Stitch: The Lore of Sara Foxgrave

The gray autumn chill settled deep into the Foxgrave woods, turning the leaves to brittle rust and giving Sara a perfect excuse to stay out of the lake water. She did not have time to think about Bane anyway. Halloween was a week away, and around her place, October 31st was treated with the kind of frantic, obsessive reverence most people saved for Christmas. 

Birdi was in her absolute glory. For three days straight, the kitchen table had been buried under tangled orange string lights, plastic skulls, fake cobwebs, and jars of homemade stage blood that smelled aggressively of corn syrup and peppermint. Birdi’s goal was to make the annual porch party look like a low-budget horror movie set, and she had currently drafted Jeff into carving an army of jack-o'-lanterns on the back steps until his knuckles were raw. 

“We need more dry ice, Sara!” Birdi hollered from the living room, her voice muffled by the giant papier-mâché demon mask she was trying to patch up with duct tape. “And check the extension cords in the shed! If the fog machine blows the breaker again this year, I’m going to lose my mind!” 

“On it,” Sara called back, tossing a handful of plastic spiders into a bowl on the counter. 

It was good to be busy. It kept her mind entirely occupied, far away from Cemetery Road and the giant, mocking hunter who lived down it. If Bane was out there checking his traps or doing his own thing in the woods, she did not care. She had not seen a glimpse of him since the lake, and that was exactly how she wanted it. He was just a ghost in a canvas coat. A weird blip in her routine. 

By the time the sun dipped below the tree line, leaving the woods in a heavy, cold darkness, the house was finally quiet. Jeff and Birdi had crashed early, exhausted from a full day of hanging plastic skeletons from the porch rafters. Sara curled up under her heavy quilt, the smell of woodsmoke and cut pumpkins drifting in through the cracked window. Her body was tired, her mind finally blank, slipping easily into the dark. 

But the quiet did not last. The dream had changed this time. 

She had been walking through those same suffocating woods, the fog curling thick around her bare ankles, when the shadow detached itself from the ancient willow tree. But this time, she did not just step toward him. The giant figure moved with a sudden, overwhelming gravity, stepping into her space and gently pinning her against a nearby tree. The feeling was massive, solid, and terrifyingly warm against the autumn chill. When his mouth found hers, the kiss was deep, dark, and filled with a desperate, familiar hunger that made her knees weak. 

He pulled back just enough for those striking, unforgettable eyes to lock onto hers in the misty gloom. 

“Popham,” he murmured. 

He had never spoken to her before, in these dreams, there were never words.

Sara bolted upright in bed, gasping for air as the word shattered the illusion. 

“Popham,” she whispered fiercely into the dark, her heart hammering violently against her ribs. Sweat dripping from her skin, shaking and disoriented, frantically looking outside at the chaos surrounding the forests trying to ground herself to reality.

Outside, a massive, hurricane strength storm was raging, tearing at the gutters and throwing sheets of rain against her window pane. Nature was throwing a violent tantrum, and it matched the chaotic freak-out happening inside her chest. She could not stay in this room. She could not stay in her head. She was going to Popham to see if there was something to this new dream. even though she promised herself no more hunting dreams. she made an exemption for this one. Not once had either of them spoken anything in the dreams before.

Moving on pure adrenaline, Sara threw off the quilt and hauled herself out of bed. She yanked on a pair of black jeans, a cropped top, and pulled her heavy leather jacket over her shoulders. and tied her black boots tight. She grabbed her old, blacked-out motocross helmet.

Moments later, the garage door cranked open into the deluge. Sara kicked her motorcycle to life, the engine roaring over the thunder, and tore out into the blinding sheets of rain and whipping wind. The storm was brutal, turning the dark roads into slick, treacherous rivers, but she welcomed the danger. 

The second she snapped that blacked-out visor down, the world shrank to exactly what she needed it to be: nonexistent. Inside the tight, padded insulation of the helmet, the roaring engine and the screaming gale muted into a low, rhythmic hum. It was the only place where the noise in her own mind couldn't compete with the reality of survival. These high-speed, punishing drives were her therapy, her twisted way of staying level when everything else felt like it was spinning out of control. 

