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January 13th, 1911 - Anoka, Minnesota
Hob Gadling probably should not have been surprised that one hundred years after his mysterious stranger, his Dream, showed up at his house one cold spring day and announced that he needed Hob to be his husband for a year, that there would be some kind of new event.
If he had dared to guess, (and he hadn’t dared, pleased for any time spent in the presence of his oldest friend,) he would not have guessed this. And it hadn’t been exactly one hundred years anyway, but it was close enough.
The person who knocked on his door was a young woman, a girl almost, except when Hob looked into her mismatched eyes he knew that she was definitely not human and definitely older than he was. The dress she wore was that of a young girl at least, hanging only to her knees, and a few years out of fashion perhaps, but the fabric was a riot of color that hurt Hob’s eyes to contemplate. She was also holding an enormous black cat.
“Can I help you, miss?” Hob asked, cautious.
“Here you go,” she said, shoving the cat into his arms. Hob balked but had no choice but to accept the burden. The cat was heavier than it looked. Hob caught a glint in the beast’s face, and expected to be bitten for his troubles, but instead saw something else entirely within those eyes.
“Dream?" he exclaimed, and gently set the cat down on the floor of the entryway.
“Hello, Hob,” Dream said, confirming his suspicions.
“Thank you?” he said to the girl who was slowly spinning in circles and beginning to hover several inches off the ground. “Should I know who you are?”
“You should,” she said, pulling paper flowers from mid-air and placing them in a vase made, as far as Hob could tell, out of live fish. She threw them one by one like darts at the vase and as each landed on target, they blossomed into color as they lodged. “If my brother had bothered to tell you.”
“This is my sister, Delirium,” Dream said, and voiced a sigh that could only be heard in Hob’s mind.
“Yes, that’s who I am. Though that’s not who I always was,” the girl- Delirium- Hob corrected himself, sang in three octave chords at once.
“Always an honor to meet one of Dream’s siblings,” Hob said, figuring that much was safe to say. “Would you… like to come in?”
“I would like to. I would not like to. I would like to not like to but I won’t. Not never won’t. Maybe someday I will ever won’t. But today is not the day.”
“Dream, do you need some kind of help?” Hob said, figuring that, taciturn as his friend tended to be, that he might yet get more answers from the King of All Night’s Dreaming than from his sister.
“He lost another bet,” Delirium said helpfully. “And he has to live as your cat for a year.”
“Beg pardon?” Hob said, feeling sure he was slowly losing his grip on reality. Though if he understood anything about Dream and his family after 500 years it could simply be that Dream’s sister inspired that reaction.
“I lost a bet with my youngest sibling,” Dream said, in a tone that implied that, of the two of them, Hob was the one with animal-level intelligence. “And the forfeit is that I must live for a year in the human world as a cat.”
“And you have to live with me?”
“Not you specifically, but you swore most ardently that should I need your services again in such a fashion-”
“And I meant it, I just - why do you keep making bets with your siblings without finding out what the penalty is going to be ahead of time?”
“I had thought my sister more merciful than Desire,” Dream mused. “An error in judgment I shall not repeat.”
“Desire lost the bet too,” Delirium pointed out. “I won this one fair and square, square and circle, it’s ALL me.” She punctuated this by suddenly also becoming a cat and bonking her head against her brother’s. Dream’s sigh was visible this time and he gently licked his sister’s furry multicolored ear.
Delirium did not stay, though she and Dream seemed to exchange words in some cat fashion before she wandered off.
"Going to tell me what the bet was about this time, or do I not want to know?" Hob asked.
“Delirium’s argument was that, during the year I spent as your wife, she had nearly as much sway over your life as our sibling.”
“How's that?”
“She stated that the depths of passion that you experienced overlap with the realm of Delirium.”
“And?”
“And she brought compelling evidence. Thus, I lost the bet.”
“I know you said that love is in the realm of Desire, but I suppose you could argue that love is also its own form of madness,” Hob mused. “A pleasant one, though. Usually.”
“My sister therefore decreed that I would be obliged to spend an additional year in the waking world, without, as she said, the carnal pleasures to distract us.” Dream looked up at him, and Hob felt his amusement. “Unless, of course, you find that this form inspires such thoughts in you.”
