dira | The Sandman CHBB Fic: To Be Brand New, Chapters 13-16

Chapters: 25
Estimated final word count: 140,000ish
Rating: Explicit

Relationships: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling, Dream & his siblings, Hob & the Endless, Dream & Orpheus, Dream & Daniel

Characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Hob Gadling, Daniel Hall, Destiny of the Endless, Death of the Endless, Matthew the Raven, Odin (The Sandman), Delirium of the Endless, Lucienne, Despair of the Endless, Desire of the Endless, Orpheus (The Sandman), Destruction of the Endless, Lyta Hall

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Additional Tags: Sandman: Brief Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Everyone Lives, Age Regression/De-Aging, Slow Burn, Like the Slowest Burn, Like One of Them Is a Pre-Sexual Child for the First 100,000 Words of the Fic, What If The Red String Of Fate Was Also A Toddler Leash, Touch-Starved Dream of the Endless, Protective Hob Gadling, Cuddling & Snuggling, Caretaking, Bathing, Bed Sharing, Crying, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, Illness, Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Explicit Sexual Content, Masturbation, Not Exactly Loss of Virginity But Not Not That?, Happy Ending

Chapters 1-4 on Dreamwidth
Chapters 5-8 on Dreamwidth
Chapters 9-12 on Dreamwidth

This fic is also posting (though more slowly) on AO3!

Check out all the gorgeous art by fishfingersandscarves on Tumblr!

Chapter 13

Dream dozed on and off in the bath, but didn't manage to sleep, and didn't ask to be taken out again, until Hob saw daylight creeping in from the rest of the flat. Then Dream held his hand up like he wanted it kissed, and Hob saw that goldfish tattoo on it, the edges peeling more than ever.

Delirium had put it there, and Dream had said he loved it. That was before he got lost, before Hob found him, before Delirium had said she would help him on his way, but... it was Delirium's mark on him, and Delirium had done something to him that needed to stop. He should have thought of this before, but he didn't think he'd noticed the goldfish all the time Dream had been sick, though he must have held and kissed Dream's hands a hundred times.

Hob supposed groggily that it had to happen that way, but he also peeled the damn tattoo off. It dissolved into light in his hand, an actual glowing goldfish that swam one circle in the air above Dream's head, which Dream watched with open-mouthed fascination. Then it rippled its way to the bathtub tap and swam into it with a last jaunty flick of its tail.

Hob said, "Your sister is a troublemaker, darling," and kissed Dream's still-upraised hand.

Dream blinked up at him, with his eyes properly focusing for the first time in a very long twenty-four hours. His voice was weak and scratchy but present in a way it hadn't been for this entire day when he said, "Hob? What..."

"Your youngest sister happened," Hob said. "And I haven't slept all night, and you've been poorly, so I think we should both go to bed now."

Dream frowned up at him for a moment, like he was trying to make sense of... probably a lot of things. Then his eyes closed, and he nodded.

Hob pulled the bathtub plug, checked that Dream was still safely propped on those sodden towels, and went to the hall closet to dig out a fresh, dry one. Dream picked his head up when Hob fished him out of the bath, and managed to more or less cooperate with Hob helping him out of his absolutely soaked pajama suit. He was a bit too floppy to stand like a little prince to be dried off, but having already done three rounds of this with Dream's most poorly limp noodle self, Hob managed just fine.

When he got back into the bedroom to dress Dream in another suit of pajamas, he discovered that someone—Destiny, presumably—had returned Dream's book to sit on top of the case. Dream had his head down on Hob's shoulder, and Hob said nothing, just tucked it back into its pocket inside. They could discuss Destiny and the book and all the rest of it when they had both had some sleep.

Dream's last clean pair of pajamas was the kind that went over his feet and zipped all the way up; they were a soft and fuzzy black with black and white striped ribbing at the wrists and around the neck, and the zipper pull was a little silver star.

"Don't let me forget to do laundry tomorrow," Hob murmured. "You're nearly out of clothes and there isn't a clean towel in the place."

Dream frowned. "I—"

"Shh," Hob said, because that had sounded like the beginning of I apologize or I will do it or some such nonsense, and Hob really didn't have enough brain left to handle it. "Sleep now. Laundry later. We'll remember well enough."

Dream met his gaze for a long, serious moment, then nodded and rested against his shoulder again, just long enough for Hob to carry him to the bed and lay him down. Hob did a quick round of the flat to be sure the doors were locked and lights were out, barely noticing how automatic it was now to keep the ribbon out of the way as it trailed him. He drew the bedroom curtains tight against the early morning sun and finally, finally lay down to sleep.

He dreamed, half aware that he was dreaming and that the dreams were ordinary, until suddenly he was very conscious that he was sitting on grass under the warm noonday sun, looking out over the sea, and Dream was there beside him.

Dream was small, but with that sense of being much more than what he looked like. Looking down at him, Hob realized that they were sitting, not just on grass, but on the grassy edge of a cliff. The sea was under their dangling feet, crashing darkly against a wall of stone. The sun sparkled on the swells further out, but didn't seem to reach the nearest waters.

Hob cautiously put an arm around Dream's shoulders, and Dream leaned into him.

"That is the way to my youngest sister's kingdom," Dream said, raising a little hand to point out across the sea. Hob could see a smudge on the horizon that was probably land, or what passed for it in this place.

"Not here to declare war, I hope," Hob said. "Destiny did say she was trying to be helpful, and that was what I thought as well, remembering what she said before she left. She wanted to help you along."

Dream looked up at him, and his eyes were black like they had been after he came back from that void place, but not empty like that. They were full of shining stars. "I will if you wish it. She made trouble for you, you said."

Hob decided not to think too hard about that, and bent to kiss Dream's forehead. "Not on your life, my friend. It wasn't so much trouble. I think she was right, and I hope that it helped you."

Dream sighed gustily, and Hob blinked his eyes open and found that he was lying in his bed, with one arm curled around Dream. The light in the room was dim, but it was obviously midday bright outside the curtains as it had been on that clifftop in the Dreaming.

"Are you feeling recovered?" Hob asked, while Dream was still blinking and settling back into himself.

Dream put one hand up to rub at his forehead in a startlingly adult gesture, and sighed again, and then lowered his hand and met Hob's eyes. "I... yes. I feel well, physically. I do not believe I have ever experienced anything like that before. It was..."

Hob raised his eyebrows as the pause grew longer.

"Unpleasant," Dream said. "Except also..." He met Hob's gaze for just a second, and then rolled forward, hiding himself against Hob's chest.

Well, that was answer enough, and he wouldn't push Dream to talk about it in more words than that right now. Hob hugged him close, ducking his head to press a kiss to his hair. "Good. Glad it wasn't completely awful for you, love. How do you feel about lunch?"

He felt Dream take a breath, and then go still, and Dream turned his head to say in a small voice, "Did I burst into tears because I thought about cold toast?"

"Quintessential human experience, being brought low by our own thoughts," Hob said, sitting up with Dream still firmly in his arms. "Ugh, that reminds me I've got to deal with all those damp towels."

Dream gave a distinct shudder, but also wrapped his arms firmly around Hob's neck. "Cheese on toast first?"

"Definitely cheese on toast first," Hob agreed, and carried him out into the kitchen.

Dream took his time eating his first good meal in more than a day, though once he started he was conscious of being ravenously hungry. He had no actual reason to fear making himself ill by eating too fast, but now he had a glimmer of how this body could be laid low, and it made him cautious.

He also preferred having something to pay attention to, while he let all the memories of the past two days fall properly into place.

He had lost himself in the Between, holding too little of his power in this form to navigate through that space; Delirium had brought Hob to him, and Hob had wrapped him up in that same red ribbon that Dream had thought was so unnecessary, and brought him safely back to the Waking world.

Delirium, in an impulse of helpfulness executed in Delirium's particular style, had rendered Dream literally delirious for something like twenty-four hours after she departed. He had had a fever, but that had probably been an incidental sensory embellishment on top of his inability to access most of his usual capacity for thought. He had remembered, mostly, who and where he was, but had forgotten nearly all context.

He had not had the wherewithal to be embarrassed about needing Hob to take care of him, and he had urgently needed Hob's care. He had wept over hypothetical cold toast and over not drying the dishes, and over a movie he had made Hob play for him six times in a single day, and over the petty discomforts of a mildly malfunctioning human-ish body.

He...

Dream looked up from his toast to Hob, who was munching on bacon and tapping something on his phone. "Did... did my eldest brother visit last night?"

"Oh," Hob looked a bit sheepish, as though he had any reason to believe Dream could possibly judge him now. "I, uh. I suppose I... called him? I got your little book from your suitcase, because it was the middle of the night and your fever seemed very bad, and I got worried that I should be properly doing something about it, not just dunking you in a tub whenever it seemed to be really bothering you."

"You got my book, and..." Dream was quite certain that he had not explained the way the book worked as his gallery to Hob, though he supposed that it probably had a certain uncanniness that Hob must have perceived.

"It fell open to that page—Destiny and Death, and I had to pick one," Hob said, glancing up briefly at Dream and then down at his phone again. "And you did say your older brother knew everything, so I touched the page and just sort of... asked him to come, and then he was there. I suppose if he knows everything he must have seen me doing that, so even if that's not how it's meant to work, he made it work anyway."

"That is essentially how it is meant to work," Dream said, and took another bite of his toast. "There are ritual words and so forth, but... likely that is not so necessary as the intention. And the other's willingness to hear you."

Dream would have called upon Death, or told Hob to, if Hob had asked him. She was his favorite, and she could have told Hob as well as Destiny could that there was no danger of Dream dying of his fever.

But instead Destiny had heard Hob's plea. He had come, and Destiny had said that he was glad to have saved Dream from the black hole. Destiny had laid his cool hand on Dream's head when Dream had the temerity to climb into his lap. He had stayed so long as he could, and he had smiled when Dream fretted about him being alone—being lonely.

He had told Dream that he was welcome in the garden. That he was invited.

Destiny had not said it as if it were something new, and Dream did not think his smallest and most incoherent self had been uniquely appealing to his elder brother. Destiny had meant that... that Dream was welcome. That Dream had a standing invitation to visit him. That just as Dream had not wanted to ignore Delirium turning up in the Dreaming, Destiny would not ignore Dream in his garden.

Destiny was the only one of them who had not been created to be a sibling to the others, but he wanted to be a good one, so much as he could. He cared about Dream, as his function allowed. He had even been affectionate, in his way, when Dream had been too addled to know better than to demand it.

And all the while Hob had been there. Hob had called upon Destiny for him—Hob who had been so terrified a day or two ago, of gods and of Lucifer, of all the vast realities that Dream dragged in his train.

Hob had gone into the Between for him, with only Delirium's guidance, armed with fifty yards of red ribbon. Hob had saved him, in that dramatic moment, and then equally Hob had been patient and kind for hours and hours and hours afterward through the tedium of Dream being a sickly, needy child.

Hob had wept for the reminder of all the people he wanted back and could never see again, and then watched the movie that made him weep five more times because Dream wanted to see it and could not stay awake through it. Dream had dared to offer his own troublesome, helpless presence as consolation for all Hob's losses.

And Hob had seemed to agree with him when he did.

Dream did not know how to think about any of that. It had been easier when he couldn't think about it. All of that had only happened because he couldn't think about what he was doing, and Dream didn't think he would trade any of the incredible occurrences of the past day for anything he could name.

Dream had spent twenty-four hours as a small, helpless, whiny child, and Hob had never laughed at him, never grew impatient with him, never showed any sign that he was tallying up a debt to be called upon later. Dream had demanded to be called only pet names, and Hob had called him love and darling and sweeting and dear heart and my joy, and never once had a word he said sounded false. Even in hindsight, he did not think Hob had been lying when he said those words.

Dream slid down from his seat, walked around to Hob's side of the table, and wrapped his arms around Hob's middle.

Hob didn't ask why. He just turned and bent down over Dream, hugging him right back.

After the dishes were cleaned and the laundry started, Hob looked down at Dream and said, "What do you think? Movie time? Go for a walk? Not a very long one, the wash will be done in half an hour."

Dream looked down at himself—he was still wearing the footie pajamas—and up at Hob—who was dressed no better, in a disreputable old t-shirt and his most ancient joggers, tattered at the ankles and with a few other holes worn in spots that shouldn't be showing in public.

Point made, neither of them was ready for a walk.

Then Dream looked toward the living room and said, almost managing to sound casual, "I think I would like to draw."

Hob did his best not to say anything or do anything that would be very obvious in Dream's peripheral vision, though he didn't think he could answer for whatever his face did at those words. He took a steadying breath, then reached down and gently ruffled Dream's hair. "Go to it, love."

Dream went, twiddling with the ribbon as he did, and Hob let himself lean against the dryer and take a moment to breathe.

Even if it was more little squares, it was something, and Hob had a feeling that Dream would allow himself more than just a page of color study today. Hob had done yesterday right enough that Dream could trust him a little more today, could relax that much more into being a child.

That was good—that was wonderful—especially because despite the morning's sleep Hob still felt absolutely emptied out. Yesterday had been a long slow crisis, capped by that awful memory of Robyn being ill, and...

