between life and death

orchid graves

George is no idiot. He's lived for hundreds of years and has met generations of souls. It would be impossible for him to be stupid. Somehow, though, it's not until now that it hits him. This has not been some stroke of luck, a happy coincidence. This has been fate.

Dream leans happily against his own gravestone, and plays with the orchid petals scattered in the grass. But a low humming seems to haunt the air, it urges George forward. He's immortal, but strangely, he feels as though this might be his moment of death: his last and final chance to say something. He has seen Dream through every stage of life; his cycle is ending while George's will never.

"Dream. They only make a few of you every millennium." George smiles bitterly, it's not hyperbole, it's true. "Did you know that?"

Dream stares at George. He still wears the rumpled clothes he was buried in and his face is painted with a mortician's brush of artificial life. But to George, he has never looked more lovely. Not as a blushing teenager, not sickly and bruised, in all the moments between life and death he has never been so radiant.

George just doesn't want to have any regrets.

"George, I'm dead." Tar-like mud and lake water spill from between Dream's lips from when he drowned in the lake. It smells of lost time.

"And yet you're still so dear to me." George squeezes his cold, grey hand. "Do you remember?"

"Remember?" Dream grimaces. "I remember plenty. I remember drowning myself in the lake. I remember the mortician pressing his lips to mine. I remember leaving the morgue, getting on a bus, and finding you sitting in the last row."

"I'm not an idiot, Dream." George rubs his thumb against Dream's clammy flesh. "And neither are you."

Sometimes changes in Dream's gaze, sharded fragments warming to molten glass. "You mean the others. The past lives my soul has lived? I remember those."

"Do you remember the heat of my hands in the snow, do you remember the numbness of my blood in yours, do you remember when I loved you more than I had ever loved living?" George sniffs. "Tell me you remember, Dream."

"I remember." Dream nods slightly, eyes unfocused and glassy. "Of course I do. You were mine."

"Will you remember how much I loved you? Promise me." George fists his hands in the fabric of Dream's collar. "I'll miss you. I'll never stop missing you until time consumes me, too."

"I've never seen you like this. So emotional. It's weird. In all my lives I've never known this side of you." Dream murmurs thoughtfully. He gently cards his fingers through the curling hair at the nape of George's neck. "I don't know what comes after this for me, but I wonder how much of myself I'll have left with you."

"I've never known this Dream, either." George lets himself laugh. "The first was always my favorite. Leave him with me, at least." He teases.

"Nah, you're getting it all. My whole heart. Consider it signed into the will."

"You don't have a will, dumbass. You didn't even know how to swim. You have nothing." George takes off his locket, he'd found it on one of the very last days before Dream killed himself. He's worn it since then. Dream had it made for him from wire and steel. Inside a yellowed picture of Dream smiles at the camera, wearing his mother's lipstick and his father's sports coat. Eyes full of light and hope, the purity of someone who has yet to know the secret of life—it fucking sucks.

"But you have my heart." George clasps the necklace behind Dream's head. It clicks into place impossibly loud with the finality that death should have brought many lives ago.

"I'll see you again, George." Dream whispers, skin disintegrating into bone and ash, tired fingers locked firmly around the metal pendant. "I love you."

George is no idiot. He knows this is his final goodbye. Dream is leaving him forever. He should've known it would be just as fleeting as everything else.