“Can’t say that it does,” Hob said, refusing to rise to the bait. He knew Dream too well for this. Indeed Morpheus instantly made himself at home, though this particular residence was not one that he had visited before, Hob only having just moved to America under his newest identity about a year and a half before. Dream wandered the house, inspecting the furniture and each potential hiding place as if he were, indeed, merely a cat. Hob followed him, somewhat bemused.
“So what I’m hearing is that I have another mouth to feed, and that I’m not getting laid anytime soon,” Hob sighed. “Look, I told you that you were welcome any time and in any form, and I meant it. At least ‘surprise I have a cat’ won’t raise the same level of chaos among my friends and business partners that ‘surprise I have a wife’ would.”
“You do speak from experience,” Dream said. "How are you enjoying this new self?"
"It's been alright. It's always easier to go back to London without raising suspicion after one or two 'normal' lifetimes elsewhere, and since I now know you can find me anywhere if you so choose, I figured, why not see what they’re up to in the colonies?"
"And you chose this place."
"Mm-hm. Town’s not too big, about 4,000 people currently. Quiet, but close enough to Minneapolis to do business there if I need. I had a business associate whose sister was from here, so I had a contact to refer my "cousin" to for references."
“It should not surprise me that you have put a significant amount of planning into these changes.”
“You know what else is nice? If anyone asks I can tell them your name is Morpheus and not have them so much as bat an eyelash. So, similar rules as before? You’re a cat, you have to live as a cat, you tend to your realm at night or whenever you sleep? Do you have any say in your appearance?”
“Since I am obligated to present as a cat, I believe my only options are to change the color of my fur, or my apparent size, within reason.” He paused. “I may also be able to become invisible should the need arise, since that is also a normal cat behavior.”
“It is not, ” Hob groaned.
“What would you know of the magic of cats, Robert Gadling?”
“I’m not having this argument with you. Do you want something to eat, or are you going to take care of that yourself?”
“You may… feed me,” Dream allowed.
“Very gracious of you, your majesty,” Hob said. “Though, come to think of it, how are you at catching mice?”
February
It turned out that Dream was terrifyingly adept at catching mice and rats, though there were some arguments about what restrictions lay on Dream as it pertained to not being able to harm any mortal, considering that such creatures also dreamed. It had involved a certain amount of argument among the Endless, from what Hob had been able to tell and Dream had apparently won in the end on some kind of technicality. It also seemed to be some kind of a slight against his oldest sister - making more work than she would otherwise have. Hob couldn’t see how it much mattered- with as much farmland as was around them, there could never be any shortage of mice.
Hob felt that the first few bloody corpses laid in front of his bedroom door were probably more the result of the cat version of pique than actual showing off, but it was hard to tell. He supposed he should be grateful that the King of Nightmares didn’t just drop the mauled rodents onto his actual pillow.
And after an unfortunate incident where he had stumbled down the pitch dark hall to the loo one night and tripped over a nigh-invisible black furry body, he had suffered through at least one nightmare where he was, in fact, a rodent of some kind being hunted by an enormous black cat.
“Still better than the drowning nightmares," he told Morpheus the next morning. "And as good as you are at it, I could probably lend you out to the library or the general store. Earn your keep.”
“As if I need justification for my presence,” Morpheus huffed.
“You might tweak the sizes on that nightmare, though," Hob said. "When the predator is that much bigger than you are, it feels less real. To a human.”
Morpheus seemed to consider that.
“As my previous year in your company in the waking world was a great inspiration for all manner of dreams, perhaps this year may yet inspire some of my most potent nightmares.”
“Good, because I’ve got more feedback on that nightmare for you."
"None on the one from two nights ago?"
“The one where I was at church here in town and the actual devil walked up and told everyone I was his friend? Oh yeah, you had fun with that one, didn’t you?”
“Why do you even attend the church here? Your beliefs being what they are.”
"Eh, American Protestants. Doesn't make much difference to me one way or the other. They're always coming up with some new weird twist on ol' Martin Luther. The trick to blending in here in the states is to find a town with enough churches that you won't be noticed not going to the only one in town. And then go to the biggest one and be generous with the offering plate but not TOO generous. This town’s not quite large enough for that to work, and it’s more trouble than it’s worth to fake baptism records for each new identity. Still, Father Francis at St. Stephen’s here in town knows me. Told him that my grandmother was a devout Catholic and it’s comforting to me to attend mass occasionally.”
