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“There’s another one.”
“Yes, I noticed.”
“A woman this time.”
“Yes.”
“That’s fun, some balance added back. How many centuries has it been since the last one? Or is it millennia now?”
“I’ve lost track.”
“Well. Go on then. What do you think of her?”
“What do you think of her? You pay them more mind than me.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. You love seeing what humans are up to.”
“No, dear brother. I love seeing what humanity gets up to. But you only like your special projects.”
“I didn’t start this project.”
“No,” Death laughs. It’s at his expense, but he tries not to take that personally these days. She leans back to let the sun shine on her face and then looks at him from behind her shades. “You just help them find each other.”
It only takes one dream this time for the rest of them to find the new one, and he finds he’s disappointed, and embarrassed in himself for being disappointed, although if pressed he couldn’t say why.
There is some satisfaction, though, in seeing them piece the clues of the dream together. And it used to take so many dreams to do so. A shame for it all to be over so quickly.
There will be more dreams for the new one, of course. But they’re impotent dreams. Dreams of rage and terror, and they only exist because the rules require them.
He decided long ago, at the beginning of all this, that they'll dream of each other until they meet. Then the dreams will stop, but only then. It doesn’t occur to him to alter the rules now that meeting the complete set is all but impossible. Or if it does, he disregards the thought.
Humans may change, but he does not.
Not much anyway.
He walks up the path to Hob Gadling’s home, and lets himself in. It’s dark, most of the lights off this late in the day. He wanders the halls, silent as the cat Hob sometimes accuses him of being, until he finds the man himself.
Hob stands, barely clad, before his sink, brushing his teeth, and Dream pauses to admire the human ritual, waiting silently in the doorway to be noticed.
It doesn’t take long. Hob spits, straightens, and, catching sight of him in the mirror, gives a full body jolt.
“Gods alive,” he startles, turning round. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“You know damn well what,” Hob says with a grin, but Dream didn’t come here for a chat.
He stalks forward, but Hob pulls him in first. Hob’s back is to the counter; he’s the one in the defensive position, and Dream is an endless, unfathomable, ageless being.
But he’s also the shorter of the two, lithe where Hob is broad, the solid heft of a life well lived, and he fits snug in the circle of Hob’s arms. He could escape this grasp, flip them. It wouldn’t be hard. But he stays put, surrounded, enveloped, letting himself switch, just for a moment, from predator to prey.
“Have you ever come across any other immortals in your time?” Dream asks, sitting upright in bed. He’s never quite gotten the hang of lounging.
Hob has, but the words sink in, and he sits straight up.
“There are others?”
“No, then?” Dream drawls.
“There are others?” Hob repeats, like a dog with a bone.
“Not like you.” He’s not even sure why he brought this up. He’d know, wouldn’t he? If they’d met. “They’re different.”
“How?”
Dream has never especially cared for being questioned. And in times passed, he wouldn’t have stood for it. The temptation is still there now, to scoff and rebuke and move on now that he’s done with the topic. But he’s been trying new things, spending this aimless time with Hob, compromising, answering things when they’re asked of him…
He swallows his irritation and says, “They have their time; it simply lasts longer than others. You have no such end date.”
“Why?”
Dream cuts him a look, and it’s clear from Hob’s expression that he knows what he’s doing. He is smart. And he’s learned, rather painfully, to back off when Dream doesn’t want to be pushed.
But he’s also learned that you don’t get what you want if you never ask. As though sensing this softening, Hob digs in.
“And how many are there? Who chose them? Was it you?” he asks with mounting glee.
No longer in the mood for questions, Dream shoves him flat, back onto the mattress – Hob laughing with delight and surprise – and keeps him occupied until the topic is gone from both their minds.
Hob dozes. Just a little.
Ironically, he sleeps poorly when Dream spends the night. Dream’s sure it’s his fault; his own unorthodox relationship to sleep bleeding over. But Hob declines all offers of a sand-induced sleep and asks him to stay anyway, so, a couple times now, Dream does.
Since he’s there anyway, with nothing but time, he can’t help but look. Can’t help but peer, just from the edges, sight unseen, at Hob’s dreams.
Hob is teaching a packed room in what must be a foggy mock up of his real classroom. He goes down the line, speaking to each student in turn. Lecturing.
Oh, not lecturing, Dream realizes, once he actually pauses to listen. Questioning. “How old are you? When did you realize? What’s it like for you? ” He’s going down the rows, pausing to chat when he likes the answer: when the person gives an age longer than a mortal lifespan.
He’s looking for other immortals.
Dream hovers for a moment as Hob leans in to a woman who has claimed to be the same age as him. He looks so pleased at this answer that Dream feels caught, unexpectedly guilty watching something not meant for him.
What a deeply foreign thought. All dreams belong to him.
He pops back into the waking world and waits out the dawn.
“You were looking for other immortals, in your dream.”
“Was I?” Hob says mid-bite of toast, looking amused at the thought. “I don’t remember.”
“You were.” Dream sits across from him at the table, sun streaming through the window. This might be the longest consecutive period of time he’s spent in Hob’s company. It’s not unpleasant.
“Well, who doesn’t want more everlasting friends? Worked out well for us.”
Dream narrows his eyes.
Hob laughs and continues, “No, of course not. My apologies – you and I are a special case.”
“Are you lonely?” Dream says, instead of acknowledging what that might mean.
Something flits across Hobs face, too quick to name, before his face brightens into another grin. Everything is funny to him this morning, apparently. “Oh ho, what is this? Mind games?”
Dream would blush if that was something this projection of a body did. He hadn’t realized what he was saying until it was said. Before he can take it back though, Hob answers, “I suppose turnabout is fair play.”
Hob sobers, just a touch. “No, not lonely. Not a problem I tend to have, really. But it is nice, a truly rare – thus far singular – gift in this life of mine, to have a friendship that can endure. It might be nice to have more than one.”
Before Dream can think of a thing to say to that unexpected moment of candidness, Hob breaks the moment by teasing, “If you can stand to share.”
After his sojourn with Hob, it’s back to the Dreaming where there remains much to be done as he continues to rebuild, and beyond that expand. Improve.
Some time passes before Dream remembers the mostly-immortals, and then he can’t resist another check in.
To his surprise, it seems they’ve had a more eventful string of days than he could have imagined. And that is saying something, as the lives they choose to lead are hardly stagnant.
The new one’s been welcomed into the fold. An old one’s been cast out. Gain one, lose one. Some equilibrium in that, at least. Although there’s little equilibrium in their existence to begin with.
The new outcast’s existence is pitiful. And every time Dream thinks to check in over the next few days, he finds more of the same. The outcast is not handling solo immortality well. He has none of Hob’s resilience and joy, and if it were in Dream’s power to do so, he would put an end to this sad affair.
But it’s not.
He stews on this new development. He’s not sure why it should bother him, but it does. It’s what he’d expected for Hob, when he’d gifted – or rather cursed – him with this existence. But he takes no pleasure from seeing his prediction fulfilled.
He stews on the thought, turns it over again and again in his mind, when a… well not a solution exactly, but a strategy for this problem occurs to him.
Hob comes home late after a day of lectures, office hours, grading, and then drinks at the bar. A long day, but not a bad one. Not at all. He dumps his bag in the entryway, and heads up the stairs, ready to collapse into bed, when something on the kitchen table catches his eye, and he doubles back.
There’s a piece of paper, left folded in the middle of it.
He approaches cautiously and, seeing no outside markings, unfolds it.
If you are curious. it reads in elegant scrawling script. Below that, an address in Paris.