Hermione opened her eyes, blinking in the semidarkness that surrounded her. She rubbed her eyes, and it took a moment for her to register that she wasn't in her own room. Then the events of the night before came back to her. She managed to make out the shape of the clock on the wall in the darkness, but there wasn't enough light for her to see where the hands were. Sighing quietly, she fumbled in her robes and found her wand. She pointed it in the direction of the clock, and the number and the hands glowed just long enough for her to see that it was six o'clock in the morning.

In the darkness that followed after the clock had ceased to glow, the image of the numbers and the hands was burned into her vision for a few moments. When at last she could properly see again, she made sure that she had her beaded bag in her robes and rose from the chair, making her way quietly out to the study. Snape was still sleeping when she made it to her own quarters.

She went straight to the bathroom, pointing her wand at the floating orbs and lighting her rooms as she went. Hermione had known she was a mess by that point, but nothing she had imagined came anywhere close to the sight that greeted her in the mirror.

Her hair, which was still down, hung in untidy, unkempt curls and waves that were tangled and bent at odd angles from her not brushing it and sleeping on it wet, not to mention that it stuck up in places and lone strands of it were flying in every direction; her eyes were bloodshot and below them were dark bags, half-circles as proof of how tired she was; her face was pale and she looked more strained than she'd ever seen herself before, even during the war; her teeth felt gritty and unclean because she hadn't brushed them the night before; her robes were a crumpled, wrinkly mess, some places worse than others; she had rumpled socks on her feet and had an all-over look that simply said: spent.

Sighing, she filled the bathtub but denied herself much time in the luxury of the hot water. She took only as much time as she needed to wash herself and such before she climbed back out and dried off. Then she brushed her hair, pulling it back into a messy-but-acceptable bun like the morning before. She closed her eyes and reveled in the mint taste sweeping through her mouth as she brushed her teeth and finally scrutinized herself in the mirror once again. She looked much better than she had upon entering the bathroom, but still had the appearance of a tired person. She figured she would look that way until this whole thing was over.

Pulling her new, clean robes over her head and new socks on her feet, she grabbed her wand and the beaded bag from her bed and left her own quarters once more. She checked the clock in the teachers' lounge and nodded to herself; it was six-thirty. Then she entered Snape's room and quietly shut the door behind her. It was dark in his rooms besides the light of the fire and she stood still for a moment before her eyes adjusted and she could see. Then she walked quietly to the chair beside the bed and sank down into it. Now it was time to wait. When Snape came around, she would give him a drink and bathe him with cool water once more. Was he any better today than he had been the night before? She didn't dare light her wand or the orbs on the ceiling for fear of waking him, especially since he seemed to be breathing with less difficulty than when he'd first fallen asleep the night before.

She bit her lip, suppressing the sudden urge to light her wand-tip and check to see whether his dark mark had changed color and whether the skin around it was still inflamed. She didn't have much time to fight the desire, though, because just then the door opened very quietly. Hermione stood and walked around the frame that separated Snape's bedroom from his study. She stepped down into the study and peered through the darkness at the headmistress. She walked up and the older witch whispered, "Miss Granger, I have news from Azkaban. Please accompany me to my office."

Sitting in McGonagall's office, Hermione glanced between the headmistress and the Minister of Magic. The headmistress looked to Hermione. "Please describe Professor Snape's ailments to Kingsley."

Hermione nodded. "His dark mark is—or was—changing colour. Last night it was dark grey rather than black and I'm not sure whether it will fade more or darken or stay the way it is. The area around the mark is all badly inflamed. And he is experiencing terrible pain all throughout his body. I don't think it's just the surface and exterior, either. His skin his terribly hot to the touch; it's as if he has a fever, and all I can do to soothe it is bathe him with cool water with a rag."

Kinsley looked troubled. "You say all you can do is bathe it with a wet sponge or rag?"

Hermione nodded. "I tried several other treatments and it's almost as if the dark mark is able to reject them. It caused him more pain when I spread healing cream on his arm over the mark and when I gave him a potion to soothe the pain he almost choked to death and ended up throwing it back up. Water is the only remedy that the dark mark doesn't reject when I try to soothe his hurts."

