Ann, I can't believe you've doubted your writing ability. Like, ever. Your prose is gorgeous and layered and so, so atmospheric, putting your readers in the scenes you've masterfully crafted.
From the beginning, we're there with Lois and Sandman, taken along on this dizzying, horrifying ride:
The robed figure reached out an arm, which grew to an immense length, and grabbed the glowering horizon an eternity away. Reaching out to gather in Lois with his other arm, he pulled them both, at a dizzying speed, up flush against the wall of the horizon. With his bony fingers, he parted its red-black folds, and opened a window onto a world outside; grey, howling and swirling from a blizzard. Grabbing her hand tighter he led her out into the raging, pounding snow. But the screaming white fury didn’t seem to touch her. As if her body had been surrounded by an invisible aura, the snow whirled past her, failing to make contact.
Then she made out the crashed balloon, its huge red inflated air-trap, a beached whale, a titanic Amazon’s cut-off rosy breast, straining and pulling at the remnants of its basket across the snow-choked ground. Next to it, a small, brightly-colored figure of a man, his red cape flapping furiously in the wind, was carefully cradling an unmoving, broken-looking woman in his arms.
Wow. Just wow. The description here is stellar. (One tiny nit-pick: When you write "a titanic Amazon's cut-off rosy breast," I've paused there every time because of the "cut-off," though I completely understand the reference. Maybe "severed" would work better there?) Honestly, I'm at a loss for proper FDK, and this is just the fourth and fifth paragraphs of your story!
But even staring Death in the face, Lois doesn't lose her famous indignation:
”What???” She grabbed the Dream-Lord’s robe and shook him, sending stars and spiders flying. ”You bring me here just to make me watch myself dying???” Turning, she spat sparks of fury at the approaching shape of Death. ”And you can take your scythe and shove it!!! I’ll make you sit on it!!!"
*loves* This was a great way to allow us to breathe, if only for a second.
Because then, Lois' consciousness is momentarily shoved back into her broken, dying body, only to leave again:
And she was floating comfortably in the sky, looking down at a still woman and at three men gathered around her. One man, in a beloved blue skintight suit, its bright colors and gaudy design seemingly taken right out of a children’s comic book, was cradling the woman in his arms. A tall figure, so dark that the negation of illumination seemed to radiate out of him like an inverted sun, moved inexorably closer to the woman and reached out a skeleton-hand for her heart.
Again, such haunting, gorgeous description. If I weren't sitting on the edge of my chair, I would've laughed at the "children's comic book" line, and I loved reading Death as "an inverted sun."
And the way you've written the instrinsic, almost elemental connection between Clark and Lois left me near tears. Your Lois and your Clark bring a whole new meaning to the term "soul mates," Ann:
He was a huddled, grieving figure of a man, with a Lois-shaped hole in his heart, still oblivious to her. She reached out to him, to touch his heart. His heart-hole beckoned her. It invited her in, and she floated inside, settling herself into the snug fit of the hole. Until it was a hole no more. As she completed him and filled him, and snuggled herself into his warmth, she felt his presence imbue her. His heart, now healed, made her own heart grow back inside her. In tandem, their hearts set her stilled blood moving. Together, they sent her presence flowing along his nerves and capillaries into the body that was hers, leaping like sparks of electricity into the body he was holding in his arms.
Ann, I could go on and on quoting, it's all so wonderfully written and fraught with suspense. This deal Lois has made with Sandman — she's basically wagered her life to save Clark's own! It's the inversion of a familiar gesture (Clark putting himself at risk time and again to save Lois) that makes what your Lois has done all the more powerful. Sandman's going to put the world in a deep sleep, and everyone's going to forget that Clark ever revealed himself as Superman. And now Lois is left, lying broken and bleeding and dying somewhere in the Arctic, completely alone, with only her hope that an unknowing Clark will save her to comfort her:
A red balloon, dark in the pale moonlight, lay half-buried under the snow, and a woman’s broken body lay sprawled beside it, her blood tracing a delicate calligraphy of love letters in the snow.
Such a poignant, haunting line to end on. Ann, this is such beautiful writing, and what a gripping story — you must must must post your next chapter soon.
