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The place where Joseph slept would've been familiar as home to him now. The room's canopy had been crafted from aging boards and rusted nails; its dirt floor lined from wall to wall with cots, the flimsy posts of each buried shallow in the dusty earth. Sometime while he slumbered, those beds had been emptied of restless occupants, leaving nothing behind but the smell of their flesh, and pervasive stillness where there had been misery.
There was a sifting sound, as of fingers slipping through the heavy fabric of curtains. A slender shaft of light spilled across the room as curtains were nudged aside and a dark-haired woman stepped through. They fell into perfect place behind her, returning the room to darkness.
She walked quietly and with great care not to disturb the order of things. Weaving in and out of rows of empty cots, and coming round the foot of one that had been left full of its sleeper. Fingertips trailed along the edge of it, and as she knelt close to the ground, their tips traced along his stubbled jaw.
Rhiannon leaned close and whispered his name.
"Joseph..."
Joseph had gotten better at sleeping in his surroundings. Long days of endless, hard labor were enough to exhaust him to the brink of sinking into the heavy darkness that sleep brought. He wasn't the most restful of sleepers. Even in his exhausted state, he tended to toss and turn, but his body was still for the first time in many nights.
Sounds all seemed to blur until it was hard to tell one from the next. It was also difficult to distinguish one person from another. His own ragged breathing seemed set on drowning out everything else.
Though the moment his name escaped in that voice, Joseph stirred and his eyes opened slowly. A touch to his jaw caused his head to turn and confusion briefly clouded his features as he took in who was touching him.
"Rhiannon?" He questioned, not entirely believing his eyes.
( Escape From Reality )
Joseph wanted to open his eyes. He wanted to see Rhiannon's face, to try and burn the image into the back of his mind, and yet he knew that if he did, she might vanish. He didn't want to risk it, not now, not when she was so close to him.
"Whatever happens, I won't stop trying to get out," Joseph muttered softly as he slid his palm to rest against the side of her face. His palm was rough, where cuts and bruises had formed across the skin, and blisters lingered on certain areas of his hand.
Rhiannon’s eyes found a slick of black blood on the pad of her thumb. She rubbed it against her forefinger, knowing that the corruption inside her was stirring again. Working its way to the surface.
She covered Joseph's roughened hand, and turned her mouth into his palm to kiss it. "I'm coming," she promised, before her weight that pressed down on him was gone.
Just as that happened, Joseph's eyes snapped open, and his body stirred to rise away from his bunk. His fingers went to his lips and traced them, as he could almost taste Rhiannon. He could almost feel the shape of her mouth as it had pressed against his own.
His hand dropped away as he released a shaky breath and he glanced around himself. People were doing their best to sleep in the bunks they were given. He rested his weight back down before he took to curling his arms around his waist.
Rhiannon had said she was coming and he had no doubts that she would be there.
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