The minister nodded. He glanced at the headmistress, who nodded her consent, and then turned back to Hermione. "Minerva told me to check the other death eaters in Azkaban for strange ailments. All of them are terribly weak and in copious amounts of pain. And each has very red skin around his or her dark mark, which has, as you said, faded to a dark grey rather than black. I sent a ministry healer to check up on Malfoy Manor. They have it too."

Hermione frowned. "And do you suppose this is linked with the dark lord's death?"

He nodded sagely. "It seems that he thought he would live forever, but took the time to set a special curse within the dark mark upon its appearance on the arm of his followers, so that if he ever did die and they failed him, they would die miserable deaths as well. We've no idea how to cure it, and while I admit I'm not exactly devastated by the news that the Malfoy family may die out completely, I wish them health because they are free for a reason. And Severus . . . is a good man. He doesn't deserve, after everything he's done, to go like this. The man deserves a little happiness after that hell of a life he made it through."

"How are you going to find remedies?" Hermione asked. "I only tried a few different things with Professor Snape and I felt like I was performing some kind of sick experiment on him. It was like I was trying to see which treatment caused him the most pain!" Her eyes welled up with tears again, but she forced them away and continued, "Those witches and wizards may deserve to be in Azkaban with the Dementors, but they don't deserve to be experimented on! To do so would be a savage, terrible, unforgivable thing to do! We would be no better than them to put them through such torture!"

"Miss Granger," he said calmly, "I understand exactly how you feel. Please do not doubt that I feel the same way as you do. But would you rather have them experience some pain and then be healed, or die very painful, drawn-out deaths?"

Hermione was silent. Either could be worse than the other; they could die terrible deaths or experience much worse if the experiments continued to fail over and again.

The minister spoke again. "And the death eaters are not quite as miserable in Azkaban as you think; we have terminated the Dementors that remained and your friends Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley are, in fact, tracking down many of the rest at this very moment."

"No Dementors," Hermione repeated, awed by the very idea. "But I thought Harry and Ron were in Bulgaria going after Rookwood?"

He nodded. "They were. But he seemed to have sensed this strange ailment coming and hidden himself away someplace where we can't get to him. He has, as of the moment, slipped beneath our radar. Seeing that he'll die anyway without the proper assistance or treatment—whatever that may be—I sent your friends after Dementors. They are excellent at conjuring patronuses, and so young too!"

Hermione smiled lightly at the thought of Harry and Ron. She wondered if Ron thought about her before conjuring a patronus, wondered if perhaps she was his happy memory. But then she was brought back to reality and the present and looked up at the two adults standing over her. "Is there anything else?"

They shook their heads. She nodded and stood. "I should go, then. Professor Snape-"

"You should just start calling him Severus, dear," the headmistress broke in.

Hermione was shocked. "What?"

"You should start referring to the man you are caring for by his first name, not his professional or his last." McGonagall said clearly.

"But-" Hermione stammered.

McGonagall smiled down at her and said, "You were once his student, which called for his proper title. But now you are his colleague. I only call him 'Professor' or 'Professor Snape' when I am speaking about him to students. 'Severus' is his first name and that is how I know him. All of the staff know each other by their first names."

"That's fine for you," Hermione said politely, "but I don't think he would be very pleased to find that I assumed we were on first-name terms."

At this, Kingsley let out a bark-like laugh and looked at Hermione with a grin on his face. "Oh-ho," he said, turning to McGonagall, "this one has a sense of humor! She'll do well with the students."

"But I'm serious!" Hermione insisted.

The headmistress smiled. "He may not like the idea now, but he will have you accept you as a colleague when you're sitting at the staff table every night, starting the first night of September. And you already are sitting at the table with the rest of us and helping us with the school. Also, you may call me Minerva now, rather than Professor or Headmistress."

At the thoughts of repairing the school, Hermione asked, "But Profess—I mean, Minerva—if I'm required to stay by Snape's—I mean, Severus'—side all of the time, how can I help with the restoration?"

The headmistress sighed and leaned over her desk, patting Hermione's arm. "Don't worry about that, dear, we can handle it without you. Granted, I'll have to tackle the places you were set up for, but don't fret; we'll do just fine. You just worry about taking care of Severus and making him as comfortable as possible." Then she clapped her hands together. "Now, you ought to get back, as you said. Kingsley," she turned to the minister, and Hermione sensed her dismissal and left the headmistress' office.

