i have no clue what i am doing rite now. i don't think this will work, 
but i'm gonna try. anyway, the story i wrote is sorta based on the story 
'The Mender of Broken Dreams' by Nancy Collins.

This story is to and about my very wonderful frinnd Sarah. It's only sorta
original, but that's okay cuz this is my first attempt at writing (really
writing) and at posting, so i hope it goes well.

***********************

To Dream in the City of Sorrows
By Raven's Delight <ravens_delight42@yahoo.com>

It was rather ironic that the end of the world began on a Monday. At least,
it was the end of the world as Sarah knew it. The day had started well
enough, Sarah got up and packed her belongings into a well worn backpack
and crawled out from under the rotting old bridge. She took a moment to
brush the dirt from her ragged clothes and stared at the city lying before
her. 'City of Sorrows is right!' she thought. 'This place looks like it was
dreamt up by some psycho.'

"Perhaps it was! Wouldn't that be nice!" cawed Matthew from a nearby dead
tree. He sat perched on a high branch watching Sarah with his intense black
eyes.

"Nice? How would that be nice?" Sarah shot back in disgust to the raven, as
she flipped her brown hair out of her eyes.

"Maybe someday the dreamer will wake, and this nightmare will end?" replied
Matthew philosophically, while he preened his shiny black feathers.

Sarah shrugged off the comment and began the short walk to the center of
the city, leaving Matthew in his little tree. "Are you coming today?" she
yelled back. She waited a moment while Matthew thought it over.

"Yes, I think I will! Maybe something interesting will happen," he
commented with a far-away look in his tiny dark eyes. He flew after her.
The walk to The City of Sorrows was uneventful. They just followed a short,
well-worn path through the city park.

When they arrived a half hour later in the heart of the city, everything
looked just how it had all the other times they had been in the city. To
her and everyone else, the entire city seemed to be bathed in unnaturally
dark shadows. The sun never seemed to be able to penetrate the black
clouds, and there never seemed to be enough light along the sidewalks.
"Strange how people see the world," commented Matthew.

Sarah spent the rest of the day walking the streets in random patterns
telling stories to anyone who happened to be in earshot; business men and
women with dull, emotionless faces, other homeless people like herself, and
even a few of Matthew's feathered friends who had stopped by to say 'hi'.

Everyone who had met Sarah had to admit that she was a master storyteller.
Her stories were always of hope and promises of a better life, filled with
fantastic details of huge castles and endless corridors. When asked about
them, she just shrugged and claimed they had come from a number of her
dreams.

Her stories had caught the attention of a great many people, but it was the
attention of a select few that was so important. And even then, it was one
person that paid more heed to her ramblings. Delirium. She had been sent by
her brother Lord Morpheus to watch this young girl to see how much she
knew.

Delirium was odd, to say the least. She had long, peppermint stripped hair
that framed her deathly pale face. Her unnatural look was accented by the
fact that one eye was bright blue, while the other was chocolate brown.

Before Delirium could talk to Sarah in person, she had to stop and talk to
her older sister, Despair. Despair was an ugly, troll-like woman with a
hideous face and blackened teeth. Despair had been watching Sarah as well,
but only because she was the only interesting thing in the entire city.

Delirium walked up to her sister and sat down beside her. "She's so sad, I
guess. Why does our brother give me all the sad ones?" she asked, while she
played with her hair, now long purple dreadlocks.

"How should I know?" snorted Despair, "It's your job, not mine! Just go
over and talk to her. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can go do
whatever it is you do!"

"I don't know... Wait! don't what? Um..." said Delirium, confused by her
own conversation. "I think I'll go now. Goodbye sister!" She walked off
muttering to herself. Despair, for her part, just waved her away and
watched her walk towards the young girl.

"Hi Sarah!" cried Delirium cheerfully, and also startling the young girl
who hadn't noticed her before. Sarah just eyed her wearily, while Matthew
remained silent, but with a tiny grin. "I wanted to talk to you about my
brother. He really wants to speak with you!"

"Who are you? Who is your brother? How do you know who I am? What are
you?!?" blurted out Sarah.

Delirium giggled at Sarah's nervousness. "Well, I'm Delirium I guess, and
my brother is Lord Morpheus, the King of all night's Dreaming. As for why
he wants to talk to you..." she shrugged. "He just told me to come and get
you!" She giggled again. "What am I? Ya know, I don't really know. But, I'm
not really here at all," she winked.

