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Dream had no faith in love.
It was a poison dressed as nectar, a siren song that lured sailors to dash themselves against cliffs, mistaking their own blood for moonlight.
He’d seen love’s aftermath: hollow-eyed wanderers clutching wilted flowers at crossroads, widows whispering to headstones as moss crept over their beloveds’ names, warriors who traded swords for wedding bands only to find their hands too heavy to lift either.
Love was not redemption—it was a slow suffocation, a burial in open air.
Yet here he was.
Here, in this nameless village at the edge of a spruce forest, where the wind carried the tang of iron-rich soil and the farmer’s laugh—a sound like a rusted gate swinging open—pierced the quiet.
The farmer.
Pink hair bleached bone-white at the roots by relentless sun. Red eyes that glinted like shattered rubies. A face all angles and scars, as if carved by a blade wielded by someone who’d never learned to hold it gently. He was no one’s muse.
But when Dream watched him work—calloused hands plunging into soil, spine curved like a question mark over rows of potatoes—something primal and unwelcome stirred in his gut. A hunger. A recognition.
Dream’s stall stood at the village’s periphery, trinkets laid out like armor: dragon skulls polished to obsidian sheens, enchanted amethysts humming with trapped lightning, totems that whispered lies about immortality. He told himself he stayed for commerce, but the truth festered beneath his ribs.
He’d memorized the farmer’s rhythms: dawn patrols through dew-laden crops, midday naps under the willow’s skeletal shade, evenings spent hauling sacks of potatoes to Niki’s bakery while the boys—Tommy’s crowing, Tubbo’s giggles, Ranboo’s nervous shuffling—swarmed him like gnats.
He hated how the man’s presence unspooled him. Hated how his own traitorous eyes tracked the farmer’s every move—the flex of his forearms as he hoisted a crate, the way his shirt clung to sweat-damp skin, the dirt smeared across his cheekbone like war paint. Hated how his throat tightened when the farmer smiled at others, soft and unguarded, a side Dream would never see.
Because Dream didn’t belong here.
He was a specter in a traveler’s cloak, a merchant of beautiful lies. His hands were stained with netherrack dust and the phantom weight of emeralds, not soil. He drifted through kingdoms like smoke, leaving no imprint.
But the farmer? He was rooted. His life was a tapestry woven from simple, sturdy threads: early mornings, honest labor, the clatter of dishes at Niki’s bakery, Phil’s crows cawing gossip from the rooftops.
Dream had seen the farmer’s world up close, its fragile ecosystem of care.
How Phil would “accidentally” plant extra carrots near the farmer’s plot, muttering about pests. How Wilbur’s ballads, though teasing, always circled back to the farmer’s resilience—“Oh, the mud-prince of the fields, calloused hands and stubborn yields!” How Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo left clumsily inked notes in his mailbox (*”u owe me 5 potatoes!! >:( -Tommy”*) that the farmer pinned to his wall, edges curled from humidity.
And Niki—sharp, relentless Niki—who hid concern beneath crusty loaves. When the farmer coughed through a week-long chill, she filled her pastries with honeyed ginger, slamming them onto his table with a glare that dared him to refuse.
They were a family. Not by blood, but by choice—a mosaic of mismatched souls who’d chipped their edges to fit together. Dream ached to understand it. Ached to hate it.
One midnight, unable to sleep, he wandered to the farmer’s field. Moonlight silvered the potato leaves, turning furrows into shadowy scars.
He knelt, gloves discarded, and pressed his palms to the soil. It was still warm from the day’s sun, vibrating with the memory of the farmer’s touch.
Pathetic, he thought. A wanderer brought to his knees by dirt and longing.
But then he saw it—a single potato plant, its stem snapped, leaves crumpled. A casualty of the farmer’s rough hands, perhaps, or a storm.
Without thinking, Dream untied his cloak, bundling the plant in the fabric. He carried it back to his rented room, a thief stealing a fragment of the man’s world.
For days, he nursed it. Watered it with rainwater collected in a stolen ladle. Sang to it in a voice roughened by disuse, the way he’d heard the farmer murmur to seedlings.
When it revived, leaves unfurling like tiny fists, Dream laughed—a broken, startled sound—before crushing the plant in his hands.
Idiot. Sentimental fool.
He left the corpse in the field, a silent apology to the earth. But the farmer noticed. Of course he did.
The next morning, Dream found a clay pot outside his door. Inside: a potato sprout, roots coiled like veins, nestled in black soil. No note. Just a smudged thumbprint on the rim.
Dream’s hands shook. He nearly hurled it against the wall. Instead, he placed it on his windowsill, where dawn painted it gold.
Weeks blurred. The village spun on, oblivious to the war in Dream’s chest. He caught the farmer watching him once—a fleeting glance across the market, red eyes narrowed, not in suspicion but… curiosity? Recognition?
Dream’s pulse roared. He snapped his stall’s curtain shut, breathing through clenched teeth.
That night, he dreamed of roots. They slithered beneath his skin, anchoring him to the farmer’s field, tendrils blooming into flowers where his heart should be.
He woke gasping, sheets damp, the potato plant on the sill trembling in a breeze that wasn’t there.
Autumn came. The farmer’s harvest began, baskets overflowing with knobbly tubers. Dream’s stall gathered dust.
He told himself he’d leave after the first frost, but frost came and went, and still he lingered, lured by the farmer’s voice haggling with Tommy over pumpkin prices, by the smell of Niki’s spiced cider, by the way the farmer’s scarred hands cradled produce like something precious.
Then, the storm.
It struck at twilight, sky bruising purple, wind screaming through the spruces. Dream watched from his doorway as the village scrambled—shutters slamming, livestock herded, children shrieking—but his gaze locked on the distant field.
The farmer was out there.
He saw him—a silhouette battling the gale, clutching a tarp to shield his crops. Lightning fissured the sky. Dream moved before he could think, boots sinking into mud as he sprinted, rain needling his face.
The farmer stumbled, knee-deep in a flooded furrow. Dream reached him as the tarp tore from his grip, whipping into the black. They stared at each other, breath ragged, rain sluicing down their faces. The farmer’s eyes were wildfire.
Dream seized his arm, hauling him toward the barn. The farmer resisted, shouting soundlessly against the wind, gesturing to his fields.
Dream roared back, voice raw, “They’ll die if you do!”
A lie. They both knew it.
The farmer relented.
In the barn’s hay-strewn dark, they crouched, shoulders brushing. The storm howled. The farmer’s trembling hands—chapped, dirt-caked—hovered over a lantern’s feeble glow.
Dream’s own hands ached to cover them, to steal their warmth. He didn’t.
When dawn broke, the field was a graveyard of broken stems. The farmer knelt in the wreckage, shoulders hunched.
Dream hovered at the edge, useless, until Niki arrived with a thermos and a blanket. Phil came, too, and Wilbur, and the boys—their presence a fortress around the farmer’s grief.
Dream turned to leave.
A hand caught his wrist.
The farmer stood, mud streaking his cheeks like tears. He pressed something into Dream’s palm—a single surviving potato, skin gnarled, sprouts clawing upward.
His thumb brushed Dream’s pulse point, a whisper of contact. Then he walked away, flanked by his family.
Dream clutched the potato, its weight a paradox—heavy as regret, light as hope. That night, he packed his stall, trinkets clattering like old bones. The clay pot with its thriving sprout sat beside his bedroll.
He left at first light, the potato buried in his pocket.
Two miles down the road, he stopped. The village was a smudge on the horizon. The wind carried the faint scent of baking bread.
In his hand, the potato’s sprouts trembled.
Dream retraced his steps.