Disclaimer: Mine are mine, everything else is Vertigo's. No money. No sue.

She knew no reality, for she hovered on the misty borders of the realms of Dream and Delirium with dolls and flowers tugging at her long, tattered skirt. Sometimes she talked to them, but not for long because the orderlies would come and listen and shake their heads and pity her. She didn't like that so she merely sat and stared out the dingy window at the swan, the naked trees, the snow, and the dead grass and wondered at the beauty of it all. She was not insane, she had merely discovered that she, like everybody else, could never know anything of great importance and so preferred to know nothing at all.

Delirium loved her. Delirium would stare at her for hours, smiling in that curious way that only Delirium could as salt and pepper shakers dusted her with pixie dust and cobwebs and other useful things. One day Delirium swam up to her and asked her name. She turned to Delirium and blinked, drawing her eyebrows together and lightly nibbling on her lower lip in concentration.

"I don't know," she answered in a voice that sounded like white silk on the wind.

"Shall I give you a name?" asked Delirium hopefully.

She tilted her head slightly and her chin-length, black hair swung into her eyes. She breathed a smile.

"Yes."

Delirium clapped her hands with delight and disappeared in a cloud of purple snowflakes to find a name.

Three years, seven months and twenty-nine days Delirium searched, becoming distracted quite often by such important things as leaves falling and butterflies dying and coals popping in well- used and blackened hearths. She thought first of all that ‘Puff' would be a good name because she was as pale as the smoke an old man exhaled in curious shapes one evening, but decided in a few moments that the man was far too old for her to be named after. Then it was Charlie Chaplin because all the pictures Delirium had ever seen of Charlie Chaplin were black and white just like her but decided that was bad because Charlie Chaplin was only pretending to be black and white. Then it was Death, but Death didn't like that so it had to be changed. Finally, after much intense thought and a different height, Delirium chose a name that could not be equaled.

Delirium found her wandering listlessly along the borders of her and her brother's realms as usual with a small contingent of well-formed dreams marching solemn and quiet as a funeral party behind her. Del jumped in front of her, starfish and paper bits flinging from her excited form and giggled with glee.

"I've found it!" Del laughed with a small pirouette.

She blinked and a corner of her mouth turned up in a slight smile. Her dreams huddled around her ankles, faces upturned with expectation.

"You shall be ‘Mine'."

Mine licked her lips as though tasting the word to see how it fit.

"Mine," she repeated softly, "Mine."

Her dreams flickered and shuddered with delight. Mine nodded.

"And who are you?" she asked, touching a blue goldfish fluttering by Delirium's shoulder.

"My name is Delirium," she answered, eyes shining like glass, "I used to be Delight."

"Why?" asked Mine.

Delirium uncomfortably shifted from one foot to the other and her image shimmered into a flock of hummingbirds momentarily. She shook her head after she had re-formed.

Mine looked away for a moment then nodded slightly, her face becoming blank as a chalkboard.

"No." she said closing her eyes and listening to the quiet of the mist that waved like fields of golden wheat in the wind. One of her dreams, a small, bright star with wings of darkness perched on her shoulder and brushed against her neck, whispering into her ear. She opened her eyes and stared directly into Del's.

"Dream wishes me to visit." she said, her hot eyes glowing with the blue light of dusk, "will you take me?"

Now Delirium didn't like this, she chewed her lip and rode around on a camel with human legs for several hours before coming to a decision. Finally she took Mine by the arm and off the curving border to Dream.

Because Mine was not of the Endless Realms, she could not pass through them as Delirium could, so she had to make due with more conventional means.

"Here," said Delirium, tugging on Mine's arm as though she was a small child and Mine was the elder, "you have to climb on."

Mine stepped onto the tortoise's back and sat down, allowing her crossed, bare ankles to hang over the side. Delirium gave her a thread of consciousness to hang onto while they traveled so that she wouldn't slip of into Despair's realm and break beyond all repair. They ate pink grapes and sea urchins and bamboo leaves as they drifted through the Mists of Reality.

Finally they reached the twisted, spiraled, dark-shining palace of the Dream King. The tortoise flapped his wings so softly that not even the senile could hear it, and padded gently to the ground, soft as sleeping feathers. Delirium pushed Mine to the entrance and gave Mine a little bracelet with a small bit of Insanity hanging from it which she was always to wear.

"When you get lost," she said, twirling around Mine like a flurry of Indian scarves, "I'll come find you and we can play." She laughed and vanished in a spray of nothingness, taking Mine's dreams with her to dance with.

Mine turned away from Delirium and stepped into the castle. The castle's guardians didn't even glance at her as she passed, she had been expected for quite some time. Mine drifted through the perceptionless hallways, her shredded black skirt of shadows flowed on some unknown current and clung to her legs like seaweed. Mine closed her eyes and waited until Dream came to her. She felt his presence around her, but she didn't see him until he touched the back of one of her arms. She reached out and traced a cool finger along the indistinct line of his face and looked into his fathomless, starry eyes.

"Why did you call me?" she asked, eyes burning bright with a flame that would never die.

"Because you are Mine and Death can no longer claim you," he answered in a voice as undefinable as the silence of a winter snowfall.