on making her fall down this sick kind of a trap then Sage would willingly be one. 

"You feel so real," Sage whispered while she thought of how she was the very first thing she felt after the numbness of the last few months. She wanted to cradle this moment, selfishly grab onto everything that she can before the fear that everything would start dissolving creeps in and all that she will be left with again was nothing but ashes of regret. "You have no idea how much I longed to feel you again," words are carelessly rolling down her mouth as her grip tightens bit by bit. She can't afford to let go now, not when she had the chance to hold the very thing her fingers had always ached for. Not when she finally grasped something after those long periods of reaching into nothing.

"I am here now," Sage wasn't sure if it was said to reassure her or to mock her desperations more and more, but Sage couldn't care less about how vulnerable she looks right now. She would pick up her bones one by one and put it all back into place if this is the only way to start feeling motion once again. "Please don't ever leave again, Olive" and there it goes, the last string of restraint that Sage had, breaking free as she regarded the being as someone, she wanted it to be. They said names holds such strong power. They never told her which person holds them though. The way she gave a name to this being started feeling more like a curse than the hope she wanted. 

If this is a curse then it's irredeemable by now.

"I have nowhere else to go," Olive said, still leaning in to her touch, and Sage calls for whoever god was listening to them in whatever fantasy world they are in right now. 

Maybe there wouldn't even be one, maybe it's just them and this excruciating build up of her selfish affairs and prolonged grief. 

But if there was one to answer, she'd probably ask why that motion looked awfully painful and how was she slowly growing fond of it minute by minute. It made her feel like she needed to protect it. 

She failed once and maybe that was the pushing factor that tells her to do better this time. A second chance if you were to vividly put it together. 

"Do I have nowhere else to go to as well? I don't want to leave you," Sage grows more impatient and desperate every second she lasts in this forbidden state. "I don't think so, but you have the choice to defy it," every syllable that comes out, sounds everything like a sultry enticement. But then, she also remembered how she swore to do everything for Olive back then when there was no need to defy things—where they were free.

"If I did, do I get to stay here with you? You won't leave me?" its funny for Sage to think about how it only took her a few minutes and a couple of strokes of skin against skin. She looked over to the clock, with the numbers smudged into its background and the hands portraying something like a wheel as it goes on and on. She too goes on and on deeper into this spiral which as she strides nearer looked more like a trench now, all ready to swallow her entirety as it mocks the pre-existing normalcy she once equipped as her own.

"I've always been here, you were the one to leave every time, remember?"

And as Olive spoke, Sage remembered all the lost dreams and hallucinations brought by grief that were pulling her away from the painful reality she was in. 

She was inviting her all along, all those while she crave and yearn and reach but was never able to take, indulge, and claim. She could have saved all that time missing a person that exists in a timeline that reality was eager to wash her away from. "You know for something so deceiving, you look so genuine," even the greatest among us are when it comes to the things they want most.

"Is it really deceiving if you think of this as hope?"

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But Sage doesn't even have the time to care about what's true and what's not in this moment. She would've wished for this in any moment that she gets. 

Living is painful anyway. 

Sage's voice cracks and the other being looked at her as if she understood what she meant. This still feels so real. It's all so real that Sage could hear her heart scream the name that sounded like crying back when there was only an empty space beside her to wake up to. And this dream, it held her, comforted her, soothed the folds on the back of her shirt the same way it rubbed the icky feeling of helplessness in her. 

This is the light in the end of her tunnel, and it is so blinding and overwhelming as Sage shamelessly bathed in it. "Take me, please take me now," she pleaded and repeated this thought like a mantra—a prayer to whoever is feeding this memory in her mind. 

Let it consume me, let it control my body. I don't need it anymore. This is the goal; this is my most desired symphony. 

And even with the wailing that took most of the ability of her lungs she thought:

Let it be, I don't need it. It doesn't make me feel like I'm living, here I am alive, I am existing. Take me, take me now. 

Olive nodded at every thought like she could hear it. After all, they spoke of the same language. And Olive, just as Sage is, is well versed enough in these syllables of longing. "You can have me," Sage whispered unto Olive and she did. It was the most painless thing Sage has ever felt in an eternity.

Sunlight pooled in the back of the sheer curtains and a small streak of golden ichor seeped through its small gap as if the sun bled onto someone's skin. Sage did not stir, did not move, even with the blinding brightness prying her eyes open. 

There comes a person, and another, and another, and Sage wouldn't even lose count of all these people. It's everyone she knew now and wouldn't in the future. It doesn't matter, she does not need to. One whispered against another, one broke down on their knees, one grabbed, one was breathless, one had thought of everything at that moment as heavy that they ended up wailing, calling for a name that could only serve purpose now as something that could only be remembered. 

One whispered against the other, "If you would look at it, you'd say the sun took her in, with it shining directly on her as if it was telling her 'this is the way I paved for you' and she did. Of course, she would," for that day, Sage did not wake up. She did not feel the extra soft bed and someone's hand pushing strands of her hair away from her face to let everyone see how happy she looked that she almost felt alive. 

Some would say she'd given to the nightmares, and if she were to hear it, she'd probably say "In hind sight, dreams and nightmares are just two different sides of the same coin, it's not giving in if you gladly begged for it," and another came in the room, they looked, and as they took the first glance in her face, they understood. "She had a good dream," they said as they pulled the sheets up to close the sunlight path she padded into.