“Both statements that are technically true.”
“Yes, well he’s never asked when and where my grandmother lived, has he? And the Protestants here in the states don’t even know enough to be surprised that someone from London would be Catholic.”
"This seems needlessly complicated."
"I have honed being friendly-yet-boring and flying under the town radar to an art, thank you very much," Hob said, offended.
March
Hob woke up and went into the sitting room with the intent of building up the fire he had banked the night before. The weather had continued bitterly cold. He entered the room and stopped. Every chair and rug was covered in cats. At least half of them looked up in alarm as they noticed him, a few even running to hide under the sofa.
“...Dream.”
“Yes, Hob Gadling?”
“Why is my house full of cats?”
"Because it is extremely cold outside and warmer in here."
"You can't just invite,” Hob counted quickly, "fifteen cats into my house in the middle of the night."
“Clearly, I can.”
“Dream."
"Who told me that if I were bored it was my own fault and to go make friends?"
"I didn't tell you to bring them all back here!"
"Hob. It is too cold outside. Most of these would have frozen to death. Particularly the kittens."
"Don't pull the kittens card on me again. How many of those tiny bastards are yours anyway, you drabber?”
“Do not be ridiculous Hob. I have barely been here long enough for any of the kittens to be mine.”
Hob is pretty sure Morpheus is joking with him, but he recognized that he wasn’t going to win this argument.
“Fine. Just until the storm is over.”
April
Bored of being left alone in the house most days, and fed up with the dreary weather, Dream finally decided to accompany Hob to his place of business. Hob offered to carry him, but Dream had snorted disdainfully and then turned invisible. Hob yelped in surprise when an invisible furry body threw itself against his ankles, but managed not to fall over. They made it to his shop without further incident.
"Glad to have you here honestly. I won a lot at an estate auction that finally got delivered, and there are a few items I can't tell if they're magical or not."
"I find myself appalled by your lack of organizational skills," Morpheus said, winding his way around and under an antique bed frame . "Though there are far fewer vermin here."
"I don’t keep any food here; it's an antique shop, Morpheus. Or if we're being less charitable, a junk shop."
"And you manage to earn a living buying and reselling such… objects."
"Not at all. But I thought at one point if Mr Fell can house his personal collection of books by running a book store and pretending to be willing to sell them, why couldn’t I do something similar to house the frankly appalling number of historical artifacts I've accumulated over the last few hundred years."
"Perhaps a museum would be more appropriate."
"I’ve donated plenty of things I don’t mind losing personal control over. Museums are supposed to attract attention as a rule. I'm trying to avoid attention, if it pleases your lordship. Come here in the back once you've had a look. I've got the new items back here."
Dream followed him into the back room, at a leisurely pace.
"Some of this stuff is just flatly misdated or fake. Some I don't know what to make of it. Take this old lantern, for example," Hob said, holding up the item. "It came grouped with an old but otherwise ordinary looking thimble. It looks like any other old boat signal lantern, but when I try to take the cap off-"
"DO NOT," roared Dream. Hob jerked his hand away as if burned. “That. Is the lantern of Jack the Ripper. And the thimble of Harriet Tubman. They are objects of some power, and not to be trifled with.”
“Oh fuck off,” Hob groaned. “You’re having me on.”
“I am not. Magical items almost always come with a story. Or an entire history of stories; thus I am familiar with most of them.”
“Well what the devil am I supposed to do with them, then?” Hob said, throwing himself into a chair.
“There is… an organization that has tasked itself with caring for such things. I will tell you how to get in contact with one of its representatives. I strongly suggest you deliver them via some sort of intermediary and do not, under any circumstances, provide them with your real name. The Regents will never give you a moment’s peace should they learn of your existence.”
“Play dumb when making contact with the creepy supernatural organization. I can do that.”
May
“Do I seem more relaxed to you?” Dream asked one night while they were lying in bed; Hob had taken to reading out loud to him before going to sleep. Dream claimed it was because, in cat form, he had limited access to the contents of his Library, and also that the tradition of reading stories before going to sleep was proper tribute to the Prince of Stories and the Guardian of Sleepers. Hob thought that sounded plausible, but also that maybe, just maybe, Dream simply liked listening to him talk.
“More relaxed than what, love?” Hob had said, putting a bookmark in his place, as he felt this was going to be more than a brief aside.