Sarah just stared at her. Matthew, who had been silent for the whole time,
finally spoke up. "Hey Del, so you've finally come to get Sarah?" Sarah
looked up sharply at Matthew. "Sorry," Matthew apologized sheepishly.

Delirium giggled again. "You called me Del! Funny. And yes, Morpheus asked
me to bring her back! He has, uh, asked for her help." She nodded her head
vigorously, causing her now shoulder length green and yellow hair to whip
wildly around her face. "So will you come with me?"

Sarah sat silently on the sidewalk, wondering exactly what she had eaten
earlier. 'Maybe I shouldn't have eaten those mushrooms I found' she
thought. She looked at Matthew, who was staring back at her expectantly.
"Well," she hesitated "I don't have anything else to do, so okay. You gonna
come too Matty? You better, cuz you have some explaining to do..."

The raven shrugged, or as close as a raven can get to shrugging, "I haven't
seen Morphy for a while, and anyway, I planned on coming." Delirium clapped
her hands and jumped up and down.

"Well! come, come! We have to get going if we want to get there in time to
meet Lord Morpheus! He is never in the same place twice you know!" cried
Delirium. She led the way through the dark streets toward some unknown
destination. She kept jumping forward than running back to make sure
everything was all right.

After a few miles of walking in what seemed like endless circles, the small
group ended up in a pitch black ally behind an ancient apartment building.
Delirium stopped and started wandering around the small area, as if looking
for something in particular. "Ah! here it is! Just as I left it!" she said,
pointing towards a large green splotch on the far wall. "Let's go! Morpheus
wants to see you Sarah! And you too Matthew!"

So Delirium, Sarah, and Matthew all walked cautiously into the wall, with
Sarah expecting to walk right into solid stone. But to her amazement, they
passed easily through the wall, which disintegrated into a thick mist.

She looked around at her new surroundings, and quickly noticed that the
mist didn't go away, just moved and flowed around them, but never really
touching them. Sarah looked to Delirium for a little help. "This way!
Morpheus is so impatient sometimes."

By now Sarah was getting a little annoyed with Delirium's talk about 'how
much Morpheus wants to meet you.' "Well lets go then!" she cried. "I wanna
meet this guy and see why he wanted me to come here... wherever here is!"

"Oh here? Oh yes! Here is... ya! This is the Realm of Dreams! This is where
dreams are created, with a little help from my brother!" Delriuim explained
as she started to run towards a large shape in the distance, shrouded with
iridescent mists.

"What is that?!? Where are you going?" shouted Sarah. She took off running
after her. Matthew flew as fast as he could after them both. They all ended
up right in front of a colossal castle of polished white marble. "Wow!
that's big!" Sarah gawked.

All three calmly walked up to the front door of the huge castle, and
Matthew and Sarah waited patiently as Delirium knocked on the door. It was
almost immediately answered by a rather annoyed looking centaur. "What do
you want?" he asked tersely, rolling his large violet eyes at the group of
misfit visitors.
"I'm here to see my, uh, brother, Lord Morpheus! He is expecting me to
be..." she waved her hand in the direction of the castle, "here, ya know?"
The centaur groaned and opened the door wider to let the visitors through.

They passed through the doorway and started to go look for Morpheus. As
they walked, Sarah noticed that when they passed through the halls, the
walls seemed to disappear into the ever-present mists behind them. "What is
happening to the halls?" she asked Delirium with a puzzled glance behind
her.

"The walls? The halls? Well, uh, the halls and rooms in this place never
stay in the same places. They always seen to shift around," muttered
Delirium. "My brother never did like things to be simple." Sarah stayed
silent for the rest of the trip. Matthew laughed at Sarah's uneasiness.

They reached Lord Morpheus's chamber in what could have been a few minutes
or a few hours. Sarah couldn't tell. Delirium walked up to a nine foot tall
door made of dragons' teeth and unicorns' horn carved with patterns of
tiger lilies. She pushed it open to reveal a room that appeared to stretch
out forever.

In the center of the room, sat an impressive looking man dressed in a
impossibly black cloak. He had the look of a man who had seen anything and
everything a hundred times over, and nothing came as a suprise.

Delirium pushed Sarah, with Matthew perched on her shoulder, towards the
man on the throne. Sarah looked up at the man, and straight into eyes that
held the entire universe all at once. "I-I... um, am," she stuttered "you
asked f-for m-me?..." She forced herself to stare at the marble floor.

