Work Text:
Sparks rise towards the starless sky as another log is thrown onto the fire, driving back the darkness, and bringing, if only, small comfort to the woman sitting before the flames. Her back rests against the stump of a tree, cut down only minutes before the sun had set in this strange and terrifying world.
The woman leans forward, toward the campfire, twirling a strand of dark hair between her fingers, an old, ragged teddy bear tucked underneath one arm. At her side is a small pile of twigs and grass. She feeds them into the fire, slowly so that she may preserve what she has left. If she needs to, she can use her lighter to keep the darkness at bay, but she didn’t want to. When she did, she could feel it, so close, driven off only by the small, cheerful flame of her lighter.
She wants to take it and put it all in at once, to watch them be consumed by the hungry flames, watch them climb higher towards the inky blackness above. but she cannot.
Willow had learned this on her first night in this world. The pyromaniac had burned almost everything she had gotten her hands on, whatever wasn’t important, whatever she felt like, and then dusk came, and with it, night.
Willow only learned of the presence in the night once the trees she had set alight were faintly glowing embers, enough to see, but not enough to see by. The sound is what had alerted her to the creature, whatever it was, a hiss, almost, that came from everywhere and nowhere at once. In an instant, it turned into a frantic search for her lighter as whatever it was got closer. But despite the luck the object had brought her, it was misfortune that brought her to fumble it, sending it tumbling into the grass.
She'd awoken next to the strange stone she’d found earlier in the day, as dawn peaked over the horizon. Bright, beautiful, and yet it felt… wrong. Almost as if it were an illusion of sorts.
Willow yawns, bringing Bernie closer to her, she hadn’t slept well in a long time. Only in short bursts during the day, and when she knew it would be safe until morning, when the hands wouldn’t reach from the edges of the light to snuff her fires.
Willow shakes her head as the calming lull of sleep begins to pull at her consciousness, her vision fading into a more peaceful darkness than the one surrounding her. Her head clears for a moment before it begins again, and she slips further away from the fire, from the harsh, looming, darkness that threatened to consume her little camp, away from reality.
She grabs a few handfulls of grass and twigs and adds them to the flickering flames, watching as it devours them greedily. Willow leans back on her stump and sighs as sleep takes her away. At least, should she die again, it will be in her sleep.
But she does not.
She awakes to that same sunrise, beautiful, bright, and false.