Hob wiped away a few stray tears, but couldn't bring himself to try to force the memory away. Not today, not when he'd spent so much time telling Dream it was all right to cry and to be upset. He let the tears fall, let himself lean as much of his weight against the appliances as they would take.

He could hear Dream in the other room: quiet paper-rustling and then the soft sound of him coloring. Was it called coloring, when it was with pastels? Drawing, probably, when he wasn't just coloring between the lines of a coloring book.

Hob dried his face on whatever was at the top of the basket to be washed next—one of Dream's shirts, as it turned out. It smelled like nothing in particular, and Hob's heart clenched for a moment, thinking of how Dream's quest would end, and what would follow it. Would he just go back to the Dreaming, and maybe visit sometimes? Would he, accidentally or intentionally, leave one of his small shirts or his little socks and shoes behind, for Hob to remember that this had been real?

Hob couldn't even think what to hope for. He couldn't imagine what would fill the space Dream would leave in his life when he didn't need Hob to make his cheese on toast three times a day, didn't sleep in his bed every night. Hob forced away the thought of it, too much to begin to grapple with now.

Today Dream was in his flat, coloring and/or drawing with his pastels, happy or doing his best to be. Hob's life didn't have any space in it that needed filling just yet, and barely enough space for him to have quiet laundry-adjacent breakdowns.

He wiped his face one more time and put the little crumpled shirt back into the basket, and went out into the living room to find that book he'd been pretending to read a couple of days ago.

Dream didn't look up when he settled on the couch, and Hob forgot everything else he had been worrying about when he saw Dream coloring in what looked like wild scribbles of green, underneath similar scribbles of blue. He remembered the last bit of a dream he'd had before waking: that moment when they had sat together on the edge of that sea under the bright summer sun.

Dream did look up after Hob had been sitting there a moment, and he gave Hob a tiny severe look. "No peeking," he said, very nearly as blithely imperious as he'd been the day before.

He pulled his sketchbook down off the coffee table and settled on the floor under it, hidden from Hob's view, and Hob smiled and opened his book with a mutter of, "As you wish."

Under the table, Dream smiled at his drawing. He remembered enough from yesterday to know exactly what that meant, and he thought Hob knew that. He found himself whispering, "As you wish," to the page as he went on layering in shades of green, and then, "love, love, darling."

"What's that, dear heart?" Hob asked.

Dream grinned, because he was sure that Hob knew. "Nothing, my Hob."

"Ah, all right," Hob said, and a moment later Dream actually heard him turn a page.

Dream got up, retrieved the other box of pastels, and settled back under the table to consider how to add all the details he wanted to his picture. It was sloppy, childish, imprecise and inadequate, but it was something he could make, here and now, to begin to reflect all he felt at being here.

He selected the lighter of the two shades of black at his disposal, and began to sketch a small figure perched on the green ground, just before it fell away to blue.

He was occupied with blending—and blending, and blending—when he heard the washing machine make a noise. He waited for Hob to say something, or simply get up to attend to it, but there was nothing.

Dream scooted to the side of the coffee table nearer to the sofa, and saw Hob's hand dangling down. He wriggled out into the gap and knelt up, to see Hob had indeed fallen asleep. The book was on Hob's chest, the pages slightly bent under the weight of his other hand.

Dream thought he should probably tell Hob to get up and do whatever laundry things needed doing at this juncture; Hob had told Dream not to let him forget, after all, and falling asleep probably counted as forgetting.

But Hob was safe away in Dream's realm, and surely he needed the rest after his exertions on Dream's behalf yesterday and the day before. Dream blew softly over Hob's closed eyes, the best he could do just now to make sure Hob was sleeping deeply, and then he picked up Hob's dangling hand and laid it on his chest.

He kissed the knuckles before he let go, and whispered, "My Hob. Dear heart, darling, sweeting, love. My joy."

Then he slipped back under the coffee table and returned to his drawing, smiling down at it even when his tiny clumsy human fingers slipped and made a streak of blue in exactly the wrong spot.

He tore that picture from the sketchbook and set it aside before he embarked on another, and he had made a third and moved on to the fourth when there was a loud tapping at the kitchen window and Hob startled awake with a ridiculous snort that set Dream giggling helplessly.

"What," Hob said, and then reached down under the table without getting down where he could actually see. "Who's that? Is there somebody down there who let me sleep half the afternoon?"

Dream couldn't seem to stop laughing, squirming this way and that to keep out of the reach of Hob's questing hand. Hob made a sudden motion and caught him by the ankle, pulling him out from under the table and right up into the air upside down, and Dream shrieked with laughter as the blood rushed to his head.

Despite that, he heard it when there was another flurry of taps on the kitchen window, and Hob did too.

"Ah, that's what woke me," Hob said, and did something that left Dream, for the barest instant, hanging in the air with nothing holding him up at all, before he landed belly-down on Hob's shoulder, a little winded but laughing harder than ever.

Even that did not stop him laughing, not even when Hob carried him into the kitchen that way, opened the window, and said, "Hey, Matthew. His Majesty's got the giggles, so I hope you don't need any sense from him right now."

"Oh, uh, no, not really," Matthew said, accompanied by the sound of some wing-fluttering and clicking of talons against hard surfaces.

Dream wriggled around and down so that he was perched on Hob's arm and could actually see the raven standing in the sink. He put a hand over his mouth, which did not actually hold back his continuing laughter, but he hoped it showed that he was willing to listen.

Matthew bobbed his head a little nervously. "Hey, boss. Just wanted to check in and, uh, apologize for that thing where I got totally stoned eating that shiny frog and I don't even know how I got home but I kind of had a hangover, or something, for a while there. I feel like I missed something pretty important happening, but Loosh says everything was okay in the Dreaming the whole time, except yesterday it got pretty hot and rained about fifteen times, but only for two minutes at a time. So, uh, how's it going here? Everything good?"

Dream hid his face against Hob's neck and giggled because he couldn't begin to explain.

"Delirium didn't feed Dream a frog, but she did something with a goldfish," Hob explained. "Messed him right up too, but he's okay now, apart from the giggles, and I'm sure those will settle down sooner or later."

There was a little silence. Dream pictured the reaction Matthew and Lucienne and probably most of the Dreaming would have to being told Lord Morpheus had The Giggles, and giggled harder.

"Huh," Matthew finally said. "That's good, then. I'll, uh... I'll just go, then?"

"No," Dream yelped, seized by sudden inspiration. "No, stay! I shall send—" he broke off and giggled again, picturing Lucienne's face, and Matthew's face, and everyone's faces for all of time to come whenever they saw it. "I'll send—a picture, for Lucienne!"

He wriggled decisively, and Hob let him down, and as he ran away he heard Hob saying, "Get you a drink, mate?"

Dream laughed harder at that, and crawled under the coffee table, ripping out the picture he had been in the middle of and considering the blank page before him, and the pictures he had made so far. He wanted to strike a balance between something that was technically at least a little bit actually beautiful, and something that would make Lucienne laugh hard enough that she had to take her spectacles off and clean them on the tail of her coat.

He had seen her do that before, he was certain, but it had been a very long time.

He giggled to himself, grabbed a color almost at random, and started.

Hob made Matthew a coffee from a pod labeled Salted Caramel Latte, which he recalled had tasted fairly revolting. Matthew had eaten some sort of poisonous frog the last time he was here, though, so Hob figured that his taste in coffee was probably pretty solidly non-human. It was the one he'd asked for, anyway, so he could live with his choices.

Neither of them said anything until Hob set the mug down on the kitchen bench for Matthew to figure out how to drink from, and went to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer. They were both listening to the intermittent giggling and scribbling sounds from the other room.

Hob was in the middle of dumping most of Dream's clothes into the washer when Matthew said, "So, uh... so he's... doing good, then? He... he was in a pretty rough spot before all of this, just rain in the Dreaming for days and no sign of it stopping."

Hob paused with a pair of overalls in his hands—the ones with the flames at the ankles, in fact, that had allowed them to find Dream in that void place. "What do you... I mean, does anyone... do anything, when it rains in the Dreaming like that?"

"Just a lot of hunkering down and trying to keep dry, mostly," Matthew said. "Can't really fly when it starts pouring. He shut himself in his rooms, and no one can go in there without him letting us. We got the orders to never mention her name again, and that was all we could do."

All that bruising still lingered over Dream's heart, deep and dark. Love lost, love rejected.

"Was she..." Hob didn't even know what to ask. He'd never known there was a woman in Dream's life; he hadn't mentioned her at all in his time here.

"Fiddler's Green says this is sort of a pattern," Matthew reported. "This one, they dated for... a few months, I think? It was sort of longer but also shorter than that, because the Dreaming is like that, but... I don't think this was the most serious one ever, just the first one since he got back."

"Got back," Hob repeated, his hands clenching on the overalls. Maybe he shouldn't wash them. Maybe he should keep them somewhere, in case Dream needed to be found again. "He... he said something about being trapped somewhere. And Delirium said... she said his siblings knew, and didn't..."

"I, uh," Matthew said. "I'm pretty new myself, you know? I came to the Dreaming right after he got back, which was a few years ago now. But, yeah, he was... gone for a while, from the Dreaming. I mean like... like a hundred years. Things got pretty bad with him gone, and it seems like... it must have been pretty bad for him too. Where he was."

A hundred years.

All six times they had watched the part with Westley being tortured yesterday, Dream had reacted in some visceral way. He had whimpered, cried, shivered and clung to Hob like the torturers were coming for him next. It didn't look like that but it felt like that, he had said. I couldn't make a sound.

For a hundred years.

"Hob!" Dream shouted, and Hob flung the overalls into the washer like he might get caught with them, and hurried into the other room. He was realizing as he went that that Dream had sounded cheerfully bossy, and still on the verge of laughter. Not hurt, or panicked. Not trapped, or tortured, or alone.

Dream was looking around the room, so he didn't appear to notice the extra second it took Hob to get a smile on his face. There were several pastel drawings on the floor, obviously radiating outward from Dream's spot under the coffee table, and just one torn out of the sketchbook and laid on top.

Dominating the page was a wobbly tower of books, and it was amazing how, even though they were just a dash or two of color each, it was perfectly clear what they were and that they were about to fall. Down at the bottom was a tiny figure, his head covered in a wide-brimmed hat and his wide-flung arms were lost in the folds of a gray cloak much too big for him—the things Odin had been wearing when he came to Hob's door. Under that, it was just visible that the figure wore black overalls with tiny red flames around the ankles, and that under the brim of the hat, he was smiling so widely that Hob couldn't help grinning in response.

In the corner of the picture was a figure dressed all in purple, arms akimbo, dark brown head tilted to one side and revealing the shape of equally brown pointed ears. Again, though it was a very simple sketch, it was quite obvious that the person was not angry or menacing the little mischief-maker, but was thoroughly exasperated.

"Hob!" Dream said, grabbing his hand and tugging. "Where's the fixative? I don't want it to smudge."

"Uh," Hob looked around and spotted the higher shelf where he'd left it, then realized that Dream had immortalized a stretch of the books on the shelf in this drawing, as well as himself and... "Is—is that Lucienne, there?"

Dream grinned up at him proudly. "Do you think she'll like it? I want it to make her laugh."

Hob kept smiling, though he suddenly also wanted to cry for entirely different reasons than the hollow horror of what Matthew had been telling him in the other room. He knelt and hugged Dream fiercely and whispered, "She'll love it."

Dream hugged back for a moment, then wiggled decisively. "You have to spray it, so Matthew can take it to her!"

"Right you are," Hob agreed, and stood up to get the fixative, hoping it was reasonably obvious how to use it because he doubted Dream would be patient enough to let him look up a video.

Chapter 14

Hob insisted on watching a movie after Matthew had left. It was different to any they'd watched before, animated vignettes set to music, and Dream discovered a part of his inspiration for Lucienne's drawing that he hadn't ever seen from this angle.

He had put away the drawings he had meant to be for Hob, tucking them carefully behind the cover of his sketchbook to look at later. None of them were quite what he wanted, but his hands were too tired to do more today.

Later on that night, when he'd had a bath and dried off with a fresh towel, still a bit warm from the dryer, and gotten into freshly cleaned pajamas, also warm, Hob tucked him into bed and checked that his ribbon was firmly secured around his wrist.

Hob started to move away from him—he wasn't ready to sleep yet, which was fine, but Dream was suddenly seized with uncertainty. He caught Hob's hand, keeping him by the bed for another moment. Hob perched there, and covered Dream's hand with his other one, and gave him a gently inquiring look while Dream searched to put words to that sudden tide of worry.

It wasn't about Hob walking away from him, or not only that. He had the ribbon, and knew well that it would suffice to keep them together. It was about—

About going back to the Dreaming, though that was his own realm, his truest home.

He thought of Lucienne greeting him, helping him up off the sand, welcoming him back, and the knot in his belly tightened.

"Do you really think Lucienne will like it?" Dream blurted out.

Hob's entire face softened, and then he smiled. "She will, sweeting. Of course she will."

"But will she..." Dream didn't know how to articulate what he wanted to ask, and he wasn't sure he could blame that inability on his present smallness.

He had rarely spent very much time thinking hard about pleasing anyone.