Silence engulfed the room, and Matthew was the one to break it. "I believe
you wanted to speak with Sarah, Lord of Dreaming?" Morpheus looked right at
Matthew and smiled.

"Yes of course I did!" He slowly looked to the young woman before him.
"Come here." Sarah took a few steps foreword and hesitated.

"Why did you want me to come here?" she asked curiously.

"Because you are, like myself, a storyteller, and although we tell
different stories, their purpose is the same. To inspire hope! Isn't that
what you do when you stand on the street corners of your dismal city and
speak out? It is what I do when I create people's dreams. Surely my sister
has told you about my work."

"Ya, but she was a little vague, and I'm not sure if I'm not just dreaming
again," Sarah explained. She looked closely at him, and it almost seemed
she could look through him. "What are you, anyway? Where did you come
from?" she asked softly.
"I do not exist, and therefore I am all that matters. Do you understand?"
Sarah shook her head. "I am," Morpheus continued, "both greater and less
than the people whose dreams I create. But it is, after all, them who
create me to be what I am." Sarah was still confused. Morpheus laughed,
"You will see."

Delirium nodded and turned to Sarah, "Goodbye! I'm, um, not needed anymore
so I'm gonna go back to the real world now. If there is such a thing. Ya
know, things I got to do. Uh, bye Sarah! Bye Matthew!" Before they could
say anything in return, she ran out of the room and into the shifting
corridors.

Again there was an errie silence. This time it stretched on for maybe three
minutes or five hours. Time was getting a little fuzzy for Sarah. "So..."
she finally said.
Matthew looked form Morphues to Sarah and made a quick excuse, something
about a four-legged friend, and flew out the nearest window,

"I have a job for you," announced Morpheus, "and I think it will suite you
very well. I need a new Mender of Dreams. The old one has, well...
disappeared, and well, there are a lot of broken dreams to mend."

"Huh? How would I mend dreams?! I don't know how to do that!" the girl
cried out, confused.

Morpheus seemed amused by her statement. "Of course you do!" he said "You
do it all the time in the other world! You catch the pieces of broken
dreams and put them back together. You just didn't know it then."

"Well I guess I could give it a try" she said uneasily. She jumped back
when Morpheus suddenly got up from his chair and started to leave the room.

"Come along, you have a job to do!" He led her into a room filled with
thousands of boxes, all labeled with little bar codes. In the middle of the
store room was a desk of sorts, and on the desk were a hundreds types of
tools, all clean and shiny and new.
"These are for you. All you need to do is think about the dreams, and you
will know what to do. This is your destiny." With that Morpheus left the
room, and a little purple faerie took his place.

"I'm Quip," the faerie stated shortly. "I'm here to help you." He placed a
large package on the desk, and removed the remains of a shattered Ming
Vase. The vase had been patterned with beautiful red and gold dragons.
"This was at one point a simple
peasant farmer's dream. One of wealth and privilege, and it needs to be
repaired before Morpheus can send it back."

Sarah set to work on the broken dream, using a brush with only one fine
hair and a clear, powerful glue. In what may have been an hour, or a year,
or a millennia, the vase was back in perfect condition. "Very nice,"
commented Quip. "The Master chose well!" With that he flew off with the
newly restored dream.

The next dream she had to deal with was an ancient oriental rug the had
been torn, burnt, and stained with blood. "A dream of tradition and family
honor!" explained Quip. This dream took some time to fix. First, Sarah had
to carefully clean the bloodstains out and then dye wool the exact shade to
match. After she had done that, she began to reweave the pictures of
warriors on horseback and battles between families. When the dream was
repaired, it didn't look like new, but was ready to be released into the
dreaming world again.

On and on for what seemed like forever to Sarah, she spent in that tiny
room or wandering the halls with Matthew, Quip, sometimes Delirium, each
time with new hair, who would come by, and even Morpheus would stop by to
see how she was.

After time, Sarah asked Morpheus what she had done. "Come with me," he said
and led her back to the not-quite-real world she had come from. Only it was
different than when she had left. The City was no longer dark, but bright
and beautiful. Sarah was amazed.

"What have you done to the world?" asked Sarah.

"Me? I did nothing! It was you that fixed their dreams, and changed
everyone's perceptions of the world! Look what you helped to uncover!"
Sarah was shocked, but Morpheus just laughed.