Liesel opens her eyes to a thin horizon colored in with thinner air. She looks around and sees an old friend named Death. She almost calls out to him, but an overwhelming grey rinses him from her eyes. He is replaced with a world that doesn't look like itself. The Steiner's front door is no longer standing at their house, but laid out against grey rubble. She sees the town she knows in way she has never known it before; It is wrecked and ruined by destruction wrapped up in bolted metal and dropped from planes by men with harsh words and harsher eyes. The grey is not dark enough, Liesel thinks; It is almost white. Death reappears, not to be outdone by the white-grey world, and he leans over Liesel as though to give her a kiss. His face is an invitation; his lips look a little too much like relief.
Liesel woke up only just before Death's face could reach her own. And she began to cry, not because of the uninvited memory, but because she couldn't be sure whether Death was a friend or an enemy; one that she loathed or that she loved.
The nightmares were not so uncommon, indeed, Leisel could not remember a time when she had not been haunted by ghosts in places that only appeared while she slept. Leisel was just relieved that she did not have to face the darkness alone. Before, she had been shielded from it by one Hans Hubermann, and in his sudden vacancy Max Vandenburg had stepped forward. Max, however, did not shield. It was not the way he liked to do things. Max warded; With balled fists he hit and kicked at the dreams until they limped away, ever the Jewish Fist Fighter that Leisel knew from her childhood basement. Then Max would calm down, he would unfurl his fingers and use them to wipe away the salt water that leaked from Leisels eyes. He would lay next to The Word Shaker who shook so from her nightmares, and he would wrap her up in him and whisper threats to the trembling in order to scare it away.
On this particular night after this particular nightmare, Max fought the dreams with such ferocity that Liesel could almost see the dank basement bleed through the deep night blue of her room, and she could just make out a harsh eyed german in the other side of the boxing ring. When Liesel made to ask what was wrong Max stopped her before the question could jump from her tongue, by pressing his own mouth to Liesels questioning open one. And when Max kissed her Liesel knew that Death's mouth could not be so inviting as this. But she pressed her lips to his again, just to be sure.