He made certain gestures, gave gifts out of an abundance of power and resources, said simple words. He did not know if he had ever made something and wanted so badly for it to convey so many things—to be surprising, and humorous, but also well-enough-made so that not all of the surprise and humor came from its poor quality, and to express something of his gratitude for Lucienne's continued stewardship of the Dreaming as well as communicating that what he was doing while he was absent, silly as it seemed, was also real and important. He wanted her to understand, as well as being pleased, and he was aware that he was not gifted in the art of making himself understood.

Odin had forgiven him his silence at this strange time; he wanted to do better for Lucienne.

"Well," Hob said softly, when Dream had perhaps been silent for a very long time, one hand still clasped between Hob's and the other hand now fidgeting over Hob's knuckles. "You could go and see her, couldn't you? You could ask her what she thinks. Or at least try to watch her and see what she's done with it."

Dream suddenly imagined the picture he had been so pleased with a few hours ago, crumpled in a wastebasket or left unregarded wherever it had fallen, and tears filled his eyes, his chest aching with a new bruising pain.

"Hey, hey, come here," Hob said, drawing Dream onto his lap. "What makes you think Lucienne won't like it? Or wouldn't treat it like something very special and important? Has she ever—"

"I have never given her anything!" Dream burst out.

Hob was silent, but still held him close, rubbing a hand up and down his back.

"Lucienne was my raven, first. I helped her find her new form and gave her the position of Librarian when the Library began to grow, for there was no other in the Dreaming more suited to it, and I..." Dream swallowed, thinking of Jessamy, of Matthew. "I wished her to be safe, at the heart of my realm. I knew no other way to honor her, and all she had done for me."

"Well," Hob said quietly. "And you trust her to watch over your realm in your absence? To know what's important and what isn't?"

Dream nodded. "But that is work. A function. And then other responsibilities beyond her function! But I have never given her gifts. Never... things simply to enjoy."

"Do you have many things in your realm that are simply for you to enjoy?" Hob asked, which seemed a strange and irrelevant question, and one which was very difficult to answer.

He enjoyed his realm; he created dreams and nightmares and took pride in his work, and enjoyed seeing them serve their many purposes. The Dreaming as a whole was made to serve all dreamers, though it also suited his own preferences, particularly within the Palace.

"Taramis makes whatever food I request," Dream mumbled after a while.

"Well, I shall have to meet him sometime—we have something in common," Hob said, squeezing Dream a bit. "And does Lucienne get whatever she wants to eat?"

Dream nodded. He did not feel equal to explaining the arrangements for all the dreamfolk, and said simply, "She has all she requires for her needs, and she says she likes her rooms in the Palace very well."

"And if she wanted different ones," Hob said, giving him another squeeze, "would she tell you? Would you make them for her just the way she wanted?"

Dream nodded. "That is my duty. I care for all the dreamfolk and see to their needs. Lucienne knows that better than any."

"Mm," Hob said. "So you don't give her presents, you just supply everything she needs or wants."

Dream frowned, because that sounded like mockery despite the gentleness of Hob's tone and Hob's arms still firmly around him. "Yes."

"Yes," Hob echoed. "And does she like those things that you give her? Does she treat them like they're important?"

Dream thought for a moment of Lucienne's spectacles, which he had made for her shortly after she had become the Librarian. He had found her squinting at a page—a scroll, then, for this was long ago—and he had reached into dreams and found just the thing to help her see better.

She always wore them, ever since. When she wished to polish them, she always used something beautiful, and there was always a moment when she looked down at them in her hands and smiled just to hold them, even when she was not wearing them and therefore they were not doing anything useful.

Dream nodded against Hob's chest.

"I think she will like your drawing," Hob murmured. "I think she will take very good care of it. And if you get there and she doesn't, you just give a good hard pull on that ribbon around your wrist, and I will come and have a word with her about how she treats my friend and the present he gave her."

Dream was startled into a laugh, all at once horrified and wondering at the thought of Hob attempting to scold Lucienne for being insufficiently kind to him. "You could not!"

"As the kids these days say," Hob intoned, staring steadily into Dream's eyes. "Bet."

"Perhaps I should forbid you," Dream said, though he could not hold back a smile that belied his words. "As King of the Dreaming."

Hob raised his eyebrows, seeming completely unfazed by the notion. "Off with my head, is it?"

Dream shook his head. "Nothing so crude. What I forbid from happening in the Dreaming simply cannot happen."

That was... true enough, for a human dreamer like Hob, anyway.

"Mmm, suppose that depends on what you forbid," Hob said, frowning in the general direction of the wall. "Would you forbid me from speaking to her at all? Would you not allow me to meet her?"

Dream didn't really intend to forbid Hob anything, and certainly not that, but as soon as Hob suggested it he was seized with the urgent desire for Hob and Lucienne to meet as soon as possible. He thought they would like each other. He wanted them to like each other.

They were two of his favorite people. Two people outside his family who he was fairly confident cared for him, just because they did.

He was eager, then, to see Lucienne, to know what she thought of his drawing. He shoved at Hob and said, "I must go to sleep, to the Dreaming. Come to me when you sleep. I will—I will probably be in the Library. Then you may meet her."

"Looking forward to it, love," Hob said, pressing a kiss to Dream's forehead before he helped him get settled down on his pillow again, and tucked the blankets in cozily around him once more.

Dream thought for a moment that he might be too excited for sleep to take him, but the body he wore had become accustomed to this, and his realm welcomed him as eagerly as ever. He found himself immediately in the Library, in the corner few could find, where Lucienne had her desk. He was a little way down an aisle from it, in the shadow of the books, but he could see her sitting in her favorite spot, holding something in her hands and smiling down at it.

Without wholly intending it, Dream's hand went to the ribbon around his wrist, checking that it was secure. It was there, the red ribbon leading away into a shadow and disappearing there. He could follow it back to Hob any time he chose, and sooner or later tonight Hob would follow it to him.

He felt a little shift in the air, and when he looked toward Lucienne again she had gone still, and was holding the black rectangle against her chest.

"My... my lord?" she asked softly. She glanced down toward what she was holding, and kept her eyes lowered in that direction. "Are you there? I will not look if you wish me not to see."

"Do you like it?" Dream asked.

It was not what he had meant to ask. He had not meant to ask anything at all.

But Lucienne smiled, and adjusted her glasses, and then he knew that she did like it, and he knew what she was holding.

"I have framed it," Lucienne said, turning the black rectangle to reveal his drawing, behind a layer of glass. It looked perhaps even better, here in the Dreaming, than it had before. His intention was more visible, here. His laughter had sunk into the paper as he worked on it, his joyful anticipation.

Dream moved out of the shadow, right up to her desk, where he had to hold on to the edge and look up at his dear faithful Librarian, who was still smiling at him, her expression softer than he usually saw it.

"Hello, sir," she said. "You look as if your trip is doing you a great deal of good."

Dream bit his lip and clung tighter to the edge of Lucienne's desk, resisting the urge to hide. "You really like the picture?"

Lucienne's smile changed in some dimension he couldn't quite make sense of, even here in the Dreaming where all things should reveal themselves to him. But she was still smiling, and she nodded. "It is my favorite work of art, as of today. I have just been trying to decide whether I should hang it somewhere only I can see it, or if it ought to be visible to those who can find their way this far into the Library."

Dream pressed his cheek against the desk and considered who that might be. Few dreams or nightmares ventured so far in. Some of the Major Arcana might, occasionally. Gault, for her great friendship with Lucienne, but Gault of all dreams knew that sometimes change was necessary. Matthew, of course, but he must assume Matthew had already seen the drawing Dream had entrusted to him for delivery.

His elder sister might, for she sometimes entered his realm without even greeting him, only to borrow books from Lucienne.

"Do you think my sister would..." Dream did not know what to ask. She had been kind, for the moments she stayed, when she saw him this way. She had thought of Hob, and brought Dream to him, and for that alone Dream must be grateful to her to the end of all things.

"I think she will be very pleased by it, if she is allowed to see it," Lucienne said confidently. "And then she is very likely to come and pester you to make a drawing for her to hang on her wall."

"Oh," Dream said, and started trying to think of what he might draw for Death. It was much easier to make her laugh and smile; she looked for chances to do those things, and any excuse he gave her would probably be enough.

And she loved him. Any gift from him would please her, for that reason alone.

"I... could do that," Dream said slowly. "I would not mind that."

She might come to see him, if she wanted him to make a picture for her. He could tell her that he thought The Princess Bride was better than Mary Poppins. He could ask her if she had seen it, and perhaps invite her to watch it, if Hob did not mind.

"Then I shall hang it right here," Lucienne said, and placed the framed drawing on the wall beside her desk, where it obediently stayed as she wished it to. Nothing within the Library would dare to move from where Lucienne placed it, unless she permitted it; the privilege of borrowing from these shelves was enforced by the most basic nature of the Library.

When she turned back to him, Lucienne leaned closer, reaching out her hand to rest near to his where he clutched at the desk, but not quite touching. "All is well in the Dreaming, my lord. We are safe, and you have provided well for us. You need not be concerned on that account."

"I was not concerned," Dream said, aware that he lacked some of his customary hauteur in this form, and sticking his chin up all the higher to compensate. "Except over whether my drawing would make you laugh."

Lucienne's smile widened. "Indeed it did."

She studied him for a moment, and he knew he should say more. He had come because she was one of his favorite people, because he wanted to be near her, but now that he was here he hardly knew what to say. He could not climb into her lap as he would with Hob; they had a different sort of relation to each other.

He loosened his hold on the desk, and shifted his grip to hold on to Lucienne's fingers instead, where they rested so near. "Will you show me other things in the Library that make you laugh?"

Lucienne blinked rapidly, turning her hand to hold his in return. She was still smiling, though he caught a glimmer of tears in her eyes. "I would love to, sir. Yes. And if I miss any, you must point them out to me."

Dream nodded, though it was a long time since he had found himself laughing in the Library, and he doubted he would think of anything that she did not.

Hob stood just outside the bedroom door for a while, listening to Dream's breathing, waiting for any tiny twitch that might be a pull on the ribbon. When he peeked in, Dream had a tiny smile on his face, and one hand curled around the ribbon, but he was sleeping peacefully, entirely still but for the rise and fall of his breath.

After a while, Hob forced himself to stop watching, though he couldn't wipe the matching smile from his own face. He made a round of the flat, tidying up, tallying the contents of the fridge and cupboards. The art store delivery had arrived in the midst of Fantasia, dropped off downstairs as most packages usually were. Hob went and retrieved it from the kitchen landing and stowed it all neatly away, leaving just one giant sketchbook and one more set of pastels where Dream could easily spot them and just as easily ignore them if he wasn't feeling adventurous in that direction.

Hob got another load of laundry started, and then—after one more look at Dream, still smiling cherubically in his sleep—he went to the study and dug out the lists he'd started making before Dream showed up.

He couldn't put too much in motion yet, with Dream here. He wanted to be able to stay as long as Dream needed. Given how rapidly things had been happening in the past few days, he suspected that he was looking at perhaps weeks, maybe a few months more at the very outside.

If it turned out to be years, well, Hob had learned to make moving a fairly painless experience for himself. He could manage it for Dream, too.

But there was no scenario where he would be teaching this fall, and fall was very nearly upon them already. Hob forced himself to write a letter of resignation without really thinking about what it meant, and sent it off.

Then he made a nice flourishing check mark on the list.

He moved the laundry into the dryer, thought very hard about having a drink, and then looked down at the red ribbon around his wrist and smiled. There was something much better than that for him to escape into tonight.

Hob thought over all Dream had said about Lucienne as he got ready for bed. He had met Matthew, who seemed to be uniquely trusted, the first person from his realm who Dream had allowed to see him this way; he had met half of Dream's siblings, now, and didn't know what to think of any of them.

If he was reading things right, Lucienne was the person Dream loved and trusted most in the entire universe, the one whose opinion he was most anxious about, the one he'd raised as near to his own power in his realm as he could. He had not called her his friend, but even from what little he knew Hob could see that that would be an inadequate term for whatever they were. He had said she became the Librarian when the Library in the Dreaming "began to grow," and Hob didn't know exactly how Dream's realm obtained books, but that had to be at least as far back as the printing press, and maybe earlier.

Lucienne had been a fixture of Dream's life for at least as long as Hob had, and a much more significant one. He had wanted her protected, within all the fortifications of his realm, and entrusted her with its administration and defense in his absence.

Hob hadn't caught any implication of romance between them, but that more encouraged his centuries-old instincts interpreting her as Dream's consort than otherwise.

He was reasonably certain that Dream—or more likely Matthew, when speaking about Dream's pattern of heartbreaks—would have mentioned it if Lucienne were literally Dream's wife. So he was fairly confident, as he lay down in bed beside Dream and composed himself to sleep, that he was not on the way to meet Dream's spouse—only someone who meant everything to him that a spouse might, and surely valued and respected him every bit as much as he prized her.

No pressure, or anything.

Hob closed his eyes and focused on steadying his breathing, rubbing a bit of ribbon between thumb and forefinger and keeping his mind sternly focused on the count of his breaths and the fact that it was time to sleep. He had lost the knack of sleeping whenever he had the chance sometime during the last war he'd fought in, but he could not let himself think about that now.

