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Hob’s television is on: he can hear it through his front door. It’s a quick sequence of thoughts that comes next. He left it on— no, he never watches tele in the mornings. Winnie stepped on the remote— no, remotes nowadays don’t have the same clunky old buttons that paw pads could accidentally activate. Someone broke in— well, that’s not an impossibility, but they’re one hell of a bad burglar if that’s the case.
So by the time the door is swinging open, Hob isn’t actually really surprised to see Dream, tucked up at one end of the sofa.
It’s a nice sight to come home to.
“Heya, love,” Hob greets, divesting himself of shoes and keys and letting himself think, for just a