“Than I was before I started living with you. Again.”
“I don’t know. Maybe? Cats always seem so relaxed, what with the lying around looking comfortable and sleeping whenever they please.”
“My elder sister visited today while you were out.”
“That’s nice. Wait. How many rabbits did it take to get her to stay for a visit?”
“...five.”
"I'm going to bring you along to argue my next real estate contract for me, love I swear to god."
"They will not go to waste."
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“My sister said I seemed relaxed . That the time spent here has been ‘good for me.’ I am beginning to suspect that she was involved in the wager that led to my being here as well, and that there has been a conspiracy amongst my siblings to get me to-” A pause as if the words offended him. “Take some time away from my work.”
“I mean, they care about you. Presumably. I don’t know if what you’ve described is within the realm of normal for your family, mind you. But I could see tricking someone I loved into taking a vacation if they wouldn’t let themselves have it otherwise.”
“Must I now suspect you of meddling as well?”
Hob snorted.
“Love, I am thrilled to have your company in whatever way I can get it, and I don’t mind telling you these past months have been a nice change, since I normally only see you in the Dreaming.” He leaned forward and kissed Dream between his soft furry ears. “But if I’d been involved in this wager I’d have pressed for terms that didn’t mean I had to go without seeing any of your human forms for a full year.”
Dream huffed.
"You are free to seek your pleasure elsewhere, of course."
"When you sleep in my bed nine nights out of ten? I think not. And seeking out that kind of temporary companionship in a small nosy little town like this is a horrible idea. I've gone longer than this and not blinked, thank you very much. I do enjoy your company for reasons other than sex, you know.”
“My apologies. Contemplation of such a conspiracy from my own family has put me in a foul mood.”
“Forgiven,” Hob said, and, sensing that further progress on this front was at an end, returned to the adventures of Anne Shirley of Avonlea.
June
Dream was still in a horrible mood. Or at least Hob assumed that was the case by the fact that he had climbed into one of the kitchen cupboards and refused to come out. When he returned from town in the evening, Hob found him still there.
“What happened?” Hob asked.
“Destiny summoned me today,” came the grumbling reply. “It was embarrassing to appear before him in this diminutive form. And I have run out of vermin to hunt.”
“I’ll take you to the town library if you just agree to play nice with the librarians, between the two of us I know we can charm them into letting you hunt there.”
“They are poor substitutions for Lucienne, unworthy of the title.”
“Right. So this is actually about your brother visiting then.”
“He confirmed my suspicions that this entire venture was a set-up from the beginning.”
Oh dear, thought Hob.
"He also informed me that in another hundred years it would likely be possible for us to live together in the waking world as husbands, should we wish it."
"You're not selling me on this being a bad thing. "
"Already they plan for my further defeat. He was mocking me," Dream growled
"Ok, first of all, I was under the impression that Destiny always plans for the future." Silence. "Hey, I was an older brother once," Hob said. "Giving your younger siblings a hard time is in the contract."
Cat eyes glared at him from the darkness of the cupboard, stars reflected in their depths.
"Don't look at me like that, it was trying to get the best of your younger siblings that got you into all this in the first place. Second, why don't you just plan a vacation for next century ahead of time and then they won't have to trick you into doing anything you don't want? We could elope for real this time?"
July
Hob stumbled into the bedroom and threw himself face-first onto the bed. Morpheus, who had been napping on said mattress, startled to his feet and hissed reflexively.
"Sorry," Hob mumbled into his pillow, and then to Dream’s dismay started crying.
“I can see you are poor company at the moment. I will take my leave,” Dream said, and stalked out the door. Hob got up just long enough to close and lock the door behind him, then threw himself back onto the bed.
“Hob. Hob you have closed the door. Open it at once.”
"Just leave me alone, Morpheus. "
"I will not," Dream hissed, and then the door swung open.
He jumped up onto the bed and rubbed his cold nose on Hob’s face.
"Tell me."
"It's stupid. I'm just having a bad day."
Dream licked him aggressively.
“Tell me now.”
"Ran into Widow Olsen down at the grocer. She talked my ear off, as usual, about all the lovely young ladies she knows who are looking for a husband, I gave her the usual brush off, about how I was married in the past and widowed and I wasn't ready to go through that again.”
He paused to swallow his tears.