He opened his eyes, expecting to see Dream's peacefully sleeping face, and instead he saw a bookcase. A whole row—a whole aisle—of bookcases, in fact.

He looked down at his wrist, and saw the red ribbon leading very definitely along the aisle to his right, wrapping around the corner. He hadn't followed it even that far before he was aware of a woman's voice.

"Fortunately," she was saying, in a reading sort of cadence, "the cat was fluent in French."

The dramatic pause following this statement was promptly filled by Dream's buzzsaw laugh, and Hob hurried forward to peek around the corner.

Dream was sitting on a thick cushion on the floor, facing a woman seated similarly. She wore a fantastic purple suit, and had dark brown skin and pointed ears, though Hob hardly thought he had needed even that much to identify Lucienne.

Who else would Dream allow to read him a picture book, and trust enough to laugh like that at it?

Neither of them seemed to notice him; Lucienne, holding the book facing toward Dream in the finest librarian style, turned a page, and read the next line. "Unfortunately, the cat was an ardent monarchist."

Hob couldn't get a good look at the accompanying illustration from this angle, but evidently it was just as good as the last one. Dream swayed with the force of his laughter, and Hob could barely hold back from laughing from sheer sympathy.

He must have done something, however silent he kept, because Dream's laughter tailed off and he looked directly to where Hob stood, on the other end of the ribbon that connected them. In his peripheral vision Hob saw Lucienne's gaze follow Dream's, and he forced himself to meet her eyes.

She was hugging the book to her chest and smiling at Hob warmly, almost fondly. Hob knew instantly that she loved Dream as deeply and steadfastly as Dream loved her, and that she knew enough about Hob to like him for Dream's sake. He could not help liking her in return, though he made sure to refocus quickly on Dream—he need not repeat the mistake he had made with Delirium, and have Dream being anxious that Hob would love another more.

Dream didn't look anxious at all, though. He was beaming, looking back and forth between Hob and Lucienne like seeing the two of them in the same room was making him so happy he didn't know what to do with himself.

"Hello," Hob said to her, offering a hand before he could let himself think too hard about the etiquette of meeting a dream librarian who was more or less the Vicereine of the Kingdom of Dreams. "You must be Lucienne? Dream has told me a little about you, it's amazing to meet you."

Lucienne's smile persisted, and she took Hob's hand in a firm, ordinary-feeling grip as she said, "And you are Hob Gadling—if that is the form of your name you prefer? I have learned much about you from the Library, and almost nothing from my lord, but I know you are a great friend to him."

"Hob, yeah," Hob said, and then looked down to Dream and said, "What does your Library know about me?"

Dream grinned up at him and raised his arms, and, well, that answered the question of how Hob ought to treat him in front of Lucienne (and whether he would rather have hugs from Lucienne than Hob, if he was comfortable with her after all). Hob scooped him up and Dream flung his arms wide and said, "The Library knows everything!"

"Thought that was your brother, knowing everything," Hob said, smiling helplessly down at Dream.

"He knows what will happen," Dream said. "But the Library has every book ever written, and every book never written."

What was it Destiny had called him, that night? The Lord of What Is Not? And Prince of Stories was one of his titles in his little book.

"So if I asked you for..." Hob trailed off, not even sure what to ask for.

"Any book that you would like to see," Lucienne said. "Any book that ever existed, or—"

Hob knew, then, exactly what book he wanted to ask for, and should not. He pressed his lips together, hiding his face against the top of Dream's head for a moment before he could gather himself to say, "What was that you were reading when I came in? I hate to interrupt, and it sounded like a good time."

"Ah," Lucienne said, and when Hob dared a glance in her direction, she had an understanding look, and she turned around the book in her arms instead of pressing him about what he actually wanted. "This is the Infinite Edition of Remy Charlip's Fortunately, which was called into existence by the many, many children who wished for Ned's adventures to continue without end. It is likely to be different when I open it again."

"Well," Hob said, finally daring to look at Dream, who was giving him a thoughtful look but didn't say anything. "Would you mind starting over, then? I think we could all use a good laugh."

Dream hesitated another long moment, just looking into Hob's eyes, and then he nodded and unleashed a brilliant smile. "It is very good for laughing."

Hob sat down on Dream's cushion, and Dream lounged in his lap as if it were a throne, while Lucienne took her own seat and opened the book again. "Fortunately, Ned was invited to a surprise party."

Hob woke up with a chuckle still on his lips, his ribs and cheeks both aching from laughing all night.

He looked for Dream right away, and found him sitting up on the other side of the bed, the mass of red ribbon drawn into his lap and mostly hiding something that Dream was resting both hands on. His expression was solemn and knowing; seeing him, Hob felt the last of the laughter die.

He sat up and reached out, but couldn't quite bring himself to touch Dream or whatever was under the ribbons.

"It is very rare for a dreamer to have borrowing privileges from the Library," Dream said quietly. "But Lucienne and I both trust you not to abuse it. The book must and shall return to the Library at nightfall, but for this day..."

Dream drew it out, and Hob's breath caught, because he knew that book well.

It was nothing printed by a press; it was meant to be a book of accounts, but Eleanor had been an erratic record-keeper at best, and the book's contents were less than half ledger entries. Hob took it with a trembling hand.

"It was—it was burned, wasn't it?" Hob asked. He had looked, sometimes, at auctions and private archives, but he had never found a trace of any book from the Gadlen household, nor any of the private papers.

"It was, in the Waking world," Dream said softly. "But the dream of it lives on."

Hob raised the little leather-bound book near enough to breathe in the smell of it, and a sob caught in his throat at the familiarity: the whiff of Eleanor's favorite perfume that lingered on it, the ink that had now and then spattered her fingers. He had loved that she could read and write—skills he had not gained himself in his first century—and would peek at anything from her pen, even her little household account book, just to see the way she formed her numbers and letters, the way she doodled little pictures between more businesslike entries.

When he lowered the book and let it fall open, it opened at the page he had revisited so many times in the years after Eleanor died.

She had never drawn any likeness of herself, but she had made this little sketch of Hob's face and Robyn's cheek to cheek, showing the ways they did and didn't resemble each other in a few flowing lines of ink. Robyn had inherited Hob's cleft chin and dark eyes, but he'd had Eleanor's sweet little nose and, as a child, lighter hair than either of his parents.

Hob hadn't been able to bear looking at this drawing after Robyn's death, but he had held the book during many a long dark evening of drinking, feeling closer to both of them just for having it in his hands. No doubt some half-wit witch hunter had decided it was his book of spells and flung it into the flames.

Now his eyes traced the lines over and over, seeking to embed them in his mind. He wondered if he had tracing paper anywhere, if he could draw a sketch near enough to this to serve as a reminder, and then his brain caught up with the 21st Century. He looked up at Dream, who was watching him with a gentle, benevolent expression only slightly bizarre to see on someone who otherwise appeared to be about three years old.

"Can I take a picture of this?" Hob asked. "Will that—is it really here? Can a camera see it?"

Dream nodded gravely. "It is as truly present as the bottle of wine I once brought you, or my clothes and toothbrush. It must return to the Library when the loan ends, because it is a thing which Is Not, and must continue to Be Not. But there are many things which Are Not, and yet records of them persist. And should those records ever be lost, the book itself will always be safe in the Library of the Dreaming, and you will always be able to find it there."

Hob set the book carefully aside, and lunged across the bed to catch Dream in a crushing hug. "Thank you, my friend. Thank you so much, I—I cannot—"

"I know," Dream said simply, his little arms curling around Hob and hugging back as fiercely as his small size allowed. "I know."

Dream waited quietly, cuddled against Hob's side, while Hob photographed each and every page of the little book. Hob's dreamself had all but shouted his request for it when Lucienne had told him he could see anything he liked, though he had said no word on the level of his dreaming awareness. Lucienne had instantly agreed to Dream's suggestion of a special loan, under the circumstances, and Dream felt warm with happiness at having done his dearest friend a good turn.

He had done well by Lucienne, too, for she had loved the picture. And she had liked Hob, and Hob had liked her too—but it had been Dream he held against his heart all through the night as Lucienne read to them.

Dream could hear Hob's heart beating now, his ear pressed to Hob's ribs as Hob tenderly turned each page of the little book, taking one photo after another. When Hob's stomach growled, it was so loud that Dream jumped, and Hob was startled into a rather damp laugh.

"I'm sorry, darling," Hob said, tugging Dream close again and kissing the top of his head. "I'm neglecting both of us, aren't I? Eleanor's book will wait; those of us still alive need our breakfasts."

Dream turned his face to hide it against Hob's body, and did not say that Hob need not concern himself with Dream's needs just now. He did feel rather hungry.

Hob didn't ask again, or demand an answer from him. He scooped Dream up and got on with their day. There was a very nice breakfast, and washing up and putting on fresh clean clothes that smelled just a little bit like Hob's flat and a little bit like Hob's own clothes. Dream decided that this was rather an improvement on their pristine new-made state, which had smelled of nothing at all.

When that was done, Dream returned to his drawings while Hob had a shower, leaving him some privacy to consider his previous day's work.

Hob treasured Eleanor's drawings though they had all been very simple little things, revealing a good eye and a steady hand, but no great artistic gift. He would not judge Dream's own efforts too harshly.

By the time Hob returned, dressed in his own clean clothes and carrying a laptop and notepad, Dream had put the finishing touches on the very first drawing he had attempted and set it out on the coffee table for Hob to find.

He was, all in all, rather pleased with it. It showed himself and Hob—recognizable, he thought, even from behind and at a little distance. Hob's arm was around him, but his own black hair tufted up visibly above that. They were sitting in that green cliffside meadow of Hob's dream from two nights ago, looking out at the sea and the blue sky.

They were peaceful, and content, and together inseparably, the grains of pigment that represented each of them blending into each other inextricably. Dream liked looking at that almost more than he liked the interesting swirling variations of green and blue that made the sea and the meadow and the sky.

Hob stopped short when he saw it, giving Dream a long moment to bask in the wondering look on his face. Then Hob knelt down, curling an arm around Dream just as the Hob in the picture held that Dream against his side.

"Love," Hob said, and then said no more. His eyes had gone shiny again, and he was smiling a smile that looked like it might hurt, and was still worth smiling anyway.

Dream pressed a few gentle kisses to Hob's cheek and temple, and then curled his own arms around Hob and leaned into his hold.

"I love it," Hob whispered. "I love it, darling, and I'll keep it forever and ever. No matter where I go or who I am, I'll have this hanging on my wall."

Hob had had to be many people in his six centuries of life, and no doubt had had to leave behind many possessions. Eleanor's book had not been so much lost or abandoned as forcibly taken from him, but it was surely bringing to mind all the things lost in the inevitable moves that were an immortal's lot.

"Wherever you go or whoever you are," Dream said, as stoutly as he could in this small form, "you shall always be my friend. And if ever you lose this drawing, I shall make you another."

Hob put both arms around Dream and hid his face against the top of Dream's head, and Dream nestled close and felt very pleased with himself indeed.

He was not, he assured himself, competing with Eleanor's book. That was gone, and Hob could not keep it. Dream was here, and could give Hob something he could keep. Just as he had when he began his drawing, he wanted only to give Hob a gift, some tiny token to show a glimmer of how happy he was here with Hob.

Dream wasn't done yet, either. He had noticed the new big sketchpad that Hob had left on top of the refrigerator, and the new box of pastels with it. He could make more pictures for Hob, bigger and better ones, enough to wallpaper the entire flat. And Hob would love them, because he loved Dream, and the making of those drawings would be enjoyable. Fun.

He sighed happily, leaning more heavily into Hob, provoking a breathless little laugh. Hob let go of him and said, "I'd better find the fixative for this. Would it be any use to ask Lucienne how she framed hers, or does it just work properly no matter what because she says so, in the Dreaming?"

Dream didn't know; surely Lucienne could find out anything anyone needed to know, but her own framing process probably had been more one of intention than of technique. Hob didn't wait for or seem to expect an answer, wandering off to find where he'd moved the bottle of fixative, muttering to himself as he went about the perils of tidying up and how he never could find things after he put them in very sensible places. Dream smiled after him and then looked down at the picture again. He could almost feel Hob's warmth around him, just looking at it.

His attention was drawn away sharply by the tinking sound of someone tapping on glass—not from any of the windows, but from the bathroom.

Dream knew at once who he would find there, and he rushed off to see, though he had to pull himself up as far as he could on the sink to look into the mirror above it.

He had been right; Despair was on the other side, looking through.

"My brother, Dream," she said. "I hold your sigil and call your name. May I come through to you?"

Dream opened his mouth to say yes, for he was very fond of Despair and would not like to say no to her when she had taken the initiative to visit him—just as Delirium had. It must be that Delirium had told her where he was, and now she had come to see him. So soon, practically as soon as she knew where she was, she had come to him.

He felt almost breathless with love for his both his younger sisters, but before he could speak to invite Despair in, he heard Hob say, "Dream? Did you hear something?"

"In here, Hob!" Dream called back. "My sister wants to come and say hello!"

Chapter 15

Hob followed Dream's voice to the bathroom. First he saw Dream, standing on tiptoe and clinging to the edge of the sink, smiling up at the mirror.

