[b]Snippet from my WIP novel "One for the Books"[/b]
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The realm between dreamscape and reality was a cold bed, and she was lying on it. The cold winter air made her acutely aware of her body despite the thick blankets piled on top of her. Her mind, delirious from a sleeplessness she hadn't suffered since school, buzzed relentlessly from the earlier encounter. She had been tossing and turning for the past hour, but eventually settled into her current position—facing the door in a trained habit, the cooled hot water bag still between her legs, an arm curled before her face—a shield against the demons… or was it a reach into the dark? The answer to her call came to her in the form of a conscious dream. She has always had vivid dreams, able to remember them in great detail, but this was different. For the first time ever, she felt like she was in her own body, in her physical world, and the dream had met her there. Her lips touched the cool, soft lips of another. It was a tentative touch. She knew exactly whose they were. These lips had been talking to her only a couple of hours prior. Her lips parted with a sigh. She had already been feeling the draw, but she didn’t know how much she craved this touch until she actually got it. This was the point she made her advance, chasing after lips that had left hers after only a brief touch. It began as a slow, chaste dance, exploring through touch what eventually composed into a clear image of the singular facial feature she was interacting with. Then, she parted his lips with hers and deepened the kiss, still slow and restrained, as if she was handling a blooming cereus. Whether this thought crossed her mind in the moment or in reminisce, she didn’t know, but her instincts told her it was more than a dream—it was their souls in a meeting. The maddening cosmic connection thrummed and thralled until it finally lulled her into a slumber.