When she closed Snape's door quietly behind her, she found the room just as quiet as before. But when she entered the bedroom she knew Snape—no, she scolded herself, Severus—was awake. She sat down and pointed her wand at the orbs on the ceiling, which glowed dimly as they had the night before. Hermione decided that no matter what the headmistress said, she would always think of the man on the bed as Snape, not Severus. Snape's black eyes followed her every move after she lit the room.

She held the cup to his lips and he drank quite a lot, and when he was finished she again used her wand to wet the cloth and began bathing him with the cool water. She started on his left side and worked her way to his right as she had the night before. She had half expected it to be easier this time, but instead she found her eyes more drawn than ever before to his pale skin. When she was done at last, she set the cloth down in its place and stared back at the professor for a few moments. Then he closed his eyes. His breathing became steady and less pained than before.

Hermione watched him for a few moments. Then it started to dawn on her; the headmistress was right, she had begun to care about Snape. The old bat of the dungeons was tugging at her heartstrings and making her emotions a mess. And it wasn't for some strange fancy a student had taken to her teacher. No, she didn't have a crush on him. Rather, when she saved him in the shrieking shack she had created a bond between them, a connection. And even though neither had been aware of it before, she realized that she had come to care about what happened to him after that day of the last battle.

Now tears were streaming silently down her cheeks. It wasn't fair. None of it. Snape had given his everything and now he was just suffering more. She had saved him and hoped that perhaps this would be his chance to get what he deserved; a happy, peaceful life lived however he wanted and not under the influence of anyone else. But she had just caused him more pain, as he was now dying slowly and painfully, wasting away before her eyes. She couldn't just do nothing about it. But at the same time she refused to try any more "remedies" on him, for fear of hurting him worse. She took her handkerchief from her bag and wiped her face. Then she managed to stop crying and put the handkerchief back, wetting the cloth and bathing him once again with cool water.

He seemed to sleep right through it all as she dabbed the wet cloth on his chest and arms and stomach, or at least he just laid there with his eyes clothes and didn't look at her. "I'm sorry," she would whisper occasionally, or allow the words to escape her lips on a nearly-silent breath. The least she could do for putting him through this torture was take care of him and apologize as sincerely as was humanly possible.

While Snape slept, Hermione sat back in her chair and looked around the room. It was dark, all of it. The walls were dark wood, much darker even than the wood on the walls in her rooms. The bedframe and wardrobe and wood in all of the furniture were the same dark wood. The couch by the fire in the study was black leather. The floor of the study was flat, smooth grey stone, while in the bedroom it was wood that was just a few shades lighter than the walls. The bathroom walls were stone, as was the floor. The faucets and things in the bathroom were all silver. The ceiling in all three rooms was grey stone.

Hermione couldn't help but admire the study, where the walls had bookshelves built into them and were stacked with lined books on all sides, leaving only enough space for the fireplace and chimney to fit between shelves on one wall. There was a desk in the study just as in Hermione's, though Snape had placed it in a different corner than Hermione's was. Having gotten her first good look at it, Hermione thought that the study had much the same appearance as a library would. She walked along the walls, letting her fingers trail over the many books on the shelves. None of the books were dusty, and Hermione wondered which charm Snape had used to keep them clean and free of dust like they were.

She returned to her chair by the bed not long after and set her wand and her beaded bag on the bedside table before leaving to her own room and returning shortly. She brought a book bag filled with her favorite books and the one on advanced transfiguration, along with her notebook filled with notes on how she was going to teach that year. She flipped through the pages of the notebook and skimmed over her carefully outlined points about the differences between teaching first year students and teaching those who had already passed their OWLs.

She then tucked the notebook away and took out a small paperback book, a muggle book filled with fairytales. Being a muggleborn definitely gave her the advantage of understanding both the wizard world and the muggle world, and she was now familiar with fairytales and legends and facts and fictions from both. She smiled as the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves came to life within the thin, worn old pages beneath her fingers.

She lost track of time and looked up, setting her book down in her lap, when the headmistress entered, pointing her wand at two floating trays of steaming breakfast. One had the usual array of delicious foods, and the other, a small bowl of gruel and a glass of pumpkin juice. Hermione set her tray on the bedside table, moving her wand and beaded bag and books to her book bag, and set Snape's tray on the edge of the bed. He opened his eyes when McGonagall nodded towards the gruel and said, speaking to Hermione, "It's been sweetened with just enough sugar, but it isn't meant for the taste. We were just hoping we could offer something that he seemed to have some hope of keeping down and that would make him stronger."

