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Standing at the beaches they went to after Wilbur's long, long absence, Dream ponders exactly how many bottles did they throw in the ocean that night? Was it nearly the amount of those dinner table arguments they had or was it just enough like the amount of times they kissed each other with smiles on their lips? And, out of all those bottles, how many of those messages were received? Were they seen with delight painted across the reader's features, like how Wilbur saw Dream's face break into a smile as he read pretty words scrawled in centuries old ink by time worn hands?
Or, alternatively, were they seen in anger as Dream tore up those same writings, knowing while the physical copy is gone, the way the ink stains his fingers in time and how the words are branded indefinitely in his mind for eternity? How many of them sunk to the bottom of the ocean?
And, if those few that sunk to the ocean, well, sunk, how many sunk slowly, feeling the water smudge the ink and bloat the paper into an incorrigible mess. Like his love with the time traveler did. The waters rising slowly, pouring saltwater into their lungs, choking. Drowning and, finally, sinking lower and lower.
How many managed to float despite the odds ?
Dream wipes the tears from his eyes and starts to stand up from his spot by the sea when he sees it. One single bottle, with a hastily scrawled
Open me
in the familiar, time-bound writing that the immortal should be eyeing with the curious eyes of a stranger. Yet, he knows it all too well. He'd know it anywhere. Any time.
Stretching his arm out and willing his legs to move, Dream grabs the bottle, bobbing and floating by the edges of the ocean, letting the salty foam waves lick the glass gently, and brings it to his chest. Pulling up on the cork, struggling for a bit (The water made the soft wood expand a little bit, he assumes), and then finally the immortal has the cork in his hand. Slipping said cork into his pocket, Dream hastily turns the bottle upside down, shaking it harshly until the slip of parchment drops into the blonde's hand. Quickly, Dream tosses the bottle to the sand and opens the tiny scroll of paper, reading the last trace of them he will ever see.
This is my favorite time: the present. Slowly moving, slowly going, gone in an instant. We could learn to love it. You could learn to hate it. The present tense of fate is so strange, isn't it? - W.S.
Rereading the words, Dream does find it strange. It's strange to imagine his fate without Wilbur in it.
It's strange to imagine a time without Wilbur at all, Dream thought as he hugged the parchment, soaking the edges with his water-coated fingers, but time was something that was on his side, wasn't it? Wasn't small traces of himself the thing he strove for? Leaving pieces of himself (like the parchment in his hands) in the shards of time, piecing it all back together like kintsugi. Chasing the rush of it all. Yet, Wilbur told him (through paper, no less) that he likes to take it slow. Live in the present. Taking the time to learn. To truly live, not just breathe in the air of a couple of centuries and continue to forget the rest.
Then tell me, Wilbur, Dream looks down at the paper, feeling a twisted sense of foreshadowing at the sight of it, Why did you say we weren't going fast enough? Why did you immediately go back to the fast moving, ever-changing cogs of time as soon as our own was up?
Dream thinks Wilbur is a hypocrite.
He won’t say whether or not he is a hypocrite, too, but something inside himself tells Dream he doesn’t have to.
One thing is certain though: Dream is tired of bottles. Of Fate. Change. Love. He's exhausted, tired, distraught, lost. How could Wilbur do this? The immortal implores as he grabs the bottle and seals the ruined parchment. Message being read, there was no other reason why Dream should keep it. It's not like he'd forget it anyway, the immortal bitterly thinks as he seals the mouth of the bottle with the infamous little cork. He throws the bottle high and far into the sea, wishing that he could only throw Wilbur so far and spin him to himself again.
But, like glass bottles with messages needing to be sent, the current of time will take you away, leading you on to a new place at a different time. Stopping when someone will read you, see you for all you have, and then you are placed back where you started, drifting through the tide all over again.
Dream finds that one day, he wants the finder of his own bottle to keep it close, and never let it go.