storypaint | Dreamer (Syaoran/Sakura)

Title: Dreamer
Author: rhap_chan
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Pairing: Li Syaoran/Kinomoto Sakura
Challenge #: 16 (table two) for 20loves
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.

The sky was perfectly blue the day he came back, the color of Tomoyo's eyes when she was happy. Spring was here and all the colors seemed brighter. Winter faded the world into old shades of cotton, warm enough but dull, but spring had come to restore color and hope to my world.

Hope hadn't left; it had tucked itself away and slept away the winter, like Kero-chan did. Less sun meant he was weaker, and not as loud and excitable; less sun meant he was quiet and I was lonely.

But Syaoran was a creature of winter. His body was always warm against the chill. He came more alive, because in winter he came to visit, and he was always the most himself when he was here.

The day he came back the sky was perfectly blue and I began to hope, like I always did, that my dreams would finally come true. And there they were, personified in one tall middle-schooler with open arms and eyes of molten amber. He whisked me up, and we both began to talk at once, and I began to cry. Immediately he set me down and asked me what was wrong. His fingers on my cheek pulled the drops away and I felt no more need for them.

"You know when you left I stopped dreaming," I whispered. I was lonely in the winter until Syaoran came to visit, and then I was lonely again in the spring when he left. Spring was a time of new beginnings, most thought; it was the time he left, so it was an ending for me.

"Why?" He looked so adorable when puzzled that I giggled and he rewarded me with one of his beautiful smiles.

"You were my dream," I said, and held him tight, pressing my fingers against his spine, convincing myself he was real.

When he came to visit in the winter, it was always when I slept, a vapor that disappeared in the morning, leaving only tears on my pillow. Now I could dream for real, because he had returned, not as a sleeping dream to dissolve with the sun, but as my Syaoran.

He'll always be my dream.