MUSHROOM STEW // DSMPxOC

IV

The girl fell asleep underneath the oak, too tired to care if that was her end.

**

Stella coughed awake with a start, cold and in pain. A substantial weight sat on her chest and legs, making it hard to breathe. Where was she?

"Tommy?" Stella's voice cracked with a wheeze. She dry swallowed around her tongue. "Tommy! Please help me!" Only crickets replied to her screech. "Tommy... please. Where are you?"

She tried to move her arms affixed under... whatever it was. It was a sturdy squeeze, but she could move them, though it would hurt. Stella wiggled her appendages out from their hold with a hiss as she felt something sharp stab the soft meat of her under arm. Dust tickled her nose as Stella breathed laboriously. With difficulty, Stella pulled her other out. She used her aching arms to push a pole off her chest and wiggle her legs out from their starfish point. Stella couldn't admit to what she was looking at. All around her, the home that she once knew was desolate and destroyed. Rubble surrounded her as she stood in the middle of a massive pit where Logstedshire used to be.

Nightfall had come while Stella was underneath the debris, and exile, the place that she had become so used to, looked much scarier without buildings. In the distance, Stella saw the dark outline of Tommy's "girlfriend" standing alone in the wreckage. It was never her preferred thing to look at, even in the daytime, but in the darkness it was purely ominous; a memoir of what life once was.

"Tommy?" Stella asked no one. She knew she was the only one there. Dream had no reason to stick around if he thought the two of them kicked the bucket. Stella didn't understand why Dream would go to such lengths; Tommy was an important pawn in Dream's game, it didn't make sense for Dream to go out of his way to try to kill Tommy and Stella. Dream didn't even need to kill Stella, unless the masked man thought she knew too much? Then again, Stella didn't even know what she knew.

It was viciously cold. Stella crawled out of the pit to see if she could salvage anything to keep her protected throughout the night. If Stella could survive to the morning, she'd have clear vision and make up a plan. Dream might be back in the morning- maybe he'd bring Tommy. Maybe... maybe in the morning they would both come back, and it'd be a stupid prank that went wrong. Maybe it would be okay.

It was tragic for Stella to think so optimistically. Dream wouldn't let Tommy get away with having a stash like that. Even if Tommy endured the explosion and Dream didn't hurt him, it wasn't past Dream to hurt Stella to get to Tommy, no doubt about it.

Maybe it'd be easier to die. Dream didn't care for her, no one cared about her; if they did they would have visited by now, they would have done something- anything. Stella didn't care what they did, she wished that someone would come and help her.

They weren't important anymore. If they didn't care enough to come help Stella, then she didn't care enough to go searching for them. She was alone now, and she would do everything to rise above them, to prove her worth to them because they doubted her, because they left her. This was her show now, even if no one was watching, because god forbid she let herself lose like this. Stella was better than this measly place, than these measly people. She could get through this. She had to get through this.

Those thoughts scared Stella. She was getting too hubristic for someone still afraid of being alone.

The moon was just commencing her descent to the horizon when Stella climbed down from the high branches of the tree she was lounging. The damp grass made Stella's shoes wet and when she walked she made little squelching sounds. She carried cold and heavy rocks to a flat spot in the sand and made a fire pit. Stella collected kindling and thicker twigs and branches and threw them in, arranging them into a teepee shape.