Hermione nodded and was rather surprised when the headmistress left. Snape had turned his eyes to her without turning his head. She stood and propped him up against the pillows so that he was in a sitting position before giving the food a second glance. She stacked the pillows behind his head so he didn't have to hold it up and could relax, not having to strain any of his pained muscles.

She offered him the cup of water first. He refused. She offered the pumpkin juice, and he drank half of it before he stopped. Hermione scooped a small spoonful of gruel up and held it where he could see it. She brought it to his mouth and he ate it, not giving any sign of either enjoying or disliking what she was giving him. She fed him the rest of the gruel, spoonful by spoonful, careful not to spill the steaming food on his bare chest. He seemed able to consume regular food without a problem from the dark mark, and Hermione was relieved, having been worried the entire time she was feeding him. He drank the rest of the pumpkin juice and the cup refilled itself but Hermione allowed him only one more cupful before she set it back and offered him water instead. He drank several cups of water and then closed his eyes. He looked pleased, seeming to feel a bit less helpless because he was sitting and not lying down.

Instead of eating her own food, Hermione bathed Snape once more with the wet cloth after she noticed the hot gruel had made him too hot and he was sweating. Then she sat down and ate a cold breakfast, but it tasted wonderful to her and she could have cared less that it was cold; Snape looked relatively better than before.

His dark mark was a lighter grey than it had been just last night and the skin around it seemed to be more soothed and not half as inflamed. Hermione was relieved by this, but also worried; Kingsley had said that it was a curse and Snape would die. Things could only get worse from here if the minister was right.

Looking down at him, she couldn't help but let her eyes drift over him to see if she could make him more comfortable in any way. She shook her head, silently scolding herself when she realized she'd never taken his shoes off the night before. His feet might be aching just as bad as the rest of him, and if they were then shoes would definitely not help the problem. So she stood and carefully eased his shoes off his feet. His eyes opened as soon as she touched his shoes, and he stared at the ceiling while she took them off. She set his shoes at the end of the bed and when she straightened, feeling pleased that he was free of them, she looked down at his socks and her face fell; should she remove his socks as well? And should she bathe his feet?

Hermione bit her lip and stared at his feet, though her eyes unfocused as she thought. Snape's eyes drifted from the ceiling to Hermione and he watched her for several seconds. She sensed his eyes on her and looked up at him, wishing he could voice what he wanted. Then, with obvious effort, he said in a hoarse whisper, "I don't want to sit anymore."

Hermione was shocked but pleased that he could speak, and yet there was a pang of fear in the back of her mind; if he was dying, she would only see him get worse and worse until he couldn't talk or move or even open his eyes. She bit her lip while she was adjusting his pillows and helping him lie down again and didn't realize how hard she was biting it until she tasted blood in her mouth. She released the grip her teeth had on her lip immediately, sucking on her bottom lip and scolding herself, once again silently, for being so foolish. She was relieved to hear him talk. Could the love that had protected him against Nagini in the shrieking shack also protect him from the dark mark? She suppressed a smile as she recalled what he'd just said. There had been no asking for help. There had been no gratitude or thankfulness in his words. He had simply stated his own desire and expected her to obey. And of course she had. At least she knew he was still the same in his mind as he had been before; he was just as unkind and ungrateful and annoyed at needing assistance as before.

"Do your feet hurt?" she asked, looking into his eyes.

She could have sworn that his eyes actually got darker and they definitely grew colder than before. He managed to put a half-scowl on his face and glared at her. She decided they probably did but he didn't like being cared for or asked about his health. Shaking her head in mock scolding at him but with a slight smile tugging at her mouth, she went to the foot of the bed and began carefully and gently easing his socks off of his feet. They, like his shoes and the rest of his clothing, were black. When she had them off she set them on top of the shoes and looked down at his feet. She didn't know what she'd been expecting; goblin feet; troll feet; something ugly and not very nice to look at. Now she was thinking like Ron, guessing that the unseen and unknown when it came to the potions master were all gross and disgusting.

His feet were actually not so bad. Granted, it wasn't like he was a muggle woman and had given himself a pedicure lately, but his toenails were trimmed, his feet were clean, and overall they were far from ugly. Pleasantly surprised that she wouldn't have to deal with the feet that she had pictured in her mind—ugly, dirty, hairy with overgrown toenails and perhaps even abscesses or dead skin or something revolting—she went to the bedside table and wetted the cloth again, this time to bathe his feet.