“Usually that shuts them up. But no, not Widow Olsen, who started in about how her husband AND her oldest son died ten years back and how her suffering was far worse, and if she had died she would have wanted her husband to remarry, and at least I've never known the pain she felt."
Dream froze in his attempts at grooming..
"Yesterday, " Hob said, "was Robyn's birthday. And I forgot until she said that. Dream, how could I forget?"
"Your mind is only human. You cannot hold your grief so closely at all times, Hob, or you would not have chosen to keep living. It does not mean you love him less."
"I know that," Hob groaned into his pillow. "Just. I miss you. It's so fucking stupid. You're right here and I'm glad of it, but I miss you anyway. For all the hell we went through when you were my wife, at least you could hold me."
He felt Dream sigh and settle in next to him on the bed.
"God, your fur smells so nice," Hob mumbled, rubbing his face all over the black fur. Against his better judgment, Morpheus allowed this.
Hob lay there until his tears stopped, until he could breathe freely enough to let the solidity and warmth of another body lull him into sleep.
Hob opened his eyes and stared for a moment before he realized where he was. He was in the Dreaming, in what he had come to think of as the royal bedroom in Dream's private quarters. Morpheus was lying in the bed next to him in his preferred human form.
Hob rolled over and lay his head on Dream’s chest, sighing as he felt Dream’s arms wrap around him.
"Is one of your siblings going to come yell at us again? Please say no."
"I believe that as long as we stay here we may remain unbothered."
Hib moved up to bury his face in the crook of Dream's neck, inhaling his scent.
"This was what I needed. Thank you. "
"You are welcome, Hob."
August
“I am never buying from this group again, their shipping manifests are an absolute travesty,” Hob complained. He was in the small office of his shop; it was after hours, not that he made any real effort to keep regular hours. Another trick he had learned from Mr. Fell. He grumbled as he sorted through several tall stacks of paper. “Look! This appears to be the same item on these two different sheets, but they’ve spelled it two different ways and the stock numbers don’t match up.”
Morpheus made no response, appearing to be asleep, curled up on the other chair at the far end of the long desk. Grumbling, Hob went into the front room, rustled around in his folders of backup documents and came back to the office with a new pile of them.
Dream was now sitting in the chair he had been in.
“Really, love?” Hob sighed.
“I like this one better.”
Hob shook his head but moved all his books and papers over to the far side of the desk so that he could sit in the chair that Morpheus had vacated. He spent another ten minutes with a clear sheet of paper and pen, making notes, trying to consolidate the multiple disparate documents into one that would actually make sense.
“Blast it!” He growled. He picked up a single piece of paper and took it into the display room to compare the descriptions of the two items in question, now not even sure if he had received one or two lamps of the type referenced.
He came back into the office perhaps five minutes later.
Dream had switched chairs again, and was now once again monopolizing the seat in front of his paperwork.
“Morpheus!”
He received no response.
“I am going to make you stay home next time, if you’re just going to keep harassing me.
“Hob Gadling, I have no idea what you are talking about,” Dream said, looking up at Hob with an innocent gaze.
Hob moved his stacks of documents once again, glaring at his friend the entire time.
Another twenty minutes passed, Hob writing and copying numbers, Dream appearing to sleep.
Hob sighed.
“I need to go compare the stock numbers on these cabinets. Are you going to steal my chair again?”
“What need would I have to steal your chair, Hob?”
“An excellent question.” Hob stood and looked at him for a long moment. Then he put a stack of papers on the chair in which he had been sitting.
Hob came back a short time later, holding yet another stack of papers.
The documents he had left were on the floor.
And Dream was in his seat.
September
"You can stare and lash your tail all you want, love, I don't have the energy to get out of this chair, and I'm not going to. You can find your own dinner."
"I am vexed because you are ill, Hob, and I cannot care for you in this form."
"Dream, you don't need to care for me, I'll be fine," Hob said weakly. "It's bronchitis. I'll be fine in a week or two. Plenty of people survive it all the time who aren't even immortal."
"You need sleep to recover, " Dream insisted.
"Can’t sleep if I can’t breathe. And I can't breathe if I lie down, " said Hob. "I'll sleep out here by the fireplace until my lungs clear."
Hob did pass out eventually and woke hours later with a gasp. The room was dark, except for the remnants of the fire. A heavy weight was pressing on his chest. He struggled blearily to consciousness, only to find that the weight was Dream, who had curled up on his chest and was purring loudly enough to vibrate almost every bone in his body. He almost protested; if he’d had the air to do so he might have.