Then he saw the woman in the mirror, and before he knew what he was doing he had snatched Dream up into his arms and turned to put himself between them. Dream let out a peal of his rusty, ragged laughter, as though Hob were going to toss him in the air or flip him upside down next, but Hob was too busy eyeing the woman to reassure Dream with silliness.

He didn't know if Dream ought to be reassured.

There was nothing obviously threatening about the woman, aside from the fact that she was looking out of Hob's bathroom mirror from some gray place that was not of this world. She stood barely taller than Delirium, and looked like any ordinary woman who was going through a rough patch; her hair was dark blonde, ordinarily dirty and stringy, but not entirely covering her face like the Ring girl. She was wearing a rather frumpy but cozy-looking jumper.

She was smiling, just a bit, as she looked up at Hob and Dream.

The words Dream had said finally got through to Hob's brain: this was his sister, of course.

This was Despair.

Hob had never, ever let her into him. Not once. Not even in 1673, when the only alternative had been to go a bit mad. Never, ever had he despaired.

But she was not only her name, or her nature. She was Dream's sister, and Dream was now tugging on Hob's shirt, wriggling a bit and saying, "I like her, really, Hob, can't she come in? Please?"

"You ask a human's permission, brother?" Despair said, and her voice sounded ordinary, if a little flat.

"This is Hob's home," Dream said firmly, unhesitatingly. "I am his guest. It is up to him to decide who else may come in."

Hob wanted to say no the way he wanted to keep breathing in and out, the way he wanted to keep his grip on Dream instead of letting him fall. It was like fighting a reflex, forcing his body to do something truly unnatural, but she was Dream's sister, and Dream was asking.

The only way Hob could do it was to take his eyes off her and look at Dream's sweet, hopeful face as he said, "It's all right. She can come in."

Dream looked up at him for a moment that made it obvious that Hob hadn't managed to sound at all normal about that. He squeezed a little hand on Hob's shoulder—the one out of sight of the mirror—gave him a solemn nod of reassurance before he looked at her again and said, "Come through, my sister."

Hob backed away to the bathroom door, not wanting to see how this worked and also not wanting to take his eyes off the mirror, but there was no horror movie lunge through the mirror. Despair simply appeared, standing on the bathmat. She followed without a word, smiling a grim little smile, when Hob continued backing away all the way to the living room.

Dream's picture of the two of them was still on the coffee table, still unsprayed with fixative, and Hob was torn between wanting to snatch it up just like he had Dream, and not daring to give her any sign that it mattered that much to him.

"Can I, uh," Hob cleared his throat. "Cup of tea?"

"Thank you," she said, with a rather regal nod, and sat down in the armchair. "Dream, what have you been up to? Delirium told me a little, but..."

Dream wriggled and Hob let him down, because he couldn't refuse to. Dream went right to Despair, leaning against her knee and beaming up at her; Hob turned away toward the kitchen, and walking away from Dream felt exactly like walking into the sea alone. He did it anyway, step by weighted step.

Dream gazed up at his sister, delighted to be able to do so; she was different from this angle, vast and soft and welcoming.

She smiled back after a moment, her most secretive little smile, and ran a hand over his hair. "You need not tell me if you do not wish to, my brother," she said.

"No, I will," Dream said. "I will. I am simply enjoying your company for a moment, first."

She ducked her head, but that did not hide the way her secret smile widened—not from him, not now.

"I have been doing... nothing that seems so momentous, if I were to describe it," Dream added, frowning a little as he tried to think of the words. "I made myself small, as you see; I left most of myself behind, so that that which is most... myself, could be small enough to be..."

Loved.

He knew the word, and he had lived the reality for days, and he still could not quite say it.

His sister's hands touched tentatively at his shoulders—not quite on the bruises, but uncomfortably close. He looked up at her, and then smiled again and raised his arms as he would have with Hob, and let her lift him into her lap. He leaned against the soft, warm bulk of her body, and felt himself relax a little further.

"You were never anything smaller than yourself, Dream of the Endless," she said quietly, as if it were a secret. "Were you?"

She was not asking merely about whether he had ever done anything like this before. She had been something else—something smaller—before she became Despair. She had been someone like Daniel Hall; there was a part, a facet of her that was just her, who had been someone else before she was his sister.

He did not know that person's name. He never had; he had not even wondered.

"I was not," he said. "But you were. Do you remember it?"

She sighed, and her arms came around him, giving him a squeeze that he recognized was more for her own comfort than for his, though it still felt nice. More than that, he was glad to be a brother who could comfort her, if only by holding still while she held him. "I do, in a way. I had already lost much of it by the time I took my place, and what I do retain I do not enjoy thinking of. It was a life that prepared me for this existence."

Despair had been—not human, but something very like a human. And for a human to live a life that fitted them to not merely despair, in themselves, but to become the queen and embodiment of all despair... no. It could not be enjoyable to remember, even for one who came to treasure all other manifestations of misery and hopelessness.

"Are you preparing, however belatedly, for yours?" Despair asked, still very quietly, as if it were a secret.

"Odin said that I had found a strange tree to hang myself on," Dream confided, rubbing his cheek against the texture of her jumper. "In search of some wisdom I am wanting. I did not think of it that way to begin with, but I think... he is right. I think I am learning all over again how to Dream. And Hob—my friend, he—he is..."

He loves me. He is teaching me to be loved. He permits me to love him, small and inadequate as I am.

Dream could not say any of that.

"Right, here we go," Hob said briskly, coming in with three mugs. "Tea for the lady, tea for me, and cocoa for Dream. Still a bit hot, love, so I'll just set it here for a moment."

He suited action to word, setting down the best smelling mug—which was decorated with several cartoon cats—on the coffee table, and then holding forward two that did not smell nice at all toward Despair. "Didn't know how you take it, so I guessed," Hob said. "Honey and lemon, or sugar and milk?"

The honey and lemon one was in a cup similar to the one Hob had offered to Odin, though not the same one; the sugar and milk was in a mug decorated with a multicolored stack of books, reminiscent of Dream's drawing for Lucienne.

"Thank you," Despair said, and took the honey and lemon mug from Hob's hand. She sipped it, and looked up at Hob with a different sort of half-hidden smile as she said, "Barely even tastes like you spit in it at all."

"Despair!" Dream was more startled than scolding; he knew she was teasing, and she so rarely teased anyone at all. She must like Hob very much.

"Ah, well," Hob said, settling into the nearest spot on the sofa, curling his hands around his own mug of tea. Dream squirmed around on Despair's lap so that he could keep a good view of Hob over there. He could see Hob's returning semi-smirk as he said, "Covers the taste of the strychnine, you know."

"Hob!" Dream yelped, swinging a foot out in a kick that only connected with Hob's knee as glancingly as it did because Hob obligingly swung his leg out to meet it. "Do not poison my sister! She is your guest!"

"He didn't really," Despair said, taking another sip of the tea and patting Dream absently. "He wouldn't keep anything like that in the house with you here, I'm sure."

Hob bit his lip and his gaze darted away from Dream; when Dream tried to see what he'd looked away at, he spotted a rather battered tin tucked on top of some books on a low shelf. It would be out of sight, at a casual glance, from someone of average adult height while they were standing. Dream squirmed, but Despair did not let him go immediately, as Hob would have, and Hob got up and grabbed the tin and left the room without a look back.

"I can find it!" Dream called after him.

"You can try!" Hob called back, and Despair laughed softly and hugged Dream tighter against her.

"So, you have not already explored every inch of this place, then," Despair observed.

Dream sighed, relaxing against her again, and shook his head. "When I wish to be active, we go out for walks and things. Or—" Dream bit his lip, just as Hob had done a moment before, and then decided that this, at least, he could say. This was not so much. "I have been... drawing. Or coloring. I have been making art, such as I can."

"Such as you can," Hob scoffed, returning. He went over to a different bookshelf and picked up Dream's first effort, the little impressionistic landscape he had made at the art store. "Is this not art? Is this not bloody gorgeous?"

Dream watched Despair's face as she studied the little picture held so carefully in Hob's hands. He could not tell anything of her reaction until she looked down at him, and then her face softened from its habitual grimness, and she smiled a smile that had no hook hidden in it.

"It is lovely," she said.

Dream couldn't help grinning back, his face aching a little with the wideness of his smile. "I can make one for you!"

Again he wriggled toward getting down, and again Despair held on. Her smile dimmed, and she said, "I could not keep it, my brother. My rats would devour it."

Dream's own smile ebbed away, and he thought of Despair's gray and misty realm, full of mirrors but little else. Could she never have anything nice? Anything to enjoy? He supposed she could not; that was her nature, and the nature of her realm.

But it was not Dream's nature, and perhaps it was not the nature of a brother—not of a good brother, at least—to simply accept that.

"When they do," Dream decided, "I will make you another picture, and another, and another. I am your brother forever, am I not? Forever you should have something lovely, even if it is forever being lost. Hob, can you get that big sketchbook down? A bigger picture will last longer."

Hob gave him a soft, warm look, and came right over to Despair, close enough to touch her as he cupped his hand around the back of Dream's neck and kissed the top of his head. "Course I will, darling. And then I'll find that bloody fixative—it probably tastes awful, that might put off the rats for a bit."

He picked up the drawing Dream had made for him from the coffee table and took it with him when he went to the kitchen, handling it as tenderly as he would hold Dream himself. Dream smiled, watching him go, and then turned that smile up toward his sister again.

Even by the standards of this week, it felt deeply and disturbingly strange to sit and drink tea, trading occasional cordial barbs with Despair of the Endless, while Dream was out of sight. Hob could hear him—he seemed to be having little arguments with himself from time to time, and sometimes he hummed little snatches of music. He had insisted he needed to work on Despair's picture all by himself, monopolizing the kitchen table with the sketchbook that barely fit on it when it was opened, and all three sets of pastels.

Hob was wondering if he could sneak a glance by pleading a need for more hot drinks—Dream had taken his cocoa with him, or rather permitted Hob to carry it into the kitchen for him and place it just so to one side of the table. Hob had his tea, and his English civility, and Despair.

He was pretty sure that she was amused by him. He could see a sort of resemblance between her and Death—nothing about their actual appearances, just a kindred feeling about them. Death must also have been amused, back in 1389, to hear some peasant spouting off about how stupid it was to die just because everyone else did, and how Hob Gadling never would. He had to assume she'd been amused, for him to have wound up immortal, or else she'd been trying to do something ironic and it had backfired spectacularly.

He remembered the warmth of her smile, when she turned up on his doorstep with her brother in her arms, and thought that whichever it had started out as, she was pretty entertained by him these days. He had to be a pretty fun joke, for Death, the guy who just kept refusing to die.

That wasn't the kind of amused Despair seemed to be by him. Despair seemed a lot more like a cat watching a wounded mouse scramble around looking for an escape. Sooner or later, her crooked little smile said. Sooner or later, she would have him.

But she never said that, or anything else Hob could respond to with, Fuck you, I won't let you, now get out of my house. That sentiment was taking up an increasingly large section of his brain the longer they sat here, very politely despising each other, because she was his guest and Dream's sister who Dream really, really wanted to draw a picture for.

This was better than her having her arms about Dream, though. Better that Dream was in the kitchen, giggling to himself now in his tiny eldritch way, well out of Despair's reach. Hob could keep an eye on her this way, at least.

For all the good that does you, her eyes said, as she took another tiny sip of her tea.

Hob took a sip of his own, which had gone cold, because they'd been here for ages, just sitting. He ought to be doing more, ought to be doing anything other than just sitting here watching her watch him—was that her? Keeping him in place somehow, making him think he just had to give in to the madness of allowing her over his threshold?

He narrowed his eyes; she smiled and went back to studying his books. "Such a lot to pack up," she said lightly. "Or leave behind. However will you choose?"

"I have a system," Hob said, and considered telling her about it. On the one hand, he could so rarely tell anyone about the system and it was actually very complicated and interesting; on the other, he had no doubt that with her sitting there looking at him the misery of having a system for deciding what he could take to his new life and what had to be lost when he left behind the old would be inescapable.

No. He would tell Dream about the system, later. He probably ought to check his email, see if he'd had any response yet to the resignation he'd sent last night, but... not now. Not with her watching him. The weight of her attention made it easy to sit still, to do nothing, to wait and watch her, always watching him.

Dream called out, and Hob was on his feet instantly, as if he had never kept still a moment in his life; it was only when he saw Despair getting to her own feet with a slightly different sardonic smile that Hob realized what Dream had said. "My sister!"

Still, Hob strode into the kitchen ahead of her, and Dream grinned impartially at him from a face liberally smeared with several colors of pastel, though he also looked past Hob eagerly.

Hob stood aside from the doorway and watched as well. He was rewarded with the sight of Despair's face as she saw Dream's wide, happy smile of greeting, and the picture he had made for her. Her mouth softened out of that fish-hook twist and into something almost sweet, almost wondering.

Hob had to follow her gaze and look properly at Dream's work. He noticed the rainbows first, maybe because he was looking for the source of the incredible variety of colors Dream had smeared on his cheeks and forearms, all over both hands and up his arms to his pushed-up sleeves, which were also thoroughly besmirched.

The rainbows occupied the whole top of the page, arcing and intersecting into each other, dimming as they dripped downward...