He seemed as if he wished he could rise from the bed and escape from her or perhaps even attack her for touching his feet, and Hermione assumed that no one had ever touched him besides, well, himself. And these were just his feet; what must it be like for him to be still and do nothing while she bathed his bare chest and stomach? Granted, Hermione realized how personal and intimate it would be for anyone to touch her in those places, but Snape knew in full that she was only caring for him and she was only doing what she had to in order to help relieve some of his pain. When she was finished bathing his feet, she returned to her chair beside the bed.

Snape had stopped glaring at her, and she wondered whether he'd finally realized that it would have little to no effect or if it just hurt too much for him to do it continually. He closed his eyes and after a while his breathing became steady and with ease of one who had forgotten their pain. Hermione looked at him for a moment, carefully scrutinizing his face. Was he really sleeping? Deciding to find out, she dimmed the light from the orbs on the ceiling and said quietly, "I hope you don't think I'm unaware of your dislike of me, and of this situation." Then she waited for a response. His eyes remained closed, his breathing went on steadily, and his face didn't even twitch.

Satisfied that he was really sleeping, Hermione began talking very quietly, needing to voice her thoughts to someone, anyone, even if it was to someone who wasn't conscious and wasn't going to answer. She started with the first thought that popped into her head and sighed before saying, "McGonagall says I should call you Severus rather than Professor or Sir. But you would hate me for it, wouldn't you? I mean, I'll have to call you by name when I'm around the headmistress, but when she's not there you needn't worry; I'll just call you Snape or something of the like . . ." and she went on and on, keeping her voice quiet, barely above a whisper, and talking to the sleeping man about whatever popped into her head. Some of the things she spoke about were worries and fears, some were things that made her happy, some were regrets about the war and things she wished she'd done that could have saved just one more person. She fell silent for a few moments and then decided to tell him, regardless of whether he was asleep or not, what Kingsley had said. "The Minister of Magic went to Azkaban to see the prisoners. Anyone with the dark mark is experiencing the same pains and ailments that you are. No one has any idea of a cure and Kingsley said it's Voldemort's way of getting revenge on you all for letting him die." She paused, staring at the potion master's face, which, as it had been since she found him on the floor the night before, was contorted slightly in pain. Then she added in a soft whisper, "Kingsley said it's a curse. A drawn out, painful killing curse, much worse than Avada Kedavra."

She was silent then, still staring at his face and wondering if he ever had dreams. Her voice fell to be so quiet that it was no more than a breath on her lips. "I don't want you to die," she said, and then she leaned back in her chair and buried her face in her hands, wishing she could somehow take the curse instead of Snape and regretting saving his life all over again.

Hermione opened her eyes and looked up when someone laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. She realized she'd fallen asleep with her head in her hands and found the headmistress looking down at her with a motherly, concerned expression on her face. She had set a tray of food on the table and another on the bed. Hermione rubbed her eyes and blinked at the clock. It was noon. She looked to Snape, who appeared to still be sleeping. "Miss Granger, are you quite alright?" the headmistress asked quietly.

Hermione turned to her. "I'm fine," she whispered back. "And thank you for bringing the food."

The headmistress nodded and asked, "You know how to reheat the food with your wand if Severus sleeps much longer?"

Hermione nodded. She sensed that McGonagall was going to leave right away, and had mixed emotions about it; she wanted someone to talk to who would answer her, but at the same time she wanted to be alone with her thoughts. She was unsurprised when the headmistress gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, turned without a word, and left. Hermione looked back to Snape and watched him open his eyes slowly. She glanced to the tray of food; another bowl of gruel, slightly larger than the last, and another cup of pumpkin juice. "McGonagall brought lunch," Hermione said quietly, looking back at Snape.

His eyes traveled in the direction she had glanced when looking to the tray, and she set the tray on her lap and moved onto the edge of her seat, leaning over the edge of the bed. She fed Snape and let him drink just as she had during the last meal and when he was finished she bathed his torso and then his feet with the cloth. It was then, bathing his feet, when it occurred to her that he had been in bed since the night before. Her eyes flicked to his face and she knew he'd seen her own face redden slightly. Surely he needed to use the bathroom by now? Feeling embarrassed at the thought of it and ashamed that she hadn't considered it before, she sat back down and stared at the floor, wondering how to solve this new dilemma. Even if she could get Snape into the bathroom, he was in pain just breathing and speaking, and she knew that he couldn't stand on his own, let alone remove his clothes to use the toilet.

