Sometimes Dawn's dreams are odd. Most nights, they're normal dreams, dreams like she and Buffy go ice skating and then it starts raining ice cream-normal kind of weird dreams.

Then there are the other nights.

Those nights, she watches stars and realities being born; those nights, the galaxies NASA's satellites take pictures of are formed before her eyes. She sees the stars when they're right; she sees them when they're wrong. She watches as planets are born and she watches too as they die. 

She sees the beginning of existence in her dreams. When she wakes, she knows instinctively what the end of it will look like.

In her dreams, Dawn is eternal, endless, formless. In her dreams, Dawn is old.

Lois Lane is mortal.

She knows this and she is aware of it in the same way she is aware that the sky is blue, gravity exists and that she needs air to breath.

In other words, it is just another fact of life.

Lois has never had any particular problems with being human, with being mortal. She's never feared or dreaded death, not even when it took her mother so early on (it's hard to fear something when you accept it as inevitable) but as the years go on and her body begins to show its cares, she starts to regret it, just a little bit. 

Lois woke up this morning to find three new grey hairs. Clark still hasn't found one.