She sat staring out her window for the longest time, She’d done so every night for… oh how long had it been now?

Not only was there little allure in going to bed, the nightmares had continued to plague her after all, some repeating, but with every change it seemed they grew worse.
But also she’d had another reason to stay up and wait. She had a sliver of hope that was growing thinner with each passing night.

It had been a long time since she had seen Caine. There had been long pauses in his visits before to be sure, but now she was starting to wonder if he would –ever- return.
The growing doubt twisted a little knife in her heart more surely than even the nightmares had done and she closed her eyes at last and rested her head on the sill.

She sat there a long time just listening to the last of the birds; the evening crickets and the occasional rustle of leaves in the wind. But nothing so definitive as to say he had come. She at least got up with a sigh and wandered to her dress-frame. Plucking at the lace she was hemming the current dress with, poking idly at the pins that tailored the waist and put new trim and gussets.

White and frothy against the black, and for the first time in her life, it seemed… an ill fit.
She stooped again and sorted through her scraps and ends, and pulled out long coils of black lace that she had not to date found a use for, scraps of black velvet, and some poor gloves whom had seen better days, holes now poked through them, long ovals where they had split and worn into a sort of odd lace of their own.
She had thought to cut them down but now lay them over the shoulder of the dress with the lace, carefully undoing the white lace, the white inlets… and putting them aside till the dress was done all in black and tatters.

A long pause as she stood considering how it would piece together, and she carefully pinned in deep purple velvet as an inset and trimmed it too with a small length of black froth.

Better she thought, adding around the mannequin neck an black velvet choker. Simple, straightforward, and yet perhaps too much, she would add some adornment to it soon.
She sat down on the edge of her bed and pulled a plush-cat to her and squeezed it hard before staring down at the poor thing, and standing again to put it on the top of her bookcase with the others.

“He’ll be back, or he won’t… I can’t… I cannot afford to spend my nights dreaming. Not like that…” She shook her head and undid her hair and pulled down her covers.
Tomorrow would be its own day, and tonight’s dreams were their own battle.
“Grant me the power to accept what I can not control…” She whispered to her pillow as she lay down to sleep.