Two days since the evacuation scramble ahead of the storm, a day since the nightmare drowning of their city and the certain knowledge of everything lost, a few hours since finding sleep in a borrowed bed, and she awakes dragging the dream with her. Sheep, shorn to a bony nakedness, shivering, bleating. And there’s no way for her to tell if she’s awake or still in the dream, hearing the noise or not. 

More towards awake, she’s aware of something there beside her, but around her the darkness is opaque and all she can make out are the faint backlit moon shadows of tree branches rubbing against the window screen. Need-pulsed but afraid, if she reaches out, can she touch what’s there? Should she? Eyes closed now in case after all it is the sheep of bones and little skin, she extends a tentative finger. Sheep? Or him? Suspended there, she manages a single whispered sound. 

It moves, makes a small noise. Air in. 

If it is the bone-sheep, she tells herself, she’ll dream scream and wake. 

“I’m here, baby.” It is his voice, buffered, but a real voice. 

It’s him. “Oh.” Not sheep. She is here in the room, in this bed, with him, awake. “I…” 

She touches him, his shoulder, now with the whole of her hand. She accepts the real of him, lets it flow up her arm and into the rest of her. 

The sounds and movement of his breathing pull her body towards him. And when he rolls over and towards her, she allows it. Lost, has never wanted more than to find again the familiar woolliness of his chest. Not shorn, not sheep, him. She welcomes the fingers of his hand on her cheek, welcomes them as they trace her chin down, her neck to her shoulder, then to the small of her back. She welcomes the fuller warmth of his long body as it presses, gently, in to hers, her breasts, the bones of her hips. She understands he is merging them back into a single safe being. Safe is all she wants. 

Their lovemaking is one version of them, one version of what they always do. Or did, before. The act persuades her, for those few minutes here in the night dark, that after all there can be things true and good in waking life.