Chapter Text
When we met, it was no accident.
You dreamt of music from the very first moment. From beats of silence crept tiny hammers hitting strings, ivory and polished keys against nimble fingers. Music seemed to possess your body, flesh, and bone. It drew you to sing and dance, to make your own versions of the songs you adored.
It was no wonder that I was drawn to you from the moment I poked into humanity’s dreams for the first time in eternity. I had done it many, many moons ago, but my power had waned significantly between then and now.
You dreamt of a piano and of others, and I found myself fascinated with it. You could tell stories by simply hitting keys, weaving words together in a tune, and letting faceless muses burst to the forefront of your mind. From that alone, I knew that you had a strong mind.
Therefore, I couldn’t fathom the reason why you fell victim to it so often.
You carved your pain into your flesh and you hid it from the world. You took your nails and dragged them into unmarked portions when you couldn’t slice yourself open, digging until red crescent moons were left. You couldn’t fathom the way that your brain worked. You couldn’t understand the way that it continued to take the world in even when it bit back at you.
For all your height, you slouched and tried to hide yourself from the world, convinced that it would hurt you.
It did, and it continued to the more you tried to hide from it.
When we first met, you were surrounded by water. Your strangled words burst bubbles and water filled your lungs, cutting you away from the air you required to live and breathe and sing.
All I wanted was for you to sing again. So I saved you.
When you woke up on shoreline under the light of the moon, coughing up blood-tinged water, I spoke in the waves. I spoke in the water, in the drops of moonlight hitting your body, in the blood that you expelled from fresh wounds. I spoke in the first things that you gave to me when I saved you, in water and blood.
Slowly, you gave me more things to speak in. I spoke in the way that sun hit your music sheets as I readjusted the world to fit a dream of someone who wanted to run away. Solitude and monetary needs taken care of, you disappeared from the world that hurt you. I spoke in the way that the piano bends to your fingers as you coaxed the music from your head to reality, your voice wavering as you sang for no one and everyone. I spoke in the way that you tied white ribbons to the tree that lay in the backyard of the abandoned manor I found and gifted to you. I spoke in the way that fuzzy memories of your mother rose to your mind, with videos your grandparents took of her hushing you to sleep when you were but weeks or months old and fussy. I spoke in the way that you cried the ocean, then in the way that you cried flecks of gold as you let yourself be changed by me: skin touched by the night, your scars proof you were saved, eyes to see beyond what you thought was possible.
My vessel.
I was mistaken to assume that you would be enough.
Hubris was our downfall.
You wrote songs by the moonlight, and I provided you with instruments that would never falter. You clung to humanity, watching videos on your phone of things you couldn’t let go of. You mingled with others on the eve of the hallows when I wouldn’t allow you to hide what you have become. You were mine, and you should’ve been proud of it.
As time passed, you got bolder. You started to avoid visiting, falling ill and delirious with a lack of sleep. You asked to go out for medicine to avoid dreaming, and I retaliated by presenting you with a full undiluted dose of what you were arguing against. You were bedridden for a month.
You were a vessel for a god, yet you refused to act that way. I couldn’t fathom why you would still cling to the people and the world who hurt you, to which you said whilst visiting me, “They’re not all like that, Sleep.”
I was aware, for I had observed humanity’s dreams for a while now. Even before I was forgotten, I could still watch the cacophony of disjoined memories play out. But you were special, and you still are.
One day, that faithless day, you set up the altar. Beneath the basement where you practice your music, you cleaned the granite and lit the candles. You set out fresh flowers and some vegetables that you managed to procure from the garden (they were bruised and ugly things, but they were yours). You drew my sigil in chalk and knelt down before it, head touching the granite as if you were the offering.
What you were trying to do, and why I didn’t help you, we would never know. We would never say it, even today when you visit. You would apologize, and I would only cradle you in the warm ocean waters.
But you were there. And then you were gone.
You screamed for someone to help you, but what could I do? I was not of your plane of reality, and as you disappeared, I tried to grasp any part of you to preserve you.
It was then you gave me the last offering you would in years.
You gave me your voice.
With it, I tethered as much of you as I could to the manor. But you were still gone. The world wrote you out of existence, and the universe only scolded me that one vessel would never be enough. Not in this reality, when in every other one, there were multiple. There would always be multiple with a god of my caliber, even when most of my power was locked away with a lack of worshipers.
You were gone. Gone.
You needed to come back.
You observe in near silence as the manor, dusty with abandonment, slowly grows lived in again. You’re stuck between different things, unable to reach the ones you know you love (you know you love them, and you know that when you return — not if, but when — they’ll love you back) and unable to reach me.
You can hear me around you, singing in your voice to communicate. You can still hear me in your music sheets. In the moonlight. You hear me as I try to figure out ways to bring you back.
But you also see the others. You see them as they live in the manor and bring life back into it. You see them as they orbit around each other, letting their paths collide sometimes. You watch as they learn how each other moves. How each other takes up space. How much space they can take of another’s and still be wanted.
You’ll always want them. You’ll always want to be with them. Even when the universe and world take you away from them, you’ll still want them.
And you watch, between laughing with the lights and dancing between the second and first floor, as they learn to want you as well. They crave the absence you left, even when they never knew what that absence was. They crave the missing First Vessel of Sleep, of me.
As time passes, your influence on the manor grows. You appear before them and hope they understand what you were. A reflection in the mirror, warmth leaking through. A shadow outlined with light, feeling the other through a flamingo. A solid ghost, constantly forming and breaking and feeling so wrong about the entire thing because you weren’t truly there.
But you try again and again. You’re here. You’re here. Please, pause and listen. You’re here and you’re everywhere and nowhere all at once.
When I stake my claim on my other vessels and choir, you feel yourself gather together. When they play music, you feel the world shift as the universe pulses. It’ll all be right. It’ll correct what you and I have mistakenly broken.
I caress your face, gentle over your six eyes unlike the first time. You lean into the touch.
‘Go back,’ I say in your voice. In your words and lyrics. ‘This bough has broken through.’
Rewrite.
Reset.
I return your voice to you.
And you smile back. “The night belongs to you.”
Return.
The door opens.
He sees six people. Six, wonderful, beautiful people. His green robes and black feathers drip with saltwater, forming a puddle beneath him. He’s masked, face hidden away. His eyes leap between faces, trying to read them all at once. His nerves burn and fizzle, and his blood beats so alive it feels like it might tear right through his skin. His hands shake. They’ve always shaken, but they shake almost uncontrollably now. Nervousness? Being rewritten back into this existence?
Dare he even consider: The possibility of rejection?
He licks his lips. Opens his mouth. “Have you been waiting long,” Vessel asks, “for me?”
He knows who reaches over first and takes his hand. He’s quietly watched him from across the room when he was younger, after all. Vessel crosses the threshold of the manor, and almost immediately is crushed into a hug that pulls him down onto the floor. He feels more and more people pile onto the hug, crushing him beneath time lost and time regained.
“I missed you,” Vessel whispers to everyone all at once, voice dissipating into the air. “I’m sorry we didn’t meet sooner. I got lost.”
“We have time,” II breathes. “We have time to make it up.”
Vessel grins, letting himself relax and just be. “In return, I can show you all how to dance forever with me.”
And somewhere in the bond, permeating through each and every cell in their bodies, Sleep exhales silently, settling everything into its rightful place.