Out here, pushing a machine down a pitch-black highway in the middle of a torrential downpour, there was no room for ghosts, no room for vulnerability, and no room for the suffocating memories that usually chased her. You couldn't obsess over a man’s mocking voice or the way a dream felt too real when a single patch of black ice or hydroplaning tire could send you sliding into a ditch. The sheer sensory overload of the wind tearing at her leather jacket and the rain stinging her throat forced her entirely inside her own skin. It was pure, unfiltered isolation, a self-imposed exile at 90 miles per hour. It was the only way she knew how to ground herself—by racing right to the edge of panic until her head finally went completely, beautifully quiet. 

She pushed the bike hard, twisting the throttle as she swallowed mile after mile of empty, water-logged highway. 

After a while of battling the gales, a pinprick of white light pierced the darkness in her rearview mirror. Another headlight. 

Sara frowned under her helmet, leaning into a sharp curve. The light did not recede. In fact, it was gaining on her with terrifying speed, cutting through the torrential rain as if the storm did not even exist. Within seconds, the massive, blacked-out motorcycle surged up, hovering just off her rear tire, aggressive and looming in her mirrors. 

Suddenly, a flash of motion exploded from the thick brush at the tree line. 

A massive buck leaped directly into the beam of her headlight, its eyes reflecting a blind, panicked amber. 

Sara slammed on her brakes, her tires instantly losing traction on the flooded asphalt. The back end of her bike fish-tailed violently to the left, the wet rubber screaming against the pavement as she fought the handlebars. Her heart leaped into her throat, adrenaline turning her blood to ice as she narrowly missed the deer's flank, skimming the treacherous edge of the muddy shoulder before finally forcing the bike back under control. 

The other rider kicked his back tire out in a controlled, aggressive skid, stopping his heavy machine just inches from her front tire, completely blocking her path. 

Her hands were shaking so hard against the grips she could barely breathe. Before she could even attempt to rev the engine and blast past him, the rider reached up with a gloved hand and flipped his visor up. 

Sara’s breath hitched. Staring back at her through the sheets of rain, illuminated by the harsh glare of her own headlight, were the exact eyes from her dreams—and the jagged scar cutting down the left side of his face. 

I'm losing my mind, she thought, a fresh wave of panic surging through her veins that had nothing to do with the near-wreck. It's a hallucination. I'm seeing ghosts. 

Determined to break the trick her brain was playing on her, Sara twisted the throttle completely open, the bike fish-tailing slightly before rocketing with a slide around him and forward into the blackness. But the man on the bike did not drop back. He kept his pace effortlessly, his engine a deep, aggressive growl that mirrored her own. He surged forward, making sharp, demanding hand gestures for her to pull over and stop. 

Sara ignored him, leaning dangerously low into the turns. He matched her aggression, cutting her off, forcing her to brake, and pushing the limits of the slick asphalt. For over an hour, they were locked in an intense, high-stakes race against each other and the elements, the roaring engines competing with the crashing thunder overhead. 

Only as the looming, concrete silhouette of Fort Popham finally materialized through the coastal fog did Sara manage to find an opening, pushing her bike past its limits to gain a few crucial yards of distance. She skidded to a halt near the perimeter, cutting the engine and ripping her helmet off. Her hair plastered to her face, she spun around, heart pounding, scanning the dark road. 

Nothing. The road was empty. The hallucination was gone. 

Wiping the rainwater from her eyes, she threw her backpack over her shoulders, bolted toward the chain-link fence, and scaled it in seconds. She knew this place by heart. It was her childhood sanctuary. She ran through the crumbling concrete corridors, taking the stairs two at a time until she reached the top floor. Out here, exposed to the elements, the storm was a roaring beast. The wind howled through the open emplacements, and the surf below crashed violently against the stone foundations, throwing sea spray high into the air. It felt deeply personal, as if nature itself was trying to scream a secret into the void. 

Sara walked over to the edge, looking down at the churning, black ocean below, wondering for a split second what it would feel like to just let the gray water swallow her whole. 

“Popham,” she repeated, throwing the word directly into the teeth of the gale.

Shaking off the chill, she retreated to the sheltered corner she had claimed as a kid. To her surprise, the remnants of her old childhood fire pit were still there, the blackened stones untouched by time. She knelt down, pulled dry kindling and a lighter from her backpack, and began to carefully build a fire, watching the small flame catch against the dark. 