She bit her lip and was reminded of the sore place there when pain shot through her mouth and she tasted blood as she had earlier. Relinquishing her lip, she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She opened them and looked around when she heard the door open and close. She was more than surprised to see one of wizards from the Ministry. "Miss Granger," he said, nodding his head towards her. Hermione wasn't used to being greeted in such a way and just stared at him. He went on, "Flitwick was going to come but they're having a particularly precarious situation with some reconstruction in the courtyard." He nodded to her again and then pointed his wand at Snape, who had been glaring at him since he entered. Snape rose from the bed and floated towards the bathroom and he and the ministry worker disappeared inside.

Hermione felt a mixture of relief and worry. She didn't want to be a prick, but the Ministry worker had done nothing to prove himself trustworthy and Hermione actually felt a bit cautious around him. She didn't know whether she trusted him to take Snape away and not hurt him. He hadn't been caring for the potions master and probably didn't realize how easy it was to hurt him. She didn't exactly want to be the one taking Snape to use the bathroom, but she didn't like the strange wizard taking Snape out of her sight. She laughed to herself when she thought of what Ron would say had he been there; "You do care about that old bat of the dungeons! You feel protective of him, the slimy git! Blimey, 'Mione!"

She leaned back in her chair, wondering what Ron was doing at the moment. She glanced at the bathroom door and tried not to think about how awkward it must be for the two wizards inside. She stared at the floor and forced herself to think about Ron and Harry until the door opened and Snape floated out beside the Ministry Wizard. Hermione watched as the man set Snape down on the bed and then turned and left the room without a word, closing the door just as quietly as he'd opened it. She realized her lunch was untouched but had suddenly lost her appetite. She could only imagine how humiliated she would feel if she were in Snape's position. And Snape was the man who nobody touched and who wanted no one's help. He must be furious. All she could think to console herself was that hopefully because she hadn't done it and the Ministry worker had, Snape would be mad at the other wizard and not at her.

She finally looked at the potion master's face. His eyes were closed, but she was sure he wasn't asleep. She pushed her food tray as far away from her on the table as she could and ignored her stomach when it growled. She had come to a terrible conclusion; to die a drawn-out, painful death was bad, but for the Snape dying and experiencing pain were nothing compared to the humiliation he had just been through. She found herself whispering apologies once more and wiping tears from her face again as she bathed him with the wet cloth.

She leaned her head all of the way back on her chair and stared at the ceiling. This was infuriating; McGonagall had brought more food and been worried when she saw that Hermione hadn't eaten, staying and making Hermione eat the new tray of food while she watched. Then she had left with the empty trays and Hermione had fed Snape. He had eaten, and drank, but not once in the last few hours had he looked at her. He was refusing. She fought back more tears as she bathed him yet again, finally deciding that it didn't matter anymore and just letting the hot, salty drops of liquid roll over her cheeks. She understood if he was upset with her. She deserved his anger. She had brought him from the brink of death only to put him through a living hell. But didn't he understand that this was hard for her too? And didn't he realize how sorry she was, how she regretted ever going back to the shrieking shack that day?

When she was done bathing him she set the cloth on the bedside table and clutched her robes in her hands, squeezing so tightly that her fingernails dug into her palms through the fabric. She bit her lip lightly and looked down at Snape. "I'm sorry," she whispered again, but she was sure he had drifted off and couldn't hear. Pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, she curled up in her chair and buried her face in her robes, crying herself to sleep in silence after she put out the lights.

She dreamt of Snape dying, over and over again, always lying in the bed beside her chair, each death worse than the one before it. When she woke sometime after midnight, fresh tears had soaked her face and dampened her robes. She wiped her eyes, trying to forget what horrible things her dreams had put in her mind, and curled herself into a ball. It took more than a few minutes for her to fall asleep and then she was no longer haunted, but drifted through a restful, dreamless sleep.

I don't have much to say besides a big thank you to YOU for reading and asking if you could please review to let me know how I'm doing and how you're liking the story! Much love! ~Taelr