The thing was though.
The thing was that the vibrations from his purring were breaking up the god-awful congestion in his lungs and he could just tell that in another hour or so he'd cough up a terrifying mass of something that would speed him on the road to recovery. Morpheus said nothing but gave Hob a look and then closed his eyes and continued purring. Hob was asleep again before he could even try to form a sentence
When he woke again Dream was gone and the clock in the parlor showed it was well into mid morning. After another loud knock the door opened and a voice called out.
"Robert? Are you decent?"
“Come in,” Hob managed to call weakly, though it set off a coughing fit.
"Your cat," his neighbor Dorothy said, coming into the room with a covered dish and eyeing Morpheus cautiously, "dragged a freshly-caught pheasant to my door this morning, and yelled until I opened the door and took it. I knew you hadn't been feeling well, and then last night I had a dream about making you some soup."
Hob thanked his neighbor with breathless praise, and she stayed only long enough to make sure he ate some of the soup before it got completely cold.
"It occurs to me, belatedly, that this may draw attention of the sort you do not wish." Dream said thoughtfully. "Though I take comfort in the fact that she easily heeds her dreams."
"I'm fairly sure she takes heed of her dreams because she thinks they're from God," Hob said hoarsely.
" She does." Dream confirmed. "But I do not sense any malice towards you in her dreams. "
"Dorothy definitely finds me a trifle odd, but there’s no real harm done. They’re not going to try and put me on trial for being a witch here in the 20th century. I think. I’m not sure that particular worry will ever go away.”
October
Hob woke up and could tell by the light that he hadn’t overslept, but he immediately noticed that Morpheus wasn’t in the bed with him. Which was unusual. As the nights got colder again Dream seemed even more determined to cuddle up under the comforter with him in the mornings before the house warmed up. Not yet concerned, Hob put on his slippers and dressing gown and made his way into the living room where he found his cat-shaped friend holding court with a black and white bird only a little smaller than he was.
“Guests this early?” Hob asked, sure only through long association with Morpheus that he was, in fact, awake. "Oh, good morning Jessamy. Is this a social call?"
"Unfortunately not," said Jessamy.
" She has come to relay troublesome news. One of my nightmares has gone rogue and has entered the waking world without permission.”
“He’s been grumbling a lot this past year about your spending so much time in the waking world,” Jessamy said. “But none of us thought he would go this far.”
Hob yawned. “Good luck with that, then. Jessamy, would you like tea?”
The raven did not take tea, but would apparently be running messages back and forth from Lucienne for the near future, as she tried to track the Corinthian’s progress through the records of dreamers. Hob mentally added birds to the list of things he had to prepare to host unexpectedly.
“I shall accompany you today, Hob. I fear that the Corinthian may try to target you due to your association with me.”
“Does he know about my, uh, whole situation?” Hob said as they left the house. Hob had long since given up on the town not viewing him walking along the street to his shop, talking to his cat, but mentioning his immortality in public was still a hard boundary.
“I am unsure what if anything I may have mentioned of you to him. Certainly he did not read it in your books, disdainful of the Library as he has always been.”
Their walk was interrupted by an earsplitting yowl from Dream and Hob whirled to see him pinned to the ground, a knife sticking out of his tail.
“Shit!” Hob yelled, grabbing the knife in one hand and Morpheus with the other. He hurried out of the street and into an alleyway, looking around for signs of their attacker. “That’s your fucking nightmare?”
“Coming from the north,” Dream said. “He is close enough that I can sense his presence now.” Hob dared a peek out from around the corner of the building. He watched as a tall fair man with pale hair and clothes, wearing dark glasses, walked steadily towards them. He was holding a knife that was the twin to the one in Hob’s hand and grinning maniacally.
“I have next to no power to affect him from afar in this form, Hob. I would need to be close enough to touch him.”
“If it’s you he’s after, turn invisible and get out!”
“And leave you here to face him alone? You think I would forsake you so lightly?”
“Can we have this argument some other time?”
“You cannot kill him, Hob, he is a nightmare. And he cannot kill me,” Dream said. “He could only discorporate this form, which would return me to the Dreaming, and I would merely have to reform it from there.”
