His labored breath was the only thing he could hear, his body to weak too much and he was pretty much blind due not enough magic for his eye lights.

Dream, was going to die to under the burnt remains of the tree.

How pathetic.

How long till his body and soul gave up, he was so low in magic and energy he wasn't even shivering. His tiny hand patted mothers roots that rested inside the cave, even they were singed.

"Soon mother..."

He allowed darkness to drag his under.

Dream...

It was so far away...

Dream....

Mother?

His fading mind was hallucinating.

My little sapling, your so faded and lost

Lost.. no dying, he was so tired.

Let him rest, let him die...

Would no one let him be free of this hell?

My little apple, the fire only burnt me. They did not even take the apples

But I am here for you

Nightmare why...

I cannot answer that, you must find your own way my Dream

He felt so frozen as if ice was climbing his bones. Freezing from inside out.

Warmth had been an illusion for a very long time now, could he be anyone else.. anyone but Dream/ Dream the prisoner. Dream the slave. Dream the Guardian of a dead tree.

Then eat, and be reborn my child

Be reborn from the cold, so no one will make you cold again

As he fell into a deeper slumber, he though he tasted something in his mouth.

------

Snow came again and again, raising higher and higher s ice covered said snow over and over again.

No Sun was seen, just endless storms of winter for hundreds of years.

Inside the cave Dream lay unmoving, his body covered by a huge shell of ice.

Crack...

Tink tink tink tink...

Slowly the began to crack, bits of ice breaking away slowly.

Then it shattered, and for the first time in five hundred years Dreams woke to the wasteland of Dreamtale.

For the first time in a very long time he breathed.