But no, he was looking at it backward. The whole lower half of the picture was flames, reds and oranges swallowing up the blackened silhouettes of buildings, bodies, skeletal trees. The flames rose into clouds of smoke and ash, and from the ash, rainbows shot up in all directions, so thickly they blocked out any hint of a sky. The colors started out dim and murky, but got purer and brighter as they rose away from the fire.

It was a beautiful picture, and the message was so gorgeously, defiantly clear that Hob couldn't help grinning so wide his face hurt, even as tears prickled at his eyes.

Everything could be lost, destroyed, ruined beyond repair, and still there was joy to be found. Rainbows in the smoke. Dreams, even in despair.

"Oh, my brother," Despair said, a little audible emotion leaking into her voice. "You know me so well."

Dream was still grinning, and stood up on his chair, reaching out his arms to his sister. Hob turned away to find the fixative, giving them a moment together before, he very much hoped, Despair departed from his home for good. When he turned back, Dream and Despair were hugging, and Hob focused grimly on spraying the fixative in even sweeps to keep from trying to snatch Dream away from her.

As soon as he'd finished, Dream turned toward Hob—toward the picture, really, as he leaned down and blew over the surface of it, making the fixative dry much faster than it should. Then he looked up at his sister again, still with that huge pleased smile. "Remember, my sister. When it is gone, you must tell me, and I shall make you another. You should always have something beautiful, even if it is always being lost. There are always more beautiful things."

"There is always more to lose," Despair agreed, reaching out to ruffle Dream's hair and ending with a caress, drawing her hand down over his cheek. "You do understand." She finally let go, reaching to take hold of the poster-sized picture instead. "Farewell, my brother, until then."

She turned away, took a few steps, and vanished as she crossed through the kitchen doorway. Hob felt her absence, just as he'd felt Delirium's; a weight lifted off him, and he felt suddenly capable again, filled with energy, ready to get on with things. He hadn't felt sad in her presence so much as he'd felt oppressed by the weight of some horrible inevitability, and now she was gone and he could feel again that he was going to live forever, and he could do anything.

He tried not to grin too widely or actually bounce on his heels as his attention returned to Dream, who slumped a little where he stood, his smile melting into weariness. He had been so excited to see his sister, and as glad as Hob was to see the back of her, it hurt to see all of Dream's joy in her go too.

"Here, love," Hob said, going to him and gathering him up in his arms. "How about a bath? Get all that off you, get you some clean clothes, and then we can get back to our day."

"I used up all the red," Dream murmured against his shoulder, melting into him.

"All the red from the sets you were using," Hob corrected. "I'll just dig out the backups."

Dream sighed, melting more heavily against him. Hob gave him a firm squeeze and a kiss on top of his head and took him into the bathroom to peel him out of his clothes.

The bruises on his shoulders and chest still stood out starkly, showing a few lighter colors at their edges but still dark in the middle. Now his pale skin was also marked in rainbow colors up his arms and on his face. Hob smiled at the sight, for all that Dream was drooping. Hob might have been tempted to take a picture for posterity, but... not now. There would be other times, hopefully, when Dream would get himself enthusiastically messy and be pleased about it instead of drained.

For now, Hob moved him over into the bath once the warm water had begun to fill it, and Dream sighed and sat quietly, letting Hob clean him up.

It wasn't until he was washing Dream's hair that Hob found what Despair had left: a jagged red gouge in the soft white skin behind his ear, with what looked like a single drop's worth of blood dried at the end.

Hob just stared for a moment, feeling all his instinctive opposition to Dream's sister harden into implacable rage as he realized what she had done.

She had left her mark on Dream, just as Delirium had. She had taken his joy in her, and replaced it with despair, and now Dream would be weighted down under that smothering hopelessness until God knew when.

Hob took his hands off of Dream and let them close on the edge of the tub, instead, where he could do no harm with a white-knuckled grip. Words rose to his lips, and he kept them to a whisper because he could not hold them back, and he did not want to frighten Dream, who loved his sister—and yet it had to be said.

"Despair of the Endless," Hob hissed, turning his head to speak toward the mirror though he kept his eyes on Dream—on that bloody scratch, those wearily slumping little shoulders already bearing such bruises. "You have shed blood under my roof. You have forfeited your guest-right. You are barred from my home and my hearth from this day to the end of time. Despair of the Endless, you are not welcome here."

Dream looked up at him with wide tearful eyes, and Hob was mostly just glad that he'd already washed Dream's face, so he wasn't dripping all sorts of improbable colors. "She is my sister, Hob."

"Yeah, and she hurt you," Hob said, softening his voice as much as he could manage, which was... definitely less than usual, judging by Dream's continued forlorn expression. "She hurt you while you were in my care, love, and I can't just let that go by. I'm not swearing vengeance, and I don't mind if you talk to her through the mirror or anywhere else you like, but I can't have her in my home again. I just can't."

Dream dropped his chin nearly to his chest and mumbled something that Hob understood, after a few seconds' delay to puzzle it out, as, "I promised her."

Hob sighed, and then realized he'd been halfway through rubbing shampoo into Dream's hair and got back to it, cradling Dream's bowed head in his hands and working gently, careful to keep the suds away from that scratch until he could clean and bandage it. "You promised you would make her another picture, you mean?"

He stilled his hands, so that when Dream gave a tiny nod, he felt it. Hob resumed lathering and said quietly, "I won't tell you not to, love. Your art things are yours entirely, to do with what you will, and she's welcome to call through the mirror or send messages. If a talking rat turns up on the doorstep, I'll let it speak its piece. We can go somewhere to meet her, if you like, to hand off your next masterpiece. But in my home I will keep you as safe as I can. Always. Even from your sister."

Dream tilted his head back and Hob let him, his hands stilling again to just hold him as his tears dripped down his temples. "You cannot protect me, Hob."

"I can try," Hob returned. "To my last breath, my own joy, I can try."

Dream sat in the bath, only dimly aware of the warm water around him and the gentle touches of Hob's hands. His sister was gone; all three of his sisters now had left him behind here. And Despair had left him with the knowledge of how futile his quest here was, how wholly doomed.

Or perhaps not doomed. Perhaps simply a part of the inevitable process. He had left most of himself behind—most of what was truly Dream of the Endless, and not this mewling little facet, desperate to be loved.

He had separated out that which could and must be destroyed, and he had made it so very breakable. It would be so easy to—

Dream's whole body jerked, and he let out a yelp of protest. Only then did he realize that he was out of the bath, wrapped in a towel and held on Hob's lap while Hob did something that stung horribly behind his ear. He buried his face in Hob's chest, feeling tears start again as the immediacy of that sharp pain faded.

Hob was holding him close, murmuring apologies and reassurances even as he patted the hurting spot dry and then smoothed a bandage into place. Dream could not help raising his own hand to the spot to poke at it, but the bandage was something smooth and soft that seemed nearly to blend into his skin. He could not even complain that it itched or bothered his ear; in a moment he would doubtless forget it was there.

He wept the more bitterly for that, and Hob held him closer, rocking him gently, and did not admonish him.

Hob didn't bother with clean clothes when Dream's weeping tailed off enough to get him dressed. He put him straight into his softest suit of pajamas, the fuzzy ones with the feet attached, and tied the red ribbon to both their wrists for good measure.

Gathering up the whole mass of ribbon revealed Eleanor's little book, still lying on the bed, with the last third still unrecorded. It would go back to the library at nightfall, and Hob didn't think he was going to have any more attention to spare for it before then; it hurt to let it go, but Dream was limp and miserable in his arms, and Hob had always prioritized the living.

Dream had promised he would be able to find the book again, anyway. Hob left it there, untouched.

He went and lay down on the rug beside the coffee table with Dream an unresisting weight on his chest. Hob got his phone connected to the big speakers, and scrolled through until he found a good album to start with.

Dream didn't respond to the music, even when Hob turned up the speakers to proper wallowing-in-my-feelings levels, not until they got to the bridge of the first song.

And some days I don't miss my family
And some days I do
And some days I think I'd feel better if I tried harder
Most days I know it's not true

Dream's little hands clenched to fists in Hob's shirt, and Dream drew in a sharp audible breath, but made no other sound. His grip didn't relax, and Hob felt him starting to tremble, and he wrapped his arms around Dream and held him close.

Hob let himself think, then, of 1673. The year he had belonged to Dream's youngest sister for a while; the year Despair had thought he would be hers instead.

There was a night he remembered. Probably it had been more than one night, or there had been many such nights scattered through the years before 1673; he didn't trust memories that felt so clear to be really accurate, especially from that century. But whether it was a story he had made of it for himself or what had really happened—he remembered a particular night that felt like this late summer afternoon.

He remembered the weight on his chest, the effort of breathing. He had been starving for a long while, had passed in and out of the phases where he didn't really notice. He was in a phase where he felt hungry again, and he could feel some precipice at his feet as he huddled in a half-sheltered corner.

Hob had known he couldn't go on that way much longer. Starving was about to break him, one way or another. Starving, and waiting.

He was sixteen years from his stranger's return, and sixteen years shouldn't have felt so long to him by then; he was more than sixty years on from his trial as a witch, nearer to seventy since Robyn's death, and that still felt like an eyeblink.

But sixteen years, just then, when he was so hungry and had been so hungry for so long, was more than he could bear to imagine. It had sunk into a certainty he didn't question, by then, that he wouldn't truly be able to change the direction of his life by his own efforts. He had tried, several times in the years since his fortunes had fallen, to repair them, to make a way and a life for himself. Now and again he had gotten a little toehold for a time. He found some steady work here or there, for weeks, for months. He began to imagine that he was on his way up again, and then it all fell apart and he fell back down into the cold dark water, to fight and fight again to get his head above the surface.

But he had fought, and fought, and fought, and never thought of giving up and letting the dark water take him.

And then came that night. He was too hungry to sleep, but he was so weary he couldn't bear it, and he had known something had to break. He would run mad, or he would simply run out.

Running out had seemed like an attractive prospect in some ways. He could admit that nothing would get better. He could just... stop trying, and let events take their course. He didn't know what would happen to him, if he even could die, if he would be dragged to some leper colony or poor hospital, or if the moss would simply grow over him. Or perhaps he would die, if he at last stopped the endless struggle to keep his life.

Maybe all this time that was truly what had kept him alive: his determination. Maybe once he let that go, he would expire. He had felt none of the fear or horror or anger or revulsion he would have felt at any other time. That night, teetering on that brink, it had seemed no better or worse than his other options.

All he had to do was give up his last little shred of hope. All he had to do was believe that his stranger wasn't coming at all, that those interminable sixteen years before him was the same as never. All he had to do was give up, and he could lie down and stop.

Tears trickled from Hob's eyes as the music played, as Dream lay quiet and heavy on his chest. He remembered how much it had hurt, and how desperately he had wanted to stop hurting, stop caring, stop looking ahead to more days that would be just as bad as the ones before, or worse.

He remembered how little it would have helped to have anyone tugging at his arm and telling him tomorrow might be better. He made himself feel it, and remember it, because he knew that until that scratch on Dream healed, there was no use trying to make him feel any differently. He was down at the bottom of that well that Hob had just that once peeked into, in all of his long life.

He didn't know how many times Get Lonely had looped when his stomach growled, and he heard Dream's stomach make a mournful little noise as if in answer. The sunlight was slanting low, which meant it was well into the August evening.

He left the music playing, but stood up, still carrying Dream with him, and said, "Sorry, love. For now we still have to eat."

Dream let out a little keening sound and turned his face against Hob's shoulder, and Hob felt the heat of tears, though he didn't think Dream had actually cried at all while they were lying on the floor.

"I know," Hob said quietly, though he knew he didn't really, and couldn't. Even back in 1673 he'd chosen the other option: he'd gone a bit mad, and spent a few months convinced every day that today was the day He Was Coming. He had accidentally founded a minor congregation of Dissenters convinced Hob was a prophet of the Second Coming, who incidentally kept him fed until he came around enough to flee London for a decade or so.

Now as then, the main thing was that they still had to eat. Hob pulled out the Double Gloucester and started slicing.

Chapter 16

Dream did not walk in the Dreaming when he slept that night, did not even float in the Sea of Dreams. He drifted in a lightless void, and was excruciatingly aware that he had been here before, and would end up here again. There was so much nothing in the universe—even in him, the sum of all dreams. There was so much silence, so much absence, so much emptiness, waiting to swallow him up. Waiting for him to stop struggling against it and give in to the inevitable.

There was so much—light. He squinted against it, and blinked, and found that Hob had opened the shade on the bedroom window, let it retract all the way, so that the summer sunlight poured in directly into Dream's eyes.

"Oh, sorry, sweeting," Hob said, coming over to cast a merciful shadow on Dream as he scooped him up. "Come on, anyway. Time for breakfast."

Dream shook his head against Hob's shoulder. "I'm not hungry."

"That's all right, love," Hob said, squeezing a little tighter and pressing a kiss that was just a vague pressure on top of Dream's head. "I am. You can just drink some chocolate milk, if you don't want any toast."

Dream drank some chocolate milk, when Hob put the cup in his hands and the straw to his lips. He might have eaten something as well—whatever it took to keep Hob's arm around him, Hob's voice gently cajoling, within the bounds of what his small and weary form could manage. He didn't think he slept again, but the nothingness swallowed him up, blotting out breakfast and everything else that transpired until he found that he was sitting in Hob's lap facing the coffee table.