“He can’t kill me either, Morpheus, but that doesn’t mean I’m eager to let the man stab me,” Hob whispered. “He’s your creature, can’t you do something?”
Dream considered briefly while Hob held his furry body close.
“Hob, throw me at him,” Dream said decisively.
“What?!” Hob hissed, watching the nightmare stalk ever closer.
“THROW ME ROBERT!”
More out of panic at the voice thundering in his head than anything else, Hob dropped the knife, grabbed Morpheus with both hands and, lunging around the corner of the alleyway, heaved the enormous cat at the oncoming figure with all his considerable strength.
Dream was always such an elegant being;. Even when he was taking the form of a human, he had always moved with such unnatural feline grace
This was not that.
Dream flew through the air, all four feet spread wide, claws drawn, hissing furiously. Whatever the nightmare had expected, this apparently hadn't been it.
Hob watched, astonished, as Dream hit the man full in the face. He dropped his knife in surprise and tried to defend himself with his arms but was too late to prevent cat fangs from sinking into first his hand and then his neck. He barely had time to cry out, however, before he began to shrivel and while Hob watched, be turned into nothing more than a large pile of sand.
Dream pawed at the sand and then suddenly was holding in his mouth a tiny skull. Jessamy fluttered down to land near this scene and Dream passed along the skull to her.
Several passersby were stopped on the side of the street, staring openmouthed.
Hob was going to have to move after this year was over, wasn’t he?
November
"Does your sister celebrate any holidays?" Hob asked over breakfast. When Dream left again he was going to have to get out of the habit of eating breakfast in his sitting room, at the low coffee table where a cat could also sit and partake of his own breakfast.
"Not in the way that you are thinking."
"It's just that it’s November 1st. Day of the Dead. The Feast of Santa Muerte if you've spent any time in Mexico." Hob shrugged. "Just thinking about it. Another thing I like about this town, they’ve adopted some new, almost pagan traditions around All Hallow’s Eve. The kids dress up and run around, going door to door if you saw last night. Back in my day we called it “guising,” though they don’t call it that here. And the jack o'lanterns of course. In Cornwall they use to carve up turnips. And for a while they were called Hob’-o-Lanterns, which I had nothing to do with. More ghastly looking than the pumpkins, I don’t mind telling you.” He gave Dream a sideways look. “You already know all this, of course.”
Dream purred in acknowledgement
“But I do not mind hearing you tell me of your experiences. Shall you sing me the Ballad of Stingy Jack?”
“Hardly, you've heard my singing voice,” Hob laughed. “Hold on, did you have someone write that one? Barred both from Heaven and Hell, condemned to roam the world, with a carved vegetable named after him?”
Dream smirked and flicked his tail in amusement.
“Bloody hell, I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended. And are you the devil or the angel in my story?”
“I have told you that I am no devil.”
“Well, you fit right in at this time of year in whatever way you choose, my friend. As a black cat or as the Lord of Nightmares himself.”
December
"Are you going to get jealous if I get an actual cat once you've gone?" Hob asked one morning. The guest room wasn’t really big enough for this kind of set up, but it was providing the best light from the south-facing windows at this time of year. Christmas was only weeks away and the end of the year of living with Dream as a cat loomed on the horizon. "Only it's been nice having the company.”
“I suppose it would only be reasonable to leave you with adequate supervision for when I am not able to be here. I will see about recruiting a suitable companion for you before I go."
“Hold still, please. 'Supervision' my arse. I mean it, love quit moving, I want to get at least one good picture of you before you leave. These cameras just keep getting better. This is a brand new Thornton-Pickard Ruby Reflex. I think it cost more to ship it here from Manchester than the actual camera itself cost. "
“They will not find it odd that you wish to develop photographs of your cat?”
“Every camera enthusiast I’ve ever met has used them to take pictures of their cats. I’m starting to believe that was why they were invented.”
Dream huffed in amusement, but posed anyway, tail wrapped primly around his paws while Hob operated the camera shutter.
*****
January 14, 1912 was a Sunday. Hob woke up to find Dream of the Endless, in his preferred human form, in his bed. Naked.
"Hello, love, " Hob said with a grin. "Now if Destiny wasn't joking, we have a good hundred years to plan a proper wedding, instead of an imaginary one this time.
"That can wait a few days," said Dream, pulling him close. "There is no rush."