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A heavy stuffiness stretched like a sticky haze across all corners of the world. The air, thick and ringing with dense silence, clogged the nasopharynx and pressed heavily on the lungs. Techno swallowed the tugging heat, trying to breathe the musty vapors of what had once been snow.
The sticky crust of the remaining snow squelched underfoot. Dream swayed, slowly, like a rusty mechanism, turned in his direction and looked up at him.
Dark stars floated lazily in the sleepy haze, floating under his eyelids and clinging to his eyelashes like tiny droplets of ice. The lakes of his irises darkened, as if they had partially dissolved the pupils in themselves, and wearily trembled like tiny spots of light. Reflections of unclear images writhed lostly in his bitterly large pupils.
Techno sat down heavily on the porch next to him, his heels scraping against the steps as he stretched out his legs. Dream sucked in the air next to him, closed his eyes as if trying to smell it, and hotly exhaled a clot of sticky moisture.
Techno gently slid his hand along the damp boards, firmly pressing against one of them behind Dream's back, and moved the other one back a little, fixing his body in a comfortable position.
Dream opened his eyes, blinked sluggishly, and swayed forward awkwardly, fitting tightly into the space between Techno's side and his outstretched arm. The tight unevenness of his ribs thudded dully against the solid warmth, shifted slightly, and relaxed heavily.
Techno rubbed his cheek softly against the prickly top of his head, which smelled sharply of bitter magic and sour metal. A stifled exhalation burned the base of his neck, soaking into the skin in a damp film of a faded rusty hue.
The world swayed wearily beyond the fence, looking at them with sleepy eyes full of familiar, painful exhaustion. A thin layer of colorless snow skin shimmered faintly with rare spots of drying grass. The sky cast a thick shadow on the horizon, dull and damp.
Dream sighed heavily, his shoulders shaking slightly. Techno could imagine his face, how he was squinting bitterly, trying to squeeze the black hole that was eating away at his chest, how his lips, cracked and covered in a bloody crust, were turning white.
Not far away, a pine tree, torn out of the thinned earth down to its roots, collapsed with a dull groan. Its heavy paws hung limply, a broken mess of thick smell and sticky resin. Near it's heavy body, exhausted birds scattered like dark shards.
Dream relaxed, straightened unsteadily, and rose to his feet, swaying. Something in him clanked pitifully, cracked, and died away. He turned and, his bare feet clattering on the dull boards, staggered toward the door of the cabin.
Techno obediently stood up after him and trudged into the sickly sweet, suffocating warmth.
The parched wood creaked underfoot. Dream responded wearily with heavy exhalations, crawling up the steps to the second floor. Techno followed at a distance of one step.
The bedroom smelled bitterly of bile, worn fabric, and something elusively poisonous. Dream paused in the doorway for a few moments, casting a quick glance at Techno, and then dragged himself to the unmade bed.
The crumpled sheets rustled under his soft weight, smoothly curved their creases and froze in a disorderly ripple. The pillow under his heavy head awkwardly compressed itself, trying to hide the still damp spot that smelled sharply of sour pain.
Techno approached softly and, fishing out the edge of the blanket from the mess, pulled it towards himself. The light fabric spread across the floor in a smoky spot. Techno shook it gently and carefully threw it over the sharp protrusions of the body, limp in the bed, with a familiar movement.
His hand fell heavily on his own pillow, carefully pushed to the edge. His fingers trembled briefly.
Dream glanced at him wearily. A bitter emptiness licked him, tingling the back of his neck. A damp coolness settled on his shoulders like something heavy and hard. Then something stirred in the depths of his pupils, and a sour tenderness rose to the surface. Dream narrowed his eyes warmly in a futile attempt to smile.
The weight of the pillow hid all of this from him. The dense softness under his hands felt endless, as if it did not hide the sharp fragments of a majestic masterpiece. Techno shifted a little more weight onto his hands. Broken limbs were trembling on the bed, the frozen body thrashing like a fish on ice.
Then everything went limp. The world lost it's volume for a second and went deaf. Techno loosened his grip on the pillow. Inhaled. Closed his eyes. Counted as many as he could. Exhaled, he opened his eyes. Nothing had changed.
His hands slid down tiredly, mindlessly caressing Dream’s motionless chest. He sank tiredly onto the edge of the bed and slowly turned away.
Outside the window the sky flowed like spilled watercolor onto the earth, crumbling into ugly shards of broken shadows. Techno smiled.
And then the world disappeared.