Finally - after ages of careful consideration and teen angst, this Lost Joanniefic Relic is being posted. Aren't y'all proud of me? :)

Disclaimer: The Joannie is not making money of the Lost Joanniefic Relic. Only Vertigo is allowed to make money of the characters in the Lost Joanniefic Relic. Such is the way of worlds.

Thanks to Gills. She did beta it, after all.

Note: contains horrible terrible spoilers for anyone who has not yet read the end of "Sandman". This was written because I was having a hard time handling the events in "The Kindly Ones" in other ways.

This story is for Luba. It's time she gets one.


And Then She Woke Up
Joan Milligan

My friend had this dream, the other night, a really strange dream she told me all about after we woke up and on the bus on the way to work. She told in great details, and later in the office she did some research and found out some other people had exactly the same dream, through they've been doing different things in it. They developed a few theories around it, and someone started boasting a revelation that if enough people dream the same dream, it means it's going to come true.

I thought it was rather stupid, considering what was in their dream and everything, when they told it to me. But a little while after that, something happened that changed my mind like nothing ever did, about anything at all.

I recalled a dream of my own, a really strange dream, that I've had just a couple of days before my friends in the office sported their own crazy nighttime adventure. I remember it as if it were a real life event, amazingly detailed and lifelike. I swear, that if I didn't know it was just a stupid dream...

I was dreaming, only that I didn't know I was. I was walking a barren land, scorched and racked, and there was a storm going on with terrible thunders. In the distance, I could hear ravens cawing. A lot of ravens, perhaps a full hundred, I don't know. But their voices created a chorus that threatened to swallow the world, and I remember trying to run from the caws, but they were everywhere, wherever I went.

I remember running, thinking about what they told me about ravens, how they group and attack people that get in their way in any way. I was running, and I stumbled over things that after a while I began to recognize were bodies. It didn't occur to me until I stumbled over quite a few. They were everywhere, like the ravens, dead people, and dead... things, the sort of things you see in dreams. People with animals' heads, and talking plants and strange things made of darkness. And they were all dead, and they were all torn apart, half-eaten by ravens, their eyes plucked out. They didn't look like ordinary dead things in dreams, they looked like someone killed them, brutally, angrily, someone who wanted to destroy them, destroy that place, forever.

I think what was responsible for what came next was one raven, but another raven, a different raven. It was flying up in the air, and I remember thinking, that's strange, why isn't it coming down and eating like the rest of them? But it wasn't eating. It was flying straight and low, and I could see -I swear I could see it looking down with such sadness, in these raven's eyes. It didn't seem strange at the time, it just seemed like it was a very sad, upset raven. It struck its wings and it flew away, and it was out of sight when I heard it croak. And it didn't just croak, it screamed. It screamed in a human voice, it cursed and stuttered. I couldn't understand what it was saying, and it didn't even occur to me that it was a raven that's talking. All I knew, back then, watching the dream raven fly away, was that I've never heard such pain as I heard in its voice, then.

It was then, in the dream, that I thought I must find out what made the raven scream like that. I started running in the direction it came from, tripping over bodies of dream-things, scattering ugly dark birds that stained the view like spilled ink. I ran into a dark place, and past distant peaks, and through a horde of terrible nightmare creatures that pulled at my hair and snapped at my hands. I ran, gasping, tired, even though you're not supposed to be tired in dreams. I ran till there wasn't anywhere to run anymore. There was just darkness, and thunders, and a huge mountain, towering away into the black skies.

I stopped, and I panted, and when I had my breath back, I looked up.

Over there, on the top of the mountain, were two people sitting and looking down. They looked very much alike, like they could be a brother and sister, and they both - that's what I remember thinking - looked younger than me. The woman, she couldn't have been more than twenty. And they were strange, and dark, and mournful.

They sat at the top of the mountain, and I think I almost realized I was dreaming, looking at the two of them. They had skin the color of clean paper, and dark hair messed up by the wind. And they were dressed in black, like someone just died, or was going to, soon. And they were talking.

And I could hear every word they said.

I was scared, I was numb, I felt I couldn't move.

The things they said.

I don't remember them anymore. I think it's for the best. I don't think I - or any mortal man - was ever meant to hear such things.

I stared at them up there on the cliff, and suddenly I couldn't feel anything but sadness. Suddenly it felt as if I knew them both, from the beginning of time and for all of my life, like they were my best friends and the best people I knew, and I owe them everything I am, and everything I know. And suddenly everything I know seemed very small, very insignificant, and very wrong. Everything I thought I could believe and trust in, everything I thought I knew the world was seemed to fade away, just as I stood there and heard them speak.

I don't know how long I stood there while the two of them spoke. It could've been centuries or seconds, just a few moments, or the whole night through. But when they were done, I had tears in my eyes, and I looked at the rain and knew the whole world was crying.

The woman stood up; she looked down, away.

I don't know if she noticed me - I think she didn't, had her mind on other things. But I can tell you now and I can tell you always that then, on the spot, I didn't care, not even knowing everything.

She looked back at him, the man, who was the person I cared for most in the world, for one moment in the rain in the dream.

Give me your hand, she said.

There was light, then, and silence.

The world seemed to hold its breath; I held my breath, not knowing, not daring to think of that moment.

She stood there and held her hands in front of her - inside them, there was a glowing orb of white light, pure and beautiful, lighting away all the darkness. She held it to her chest, looked at it with love I didn't know there was in the world, then looked up and let it go.

It glowed and expanded, it disappeared in a million shards of light, shooting away into the void, and she gasped, as if in pain...

And inside me, somewhere I've never looked before, where none of us looks because we're too afraid, where we know everything, but never let ourselves know we do, I knew those tiny lights were making their way across the world. I knew they were finding people - special people, real people, artists, writers, poets, dancers and composers, dreamers - and giving them a touch of dreams, the one true thing that links our dreams together.

We were left alone, then, in the darkness. Then there was the gentle flutter of wings.

And then... I woke up.

I remembered that dream in the one instant that my friend, sitting next to me on the bus, finished telling me how she's dreamed of going to the Dream King's funeral. And I thought it maybe ought to change me, somehow, the way I look at the world, the way I see things.

But it's only been a stupid dream, I thought, so why bother?

But when she started telling everyone else, and when they started telling her how they all dreamed the same. And when they told me of the feeling of sadness, and looking inside of them where people don't look except in dreams... everything seemed different, suddenly.

I don't know what's going to happen to me now. I don't know who I am, who I'll be, what I'll think, what I'll see in this world from now on. I don't know if I'm going to believe this, if I want to believe this, but I know I might have no choice. All the things I saw and heard and knew, these things I thought I only dreamed and will always only dream, are so real now. The light touched me too, in a way.

This is my beginning, then, the beginning of my story. And I don't know when it'll end, or where it'll end, to put it better. I just know something ended, and something - someone - put me in charge of taking things from here, to wherever they'll go, after the end, or the beginning.

And then she woke up.

I suppose there are worse endings.


~~The Beginning~~

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There's a reason I didn't post it before. It seemed none too pretty - just a way of handling things. And it was... personal.

I can now only hope it will clear things up for you as it did for me.