Hob was seated on the rug. On the coffee table, within Dream's reach, were the black sketchpad and a fresh set of pastels. There was music playing, Dream realized, when his own name caught his ear. The unrelenting strum of the guitar seemed to propel the singer toward some doom to which he was quietly resigned.

We have bad dreams the night he rolls in,
We have bad dreams the night he rolls in,
And we try to keep our spirits high,
But they flag and they wane...

Dream sighed agreement, staring at the empty black page before him. Hob must have opened the book to a fresh page for him; he could not imagine what Hob expected him to put there. It was already complete, perfect in its stark emptiness.

Tears dripped from Dream's eyes as he looked at it, feeling how far he was himself from such perfect simplicity, from such a clean and complete end.

It had never felt like such a curse, such a burden, to be Endless, until now; he had never let himself feel it, never let himself be small enough to be so crushed by it. All that time to come—even if he did what he had made so easy for himself, even if he let this facet of himself end... Even to do that would be so much effort, would take so long and probably hurt into the bargain, even more than he already ached, even more than it hurt him just to exist.

"Hob," he said, turning his face away from the page and its impossible goal. He had not thought of saying anything, but his small body had learned some new reflexes, as impossible to hold back as the tears that streamed from his eyes. "Hob, it hurts."

Hob had had one arm around him already; now the other came up to cup the side of his face, and Hob pressed kisses to the top of his head. "What hurts, darling?"

"Me," Dream whined, cringing from the word as he spoke and still unable to stop it bursting free. "Me."

"Oh, love," Hob murmured, turning himself away from the coffee table so that Dream did not need to put such effort into not looking at the sketchpad, the perfect emptiness he could not reach. "I'm sorry you're hurting, my darling. Can you think of anything that wouldn't hurt you?"

Dream found that both of his hands were clutching at Hob's bare forearms, his fingers digging into Hob's skin. He ought to let go, but that seemed as impossible as everything else.

"Don't let go," Dream said, even though Hob had to let go. They both had to let go. Dream had to let everything go, let himself go, let the end come and take him away. That was the only thing that would truly make the pain stop: he had to reach the end, somehow.

Still, here and now, he was clinging and crying and whispering, "Don't let go."

"I won't, my joy," Hob promised him, though he could surely promise no such thing. "I won't."

Between his little bouts of obvious distress—which Hob almost preferred, because at least then he could be consoling—Dream mostly seemed... absent. He was listless and silent, resting quietly against Hob. It didn't seem to matter what Hob did or didn't do, during those times. Nothing seemed to make a difference.

When he nerved himself up to set Dream down on the bed, ribbon firmly tied around his wrist, and visit the bathroom for a few moments, Dream scarcely seemed to notice. He hadn't moved at all, when Hob returned, and didn't reach for him when Hob gathered him up.

Hob hugged him close anyway, reminding himself firmly that Dream still felt it, even if he was too sunk in his despair to respond. He still needed to know he was loved, even when he couldn't show it. Hob kissed his head and gathered up all the ribbon, and took Dream out through the door that went to the flat's outside staircase. It was late afternoon, not too hot but good and warm, and there was a bit of sun shining still, slanting over the city.

Hob sat down on the top step with Dream cuddled in his lap and breathed in the outside air. You couldn't really call it fresh, though it had improved vastly from the last couple of centuries. Still, it was different to being in the flat, and it was good to change things up, to feel the sun and a little breeze, and hear people coming and going.

Dream didn't so much as twitch, and Hob told himself not to peek at the bandage behind Dream's ear. It would be obvious when Dream was better, and until he was better, he just needed someone to wait with him. Hob sang to him quietly, when a song drifted into his head, or talked, when he thought of something to say. Sometimes he just watched the clouds go by.

He supposed he ought to get on with his own business, since it didn't make any obvious difference to Dream what he was doing, but... he could spare a day or two to just be with him in this. Nothing was more important.

The sun was sinking low when Dream stirred for the first time in hours. "Hob?"

"I'm here, love," Hob said, squeezing him tighter and wriggling his toes to remind himself that his feet were still attached.

"Where is my book?" Dream asked.

Hob felt cold run down his spine, and gripped Dream tighter. "It's safe, love. It's with your other things."

Dream wriggled a little, though he made no real attempt to escape Hob's hold. "I need it, Hob. Please. I need it. I need my sister."

"Dream," Hob said, barely a breath, feeling frozen with horror. He couldn't even begin to hope that Dream meant one of his younger sisters, not with that flatness in his voice. Not with the way the last day and night had gone. "No, please—"

Dream did push against his hold then, and Hob loosened his grip enough for Dream to look up at him, solemn as ever with that little furrow between his tiny brows. "Hob?"

Hob's eyes filled with tears at the thought of never hearing his friend say that again. "Please," Hob whispered. "Don't leave me, Dream. Not yet."

Dream reached up to lay a hand on Hob's cheek and the tears spilled over as Hob struggled against the urge to yank Dream into his chest, to wrap him up in red ribbon until he couldn't move a muscle.

"Please," he repeated, and still couldn't seem to speak above that half-frozen whisper.

"I must," Dream said. "It is the only way, Hob. I must go to her. She is kind. It will not hurt, and then it will be over."

"But then you will be gone," Hob pointed out. "From me, from your sister Despair, who you promised to draw pictures for. From your brother Destiny, who invited you to come and visit him. From your youngest sister, who came to find you. From Lucienne. From Matthew. We will all miss you so dreadfully, my darling. Don't leave us. Not yet. I know it hurts, I know—I know you must be so tired of it. I know I'm asking more than I have any right to ask of you, but please. Don't go. Not today."

"It will be all right," Dream insisted. "There will be another. The Dreaming knows him already. He will be Dream when I am gone. He will be better. He knows how to love. Everyone loves him."

A considerable part of Hob's brain immediately had many, many questions, but the best part of him stayed focused on what mattered here.

"I love you, Dream. And I don't think there's anything wrong with the way you love, except that maybe you could stand to get more practice at it. Please, love, no one can replace you. No one will be the same as you. Even if I might love him—I love you, now, and I will grieve all my life, forever, if you leave me. You are precious to me, my darling, and no other could make me forget that. Even when you are sad and tired and quiet, I want you here."

Hob blinked his eyes clear to see that Dream was crying now too, shaking his head.

"I'm sorry," Hob repeated. "I know it hurts. I know it's hard to stay, but please, please stay. Just a little longer. Just another day."

Dream heaved a sigh, but settled himself against Hob's chest. "Not today."

"Thank you," Hob whispered, giving him another squeeze, terror still speeding his heart. "Thank you, darling. Thank you."

Dream just sighed again, and lay still in his arms. Hob took another few breaths, letting the worst of the adrenaline subside, and then took them inside and poured them each a drink: chocolate milk for Dream, and Scotch for himself. Just a little. Just to warm away the cold that clung to him despite the summer day, remembering Dream's small matter-of-fact voice. I must. It is the only way.

He went on holding Dream until well past dark, and eventually realized that Dream had dozed off against his shoulder. Hob took him to the bathroom then, coaxed him awake long enough to wash his face and brush his teeth, which Dream did very slowly but without real protest. Hob changed him into fresh pajamas, and when he went to retie the red ribbon he held the end of it to the center of Dream's chest, right over his bruised heart, and wrapped the ribbon harness-like around each of his shoulders before bringing it back to tie the knot at the center.

Dream looked faintly, wearily amused by this. "I gave you my word, Hob. Not yet."

"I know that, love," Hob said. "And I do thank you. But all the same, I'm going to be keeping a firm grip."

Dream sighed, but said nothing more. Hob tucked him in to sleep and didn't let himself think about the possibility of that side of the bed not being Dream's anymore—about that side of the bed being empty.

About someone else being Dream of the Endless.

He kissed Dream's forehead and whispered, "I won't be far behind you, my darling. See you soon."

Dream heaved another sigh, but said nothing, and his whole body went limp in sleep. Hob stood for a long moment, watching him, and then he went to Dream's suitcase and pulled out the little book, keeping his body between it and Dream as he slipped out of the room and firmly closed the door.

Hob looked around the flat, but everywhere was too close to Dream, even with that door closed behind him. He went out the back door again, shutting it firmly behind him. He sat down on the step, and there under the night sky, he opened the book and looked at the picture of Dream's eldest sister, her gentle smile and her spreading wings.

He couldn't make himself touch the ankh she wore, couldn't make himself ask. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to bring her here, but...

"Hob Gadling," she said, and his head jerked up as he reflexively snapped the book shut.

She was standing a few steps down, leaning on the railing, so she was looking him right in the eye. She smiled. "I didn't think you would ever call on me."

"I didn't," Hob said, resisting the urge to lean back away from her.

"You didn't," she agreed. "I just popped in for no reason at all." Her expression softened. "Except that I'm worried about my brother, and I think you are too."

"Despair was here," Hob blurted. "She did this to him, she—"

Death was shaking her head softly. "She didn't make him feel this way, Hob. This was in him. It has been for a long time. Despair just—" Death made a little fish hook gesture. "Let it out."

Hob wanted to protest that Dream had been fine, but... he thought of his stranger, all those hundreds of years ago, and the sadness that hung around him all the time. The look on his face in 1689, when he asked Hob if he wanted to live—with tears already in his eyes. He had expected Hob to say no, but Hob didn't think those tears had been mourning for him. Dream knew the kind of pain Hob had been through in that century. He had known it for a long time; that bruise over his heart was ground in deep.

Hob looked at Death—she must know, and she might even be willing to tell him what the root of all this was for Dream. But Hob didn't want to hear it from her, and it wasn't going to be anything Hob could fix, any more than his stranger had been able to fix all that had grieved Hob in 1689.

Death looked back at him, still smiling gently, still leaning on the railing instead of sitting. Like she was waiting for something. Like she had been paying attention—not just to her brother, but to Hob.

"It was you, wasn't it?" Hob asked. "Back at the start, in the White Horse. He let me think he was the one who decided it, when he told me to meet him there again in a hundred years, but... that's not in his power, is it?"

Death shook her head, her smile turning a little mischievous, her curls bouncing cheerfully. "I had brought him there that day. He'd been withdrawing more and more from the Waking world, and I wanted him to see."

"See..." Hob stared at her. "See me?"

She nodded. "I'd seen you before, you know. Many times, you'd come close to me—a few times you were right on the cusp, but you never looked for me. Never saw me, certainly never so much as considered taking my hand."

"You... you see people when they die," Hob said slowly, putting together what she meant. "Or when they're about to. Well, I'd had my share of close calls before then, but..." A little jolt, the awareness of a near miss, flashed through him, six hundred thirty-five years late. "Was I—that night, were you there because..."

"Thirteenth time unlucky, or so I thought," Death said. "Truly, I was hoping to persuade my brother to take you in, for I knew you would not be content going on to any normal afterlife. Some few of the dead live on in his realm—some as ravens, his messengers and constant companions. They are the closest things to friends he allowed himself for a very long time—until you."

"Matthew," Hob realized. "He was... he died? And went to the Dreaming instead?"

Death nodded. "He is very good for Dream, I think. But I thought you would be, too—and I was not wrong, after all, even if it went a different way. When I heard you say it, Dream gave me such a look, and I realized it would just be so much funnier if you didn't die at all, ever. And it got Dream to visit the Waking every hundred years to look in on you."

Hob smiled, and then looked down at the book in his hands and felt his heart seize, his eyes fill with tears. "But he—he wanted to call you today. He... He said it's..."

"I think it's a good thing, really," Death said gently, and Hob jerked a little as her hand settled over his, but it was just a touch. His heart still beat just the same. "All of this, it's been in him for a long time. But he never let himself know it, and I don't know if he would have without Despair stepping in. I think he would eventually have just... found a way to make it happen."

"Fuck," Hob whispered, thinking of Loki, the scorpion Dream had set free. The threat he had made sure was neutralized—because he was here, with Hob, and there would have been people caught in the crossfire. "He... he was close, wasn't he?"

"I think he was," Death agreed softly. "But I think he's getting further from it now. When Dream first changed like this, he called on me and on Destiny—and Destiny said that this had changed everything for Dream. His whole path is different than it would have been otherwise. I have to believe it means that has changed. Not that he won't come to me eventually, but eventually so will you, and so will the whole universe."

Hob looked up at her, startled. "You don't... you don't want him to? I mean, you're Death, you..."

She smiled sadly. "I am Death, and I am his big sister. When he takes my hand for the last time, that will mean that I have to let him go—and then he will be gone from me as from everyone else who loves him. I never know where people go, after. I only guide them on the way. It was the same with Despair—the one you met, she is the second of her name. I don't know where the first one went, but I know I will not see her again before I die myself, and that will not be until all other things have passed."

"Then if he—if he calls to you tomorrow," Hob said, not knowing what he could ask. "I got him to promise not today, but if tomorrow..."

"I'll come if he calls to me," she said softly, and squeezed Hob's hand. "And I'll tell him what you told him. Wait a little longer, because we'll miss you when you go. For all that his feelings are truly his, they're at flood stage right now. In another day or two he's going to start remembering everything else he has been learning with you. He's going to remember that living won't always hurt this much, and that it has its compensations."

