Terjal lay upon a pallet now, Aiya sleeping peacefully beside him, her head resting on his chest. Darman slept upon his own pallet to Terjal's right, Arjas on the pallet to his left. Each was now encased in a diaphanous, shimmering sarcophagus of golden light.

Terjal would be the last to succumb to the Long Sleep, and so he looked up at his own sky of golden, filigreed light as it curved above him. He felt the soft hum of energy as each strand within its elaborate webwork quivered. Terjal felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of well-being wash over him and he sighed contentedly.

He clasped Aiya still closer to him, inhaling the rich, darkness in her hair. Time alone would now allow them to consummate their marriage, though they had not exchanged vows. Time was not an enemy, Terjal knew--Time would heal them both, remake the world around them and accept them into it once awakened. Happiness had been given him, but would not be taken away.

Terjal felt his limbs grow heavy with Sleep, as if he were being eased slowly into a warm bath. And as he passed into a deep slumber, he began to dream.

###

Terjal dreamwalked through a pastel vista, the foliage surrounding him a blur of green-hued brushstrokes. A sweet, jasmine scented breeze touched his cheeks and ruffled his hair as he strolled across a thick blanket of grass. In the distance a slim, white-clad figure approached.

Aiya, her long black hair swinging about her waist in the breeze, walked into his arms. She tilted her head slightly to take his lips against her own, her eyelids drifting closed. When at last they parted a little from each other, Terjal gazed at Aiya as he kept her waist encircled and pressed to him. In this dreamworld she showed no trace of weakness, for this was how she would be once well again.

As she reached a hand up to caress his bearded jaw, Aiya asked, "How long have we in this plane?"

"Not long," he replied, kissing her forehead. "Perhaps only a moment or two more." So much to tell her, yet so little time offered, he thought sadly, embracing her ever tighter as if she might dissolve if he did not hold her so.

Aiya buried her face against Terjal's neck, her voice muffled as she murmured, "Only a moment...more..."

Soon the dreamworld began to lose its color, fading quickly to grey and then finally to black. Terjal no longer saw himself or Aiya--it was as if the dreamworld had only been visiting--resting--on its way to another consciousness.

He could not bring it back.

But Time would be the keeper of the years now and would not allow him privy to their passing. How long they would Sleep, he knew not.

But Terjal knew one thing: that he would endure as many years as Time meted, so long as he awakened with Aiya smiling down at him.

THE END

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