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It was just like any other Christmas morning.
Birds were chirping, frost was slowly melting, and the sun was just peaking put above the horizon line.
It was a perfect morning to open gifts and watch holiday movie reruns with family and friends.
There was just one thing wrong.
December Holiday was missing.
Toriel found out first. A single phone call from the mayor and then all hell broke loose. The entire town went searching, the kids forced to stay behind. Everyone was trying to rationalize and keep hope but as the days passed, everyone soon went home.
Except one.
Amidst Dess’s sudden disappearance and the consequences that followed, another life was lost.
This is the story of how both a boy and girl went forgotten by an entire town.
-
Togore woke up later than his two siblings which meant he was the last of the Dreemurrs to receive the news.
He woke up excited to see if he had gotten the book on arachnids he had asked for and rushed downstairs, hoping they hadn’t started unwrapping gifts without him.
He instead was met with everyone huddled around the phone, seemingly waiting for a call, looking nervous and slightly upset.
“What- what’s happening?”
At first it was just silence. Then Toriel finally spoke up and said in almost a whisper, “Dess is missing.”
Togore stood there, at the bottom of the stairs, frozen. Waves of shock and grief and fear all flowed through him at once and he started to shake.
“N-No that- I just- she was just- she’s not- I-“
No one stopped him from running out the front door.
He ran faster than he had ever run in his entire life, hot tears stinging his face and contrasting with the chill winter air that was pounding against his face. He ran to the Holiday’s house but the gate was locked. He ran to the diner and ICE-E’s and the church and the Town Hall but everything was closed for Christmas.
People started to come out of their houses. News carried fast in a small town and everyone was desperate to find Dess. They couldn’t see him like this.
Togore ran into the forest, down a path he had never seen in the light. The grass crushed beneath his hooves and the wind whipped his fur, yet he ran.
To the bunker.
As he turned to the front of it he saw something. Something- someone, was there. The door was creaked open. He reached out a paw but- it slammed shut. He pulled and shook the handles with all his strength but it refused to come loose.
Soon, he could hear townsfolk yelling and shouting out Dess’s name.
Scared and confused, Togore ran deeper into the forest, away from Hometown.
-
Days passed with no sign on December. The Dreemurr’s assumed Togore just stayed out late and got up early to search for her so they never questioned his absence.
Togore was indeed looking for her but he hadn’t returned home. He was too wracked with feelings to face anyone and was dead set on getting Dess back. The only food or drinks he had were from QC, who was working 24/7 to provide volunteer searchers with food and water. He very rarely stopped to rest as all he dreamt of was Dess.
In his dream she would be facing away from him. He would reach out a hand and slowly walk towards her before she started to turn her head before being interrupted by Togore waking up in a cold sweat. He got an hour of sleep tops each night.
Yet Togore searched vigilantly. He ventured far out into the woods, even farther than he had explored before everything happened.
But it was all for nothing. Two weeks had passed. Then a month. Then another. Everyone gave up and returned to open gifts with their families. Except Togore.
Togore tried to return, he really did, but every time he went to go home, he heard fighting. Loud screeches and insults. He covered his ears and ran. He couldn’t deal with them just yet.
He stayed out there in the forest for days. QC had stopped serving free food and honestly, he looked too dirty and miserable to be seen.
He cried most of the time. He cried as he walked through the forest, screaming Dess’s name until his voice went out. He slept under the stars every night but they didn’t seem so beautiful now. He was covered head to toe in scratches and scrapes and seemed to be bleeding at all times. He grew thin and his clothes became torn, no longer a sweater made with extreme care but a reminder of better times that he would never get back. Of love he would never get back.
Finally, he lied down for the last time. He was deep in the forest by now, maybe miles from Hometown.
He wondered what his family was doing now. He wondered where Dess really went. But it didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered now.
He looked up at the stars. They seemed to shine brighter than ever and he smiled.
Somehow, someway, he knew.
He just knew.
And he felt.
He felt everything.
He felt love and hate.
He felt happiness and sadness.
He felt curiosity and guilt.
Everything flooded through him just like that fateful Christmas morning and he smiled wider than he had ever smiled before.
He slowly opened his mouth, but unable to get sound out, he just mouthed a single word instead.
“Dess”
And then all was gone.
-
No one knows what happened to Togore to this very day. In fact, it seems like he never really existed at all.
The Dreemurr’s only realized Togore was missing almost 6 months after December’s disappearance.
They didn’t know what to think of it and just figured he had run off as well.
Over time, he was forgotten. His unopened Christmas gifts were slid under his parents’s bed and no one has mentioned him since.
He was never that talkative so no one even noticed his absence. Everyone was too focused on their own problems to care anyway.
The middle child of the Dreemurr’s is now a myth amongst younger monsters and any one who knew him only has a faint memory of him that could’ve been a dream.
The Dreemurrs and Holidays, wracked with guilt, have forgotten and repressed most memories.
As for Togore?
His body was consumed by nature in less than a month. Rain created mud which covered his remains and slowly buried him over time, deep in the woods he had grown up in.
Everything he was and everything he had dreamed to be were gone.
Nothing remained of Togore Dreemurr.
And so, he became the forgotten boy, forever lost to everyone and grieved by no one.