Dream could, Hob realized, start learning to actually cope with his feelings instead of just refusing to feel them, something that Hob had learned a lot about in the last century or so. Dream might just be able to find a firm footing for the rest of his long life, instead of papering over this abyss that had evidently been there all the time Hob had known him.

He thought of Dream in 1889, that brittle rejection and hasty retreat from Hob raising the idea of loneliness. He thought of Dream, already so breakable, suffering a hundred years of imprisonment and torture.

Yeah, this had been coming for a long time.

"Still don't like your middle sister," Hob muttered, and Death actually laughed, a deep melodious sound entirely unlike Dream's rusty bullfrog croaks.

"You and Despair are natural enemies, true," she said. "But she is a loyal sister, and she has done Dream a kindness, I promise you."

"He," Hob said, and then realized it was a bit ridiculous. But when he glanced up at Death, she had her head tilted, waiting to hear what Hob had to say. Her hand still rested over his, gentle but entirely present.

Hob cleared his throat and tried again. "He drew a picture for her. She said he shouldn't, said the rats would eat it, but he said he would just draw her a new one whenever she needed it. It's beautiful, you should see it."

"Lucienne and Despair? You tell him I want one next," Death said firmly. "And—" she took her hand off of Hob's and reached over as if she were reaching out to someone else, except there was no one there, just shadows, and then she was holding a beautiful red apple. "Give him that from me, all right? Don't wait for him to ask about me, just—give him that. I don't know if it will help, really, but it's a very good apple."

"Sure," Hob said, and took the apple without quite touching her hand. "I'll tell him you—"

But she was already turning away—already gone. Hob blinked at the semi-darkness of the area behind the Inn for a moment, and then looked down at the apple in his hand, which was still there, and still definitely an apple.

Hob set it on the nightstand on Dream's side of the bed, where he would be sure to see it in the morning. The book he tucked away again, safely out of sight.

Dream had traversed vast deserts before, had walked through the dusty cold expanses of worlds without atmosphere, without any detectable life. Stones and worlds still dreamed their slow dreams in such places, and many creatures dreamed of them.

This corner of the Dreaming was colder, darker, more lifeless than any of those. It was not stone under his feet, nor even sand; it was the dust of dust, mere particles ground down to almost nothing, all their identity and individuality spent, all their dreams extinguished, all potential exhausted.

It kept slipping underfoot and Dream did not know why he kept walking. It was cold, and dark, and his legs were absurdly short. He could make himself taller—he could make this place more congenial—but instead he kept walking.

He was following the ribbon, he realized. The ribbon extended from the black bruise that marked his heart, and led on into the nothingness. Hob had said he would be here; he had promised. The ribbon would lead Dream to him.

It was cold, and dark, and Dream was tired. He knew that if he sat down he wouldn't get up again; he forced himself on for another step, another. He was gathering his strength for another step when the dust shifted underfoot. He stumbled and fell, the impact knocking the wind out of him.

He would never be able to get up again. He knew that. He couldn't summon the energy even to scream in frustration. He had not given up, not on purpose. He had meant to go on, he would have gone on, but now he couldn't.

He couldn't.

He was too small, too tired, and the cold and the dark were too oppressive.

He would never reach Hob now, and he had not meant to give in, but it would make no difference. He couldn't get to where Hob was.

He raised his hand to the ribbon, still anchored in his chest. Hob had given it to him, to keep him close. Hob had wrapped this ribbon around him once before, when he was lost. Hob had told him...

Dream closed his hand around the ribbon and tugged.

It was not much of a tug; he could not find the strength to bring his other hand to the ribbon, or even to pull more than once. His grip faltered, in the dark and the cold, though he kept his fingers loosely curled around it.

After a long, long time, he felt the ribbon flutter against his fingers, as if someone at the other end shook it. As if someone on the other end was moving.

As if there was someone on the other end.

Dream opened his eyes, and saw a shadow approaching from a long way off, with the vivid red of the ribbon stretching between them.

A long time later—or an eyeblink, ten minutes or perhaps fifteen—the movement of the ribbon in his hand became obvious and rhythmic, and he could hear footsteps padding closer in the dust. He opened his eyes again just as Hob reached him, and saw Hob smiling as he gathered Dream up against his chest.

"There you are, my darling," Hob murmured. "Been looking for you. That ribbon does come in handy, doesn't it?"

Dream nodded against Hob's shoulder, listening to the beating of his heart, feeling the warmth of Hob's body slowly chase away the cold.

"Were you going somewhere?" Hob asked. "I can carry you if you like."

Dream shook his head. "Just to find you," he whispered.

"Oh, well," Hob squeezed him as he settled down on the ground, and here in this dream place Dream felt himself squished into a slightly different shape, letting himself become someone who fit here in Hob's arms. "That's all right then. I've got you, and you've got me, and we've both got this lovely bright star to sit under, so we'll be fine until morning, don't you think?"

Dream frowned. There had been no stars shining; it had been dark, and formless, and cold.

But he had seen Hob approaching. He had seen the red of the ribbon. There had to be some light.

Dream opened his eyes and looked first at Hob's upturned face, smiling up into some faint glow that illuminated his features. Then Dream followed his gaze, searching the depths of the vast dark sky. Eventually he saw the star at zenith—faint, and flickering, but definitely there.

After a while Dream realized that it was a star, which meant that it was not its own fire that flickered; it was some obstacle that obscured it, clouds or mist blocking its light. As he went on watching he found he could see the clouds shifting, and soon his eyes were so accustomed to the star that even when the clouds hid it from him, he could still detect its glow lighting up the shapes of them, revealing their movements.

"That really is the most beautiful star I've ever seen," Hob said after a while, and Dream couldn't help but huff—not quite a laugh, but the idea of one.

"What?" Hob said, jostling Dream a bit and smiling down at him; he had understood the not-quite-laugh for what it might have been, clearly. "What's funny about that? What star is it?"

Dream sighed, settling against Hob again and looking up to where the star's light was growing stronger, warmer, though it was still the only star shining in all that blackness. "It is your star, Hob. The one you always follow. It is no wonder it shines over your head, no matter where you are."

"Oh," Hob said, looking up again, smiling up at it as at a dear old friend. "That's what hope looks like, then?" Hob looked down at him, frowning a little. "Can you see it, love?"

"I can," Dream said, and did not add, but I couldn't until you were here, until you told me where to look for it.

After a time he added, "It is a part of me. An important part."

"Ah, well," Hob said easily. "There are bits of me that I've lost track of, time to time. Gone decades sometimes without remembering to clean behind my ears, but there they still are anyhow, when I finally think of them."

Dream raised a hand to touch the place behind his ear, and his fingers encountered the bandage that Hob had so carefully and lovingly affixed. "Just so."

Sometimes Dream closed his eyes, but whenever he opened them, the star was there, a little brighter each time. When he closed his eyes, Hob's arms stayed steady around him, and Hob's heart beat audibly under his ear, and Hob's breathing in and out was as steady as—

"Oh, look at that," Hob said, "there's the sea. Can you hear it? I think I can hear it now."

Dream opened his eyes, and saw the distant waves, still dark, but with glints of starlight reflecting here and there. Their crashing was distant, but he could hear it, filling the world with its relentless rhythm.

Dream opened his eyes again, and though the light was not much brighter the red of the ribbon was vivid before him, and the tawny color of Hob's skin, the blue of Hob's t-shirt and the soft cream of the sheets. The world was so full of colors Dream could barely breathe for a moment, and it took some time for him to understand that he was back in the Waking world, lying in Hob's bed, still cradled in Hob's arms.

Dream tipped his head back to look at Hob's face, though what he mostly saw was Hob's chin, sprouting dark stubble. Not all of the little hairs were the same color, showing different shades of brown, and a few were pale silver, almost translucent. From this angle Dream realized he could also see tiny hairs inside Hob's nose, and he wriggled up a bit to peer more closely at them. He could not see their color properly, but then from this angle he could see the pinkness of Hob's slightly parted lips, and the smooth skin of his cheeks above where his beard would grow, and the tiny lines around his eyes, and the lovely swoop of each of his eyelashes, and...

Hob's nose wrinkled, making a dozen interesting new lines, and then he blinked. His eyes went wide, and Dream stared into them. He could see all the little filaments that made up the colored part of his eyes, the tiny variations in the deep brown before it gave way to black. It was all so interesting, so significantly present.

"Hullo, love," Hob murmured, his voice gravelly and low, and Dream blinked and scooted back a little, so that he could see Hob again, and not just the colors and textures that made him up.

"Hullo, my Hob," Dream echoed back, and Hob smiled at that.

"Something for you there," Hob said, nodding toward Dream's side of the bed, and Dream wriggled over onto his other side and then sat up, catching sight of a flash of red which proved to be an apple, not only perfect but familiar somehow.

"From your sister," Hob said behind him, and Dream looked back to see Hob sitting up too. "She stopped by after you were asleep—dropped that off, and said she wants a picture too, if you're doing any more."

Dream crawled across the bed to the nightstand—to the apple.

It was identical to the apple from that day he'd spent with his sister, years ago. She had offered him an apple, and he hadn't wanted it then.

He was hungry now, and the apple looked lovely; he picked it up in both hands and took as big a bite as his small body could manage. The apple was crisp and cool, sweet and juicy and good.

Dream looked over at Hob as he chewed—Hob who was kind and dear and an assemblage of fascinating colors, who had given him apple slices with his cheese on toast, who had bought different kinds of cheese for him to try, who had given him this apple, even if Dream's sister had given to him first.

Dream wanted to say something about the feeling welling up in his chest, but when he swallowed the bite of apple and opened his mouth, the sound that came out was a sob. There were suddenly tears streaming from his eyes and down his face.

"Oh," Hob said, and then Dream was in his arms again. "Is it—what is it, darling? Do you—"

Dream clutched the apple, because he was going to have another bite as soon as he could manage it. "It's—so—nice," Dream wailed.

Hob squeezed him closer. "Yeah?"

"It tastes nice," Dream sobbed, lowering his nose and catching a whiff of the lovely apple smell that just made him cry harder. "And she gave it to me and that was nice too! I never let her before, I said I didn't want any!"

"Ah, well," Hob rubbed his back gently. "Maybe you weren't hungry that time, or you just weren't ready. But now you know you like apples, and you know you like it when your sister gives you nice things. I bet you'll remember, the next time."

Dream couldn't even form the words to object, to put words to the horror of his certainty that he wouldn't. "I'll—I'll—" He wailed helplessly.

"Easy, darling, keep breathing," Hob murmured, and then took a few illustrative deep breaths himself.

Dream followed suit for a moment, but that just gave him enough breath to scream at length. "I'll get big and then I won't care because it's just nice and I won't know that's important!"

He turned his face into Hob's chest and sobbed for a while, until he had to turn his face to get a cool breath of air and saw the apple he was holding—now starting to turn a little brown where he had bitten it, which made him shriek wordlessly with the horror of having waited too long to eat the apple. It was spoiled, now, and he had only had one bite and—

"Here, here, let me," Hob murmured, taking the apple from Dream's horror-slackened grip. He took a bite—he actually bit right into the brown part! Dream stopped crying in pure boggled disgust, but Hob smiled down at him and said, "You're right, that's a nice apple. Here, take another bite."

There was nothing but white left now; Hob had bitten all the bad part away, and revealed the good.

Dream did, sniffling prodigiously as he chewed. It was quite a nice apple.

But only nice, only a simple little lovely thing. Nothing that his big self would think was important; nothing he would remember to get hungry for. When he was big he would be thinking about big things, and miserable things, and things too enormously miserable for Dream to really hold in his head right now, though remembering the existence of them made fresh tears run from his eyes as he swallowed.

Hob held the apple close to his face again, and Dream took another bite and sniffled some more and chewed. "I wanted to—I wanted to die," he said, clutching Hob's shirt with both hands.

"When you were big?" Hob asked. "Or just now?"

Dream nodded against his chest, then leaned over to take another bite of the apple. "Both," he said mournfully, before he got on with chewing.

"But now you don't?" Hob said. He didn't sound like he had last night, pleading with Dream not to call on his sister, and Dream buried his face and cried harder for a moment, remembering the fear, the anticipated grief in Hob's voice, and the way it had only barely moved him. He had been deep in the dark, far from any light, deep in his sister's mists—but that dark place was inside him, was a part of him, and it had been for a very long time now.

And still, now he was out of it far enough to see light, to taste this apple, and he remembered: he had hope. He didn't want to die. He just wanted everything to stop hurting so much.

It all hurt so much less, like this. But when he was all of himself again, when he took that crushing weight back on his shoulders...

"But I will again," Dream said. "When I'm big I will."

"Then I'll remind you," Hob said, as if it could be that simple. "Not just every hundred years, right? Every night when I come to see you, and every day if you come to see me. Every hour, if you're around. I'll remind you about apples, and hot chocolate, and all the pictures you're going to draw, and The Princess Bride, and running around at the park..."

Dream sniffled some more, and took another bite of the apple, and said, "Can we go to the park today?"

"We can absolutely go to the park today," Hob promised him, and Dream thought that maybe, for today, that would be enough.