Chapter Text
Hob meets Calliope at the cafe in Regents Park. They find a picnic table overlooking the lake and little boats that go chugging about in it. There’s ducks and pigeons and it’s a nice day— for London, at least. Calliope has a coffee cup of hot chocolate and Hob sips on a frappe. He unwraps his sandwich and crosses his legs. Forgetting his long limbs, he bumps Calliope’s shin. She startles.
“Oop, sorry there,” he says.
Calliope forces her shoulders down and purses her lips into a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “No worries.”
Hob’s mouth pulls to one side. The new slang sounds odd in the immortal voice which sounds as if she’s always singing. Today, she’s in stylish jeans and a cold-shoulder top, chestnut hair down and caressed by the wind. Hob still has no idea what she’s doing here with him. “I’m happy to see you again,” he says. “Must admit I don’t know what’s in it for you.”
Her brows furrow and she tilts her head. “Why do you say that?”
Hob shrugs. “I dunno, just, a thousand artists would probably kill to be where I am, but. I’m not… useful in that way I guess.”
Calliope levels Hob with a look not unlike the one Dream gives him when he self-deprecates. He stuffs his mouth full of food so he can’t waffle on and further embarrass himself. She purses her lips, keeping her eyes on him, as if puzzling out some mystery.
“You believe,” she begins. “One such as I would only seek you out to gain something in return? You see yourself as not valuable for company alone?”
“I mean…” She’s a literal goddess, swallow before you speak, fool . Hob swallows and clears his throat. “Company’s good, yeah. Yeah, just plain friendly lunch between, between friends is, is good.” He watches out for signs in her body language when he uses the f word, given how her once-husband had reacted the first time.
Seeing no signs of offence, he says, “So, how’ve you been keeping? What have you been up to, besides enjoying open air and hot chocolate?”
“I have made calls and visits to,” she pauses to shake her head. “Old friends, in my quest to change the Old Laws.”
When she says no more, Hob hums. “Old Guard harder to convince than anticipated?”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head again. “I knew the path ahead would be fraught, but I… did not anticipate how changed they all would be, after barely a century. Scattered, lost. And still, those who endure…” Calliope meets Hob’s eye again. “I had thought my family helpless to end my bondage because of the Laws, but the case may be they simply did not care to.”
Hob grunts. “Sounds like Dream’s family. I have to believe though, that someone would have tried to help, if they could, if they knew.”
Her eyes are soft. “You, Robert Gadling? Would you have tried to free me?”
“Well yeah,” he replies, as if it’s obvious, warmth rising to his cheeks at the sound of his name on her lips. “Any decent person would. Keeping anybody against their will is pretty frowned upon.”
“Many things may be frowned upon,” she demurs. Leaning her elbows on the table, she rests her chin on her fist. “How would you have convinced him to give me my freedom?”
Hob chokes a bit. Calliope sits at rapt attention as he thinks, sipping his coffee. “Would’ve started with words,” he says. “Any reasonable person knows not to hold a woman hostage, let alone a goddess , so when reason fails, it’d be down to fists. And I’ve got hundreds of years under my belt, including direct experience on getting information out of men by less than legitimate means. Might not be as poetic as Dream did it, but I’ll reckon I’d get the job done.” He shakes his head. “Sorry if that sounded like a job interview. And I’m no man to boast— not these days. It’s just, can’t talk about these things with anyone, you know? Well, there’s Dream, but…” Hob hesitates, reading the room. Dream and Calliope had seemed close when last he saw them, he doesn’t want to offend her by shit-talking her ex.
A smile creeps across her lovely mouth. “Yes?”
“Nothing, just, erm.” He looks up at her and takes a swig of coffee. “Not much of a talker, that one, is he?”
She lets out a soft laugh that sounds like the babbling of a brook.
“Sorry,” Hob says. “I mean, in my experience at least, maybe it’s different with other…” He gestures broadly, remembering Dream saying he is no devil or god, but lacking a better word for non-human semi-divine entities.
“You speak truly,” she admits with a wide smile. “Oneiros has always been of a reserved and contemplative nature.” Her bright expression fades. “I understand he became even more so after our son died.”
“Oh, shit,” Hob breathes, too slow to hide his reaction. “Sorry.”
Calliope half-shrugs. Looking across the duck pond she sighs. “It was several thousand years ago. His death left a wound which never fully healed.”
“No one does,” he says. “Not from that.” Hob tries to recall his Stranger’s face from 1689. He was half-mad with grief and hunger, and the memory is unclear, but Dream acted different when Hob had lamented Robyn’s death. Not his usual haughty, effusive self. He grasps at the memory some more, but to no avail.
When the silence has gone on long enough, Hob shifts the subject. “Dream,” he starts. “What was he like…before?”
A happy memory tugs at the side of Calliope’s mouth. Hob feels the urge to reach out and tuck stray hair behind her ear.
“It’s strange,” she begins. “We saw each other hardly at all for thousands of years. It may be difficult to believe the man I married and the man you know are the same being.”
Hob nods. “People change. Today I wouldn’t recognize the rotten excuse for a man I was several hundred years ago.”
Calliope tilts her head. “Humans are different. You burn so bright for so short a time, you must be in a constant state of change.” She visibly seeks the right words. Refreshing, that even a Muse has to do that. “Gods, we endure as long as our memory remains in your minds. Endless endure regardless. To live so long with one function, one purpose… we may stagnate, become cold, apathetic. I have seen it many times over.”
“Is that what happened to Dream?” Hob asks softly.
Calliope rubs her fingers over the cardboard sleeve on her lukewarm takeaway cup.“For a time,” she says, her voice so soft he wonders if she spoke at all. Meeting his eye, Calliope leans forward. “He is changed now. You play a role in that.”
Hob squirms. “I doubt I had any meaningful influence in a handful of hours compared to the century he spent in solitary confinement.”
“Be not flippant, Robert Gadling.” Her voice is firm. “You know the degree to which imprisonment may change a man.”
He shrinks under her steel gaze. Hob bows his head and turns up his hands. “Fair.”
After a moment of contemplation, Calliope says, “My work is to inspire humans. I am alongside them often. Oneiros has often been… removed from those who enter his kingdom. Of course he has his reasons, but…” She looks up at Hob as if examining him behind the eyes.
He wants to shy away, but also to open the gate and let her have whatever she is seeking.
“I sought out this meeting to understand,” she says. ”I think I do. Your unfailing lust for life, I think, stupefied my once-husband so deeply to form a crack in the core of him. With a century of pressure, the very foundation of who he was must have fractured.” She chuckles again with a sound like birdsong. “And is it any wonder, when all I want in this moment is for you to regale me with your every tale, all the many lives you once lived. Yet I doubt even then my curiosity would be sated.”
Hob blushes but represses the urge to self-deprocate again. “Unfortunately I have a class at three.”
She stands. “Then I shall walk you to your work. Might we reconvene at the same time next week?”
Hob’s chest tightens. “Yeah, sure,” he says, regardless of whether he is free or not. He’ll cancel. Hell, he might need to take a sabbatical just to get through it all.