Sara’s fingers fumbled against the lighter, her hands shaking so hard the small flame blew out before it could even tickle the dry kindling. The stones stayed dark. The cold in the concrete corner seemed to deepen, pressing into her back as the heavy, aggressive thud of boots grew louder, echoing off the historic walls. 

She did not even have time to strike the flint again. 

A massive, solid silhouette filled the arched entryway of her childhood nook. He did not slip in quietly. He moved into her space with a volatile, demanding presence that completely cut off her only exit, his large frame blocking out what little pale light the storm allowed through the window. 

Sara knelt in the dark corner of her childhood sanctuary, her fingers trembling as she struck the flint again. This time, a small, fragile spark caught the dry kindling. She leaned down, her breath shallow, carefully shielding the tiny, growing flame from the howling wind outside. 

The heavy, aggressive thud of boots stopped right at the edge of her fire pit looking down to her.

Sara snapped her chin up, looking up from the newly lit fire just as the glow caught her face, illuminating her features in the stark gloom. She didn't have her contacts in, leaving her gaze raw, vulnerable, and completely exposed. 

Bane froze. The aggression in his posture vanished, replaced by a sudden, heavy stillness as his gaze locked onto her face. Staring back at him in the firelight were those exact, unmistakable wildly mismatched eyes. one brown. one half blue and half green glowing in the fire light.—the ones matching the dream that had been haunting him, the ones he couldn't shake from his mind. He recognized them instantly. 

"You" Bane Gasped. he looked confused. the girl from the bar? How? he thought to himself. however short lived.

But Sara was unraveling. Looking up at the massive silhouette, the jagged scar cutting down his left cheek in the dancing orange light, she completely lost her grip on reality. 

“You’re not real,” she breathed, her voice completely detached, a frantic, high-pitched edge cutting through the nonsense words tumbling out of her mouth. She didn't try to run. She just stared at him from the floor, her chest heaving as she shook her head. “I’m still asleep. Or I'm dying out on that highway. I crashed the bike and my brain is just making this up. Go away. You’re not real. I need to wake up” 

Bane did not waste time talking. He did not offer a gentle explanation or stand there and let her unravel into the panic. 

He lunged forward, closing the remaining distance between them in a single, explosive stride. Before she could blink, his large, calloused hands came up, hauling her up from the floor and pinning her firmly against the rough concrete wall. The sheer mass of his body trapped her completely, his chest pressing flush against hers, effectively stealing the air straight from her lungs. 

The moment his hands clamped onto her, Sara's entire body began to buzz. It was a fierce, electric shock wave rattling straight through her nervous system—a terrifyingly raw sensation she had never experienced before in her entire life. She was completely paralyzed by it, her mind short-circuiting, entirely unsure of how to respond to the sheer magnitude of his weight against her. 

“I’m a hallucination, huh?” Bane growled, his voice deep, gravelly, and vibrating with a hard, fiercely protective edge. 

He did not give her a chance to answer. He slammed his mouth down onto hers, fracturing her frantic protests into a sharp gasp. 

The kiss wasn't gentle, and it wasn't a dream. It was heavy, grounding, and absolutely consuming. His lips were hot against the freezing chill of her skin, demanding her complete surrender to the moment. One of his massive hands shifted from the wall, burying his fingers deep into her damp hair to tilt her head back, holding her captive under the bruising, desperate pressure of his mouth. He tasted like rain, salt, and pure, undeniable reality. And she could be made a slave to this.

He dragged his lips away just a fraction of an inch, his heavy, jagged breaths fanning hot across her face, his eyes burning directly into her exposed, muddy brown gaze in the dark. 

“Does that feel like a ghost, Sara?” he whispered fiercely, his grip tightening just enough to make her feel every solid ounce of his chest crushing against hers. “Tell me I’m a dream again.” 

Sara couldn't speak. She could only stare back at him, her heart hammering against his ribs, her lips tingling from the bruising force of his mouth. The storm outside continued to scream into the empty concrete corridors of the fort, but the violent chaos in her chest had finally found its anchor. He was here. He was solid. And for the first time in her life, the illusion was gone, leaving her entirely trapped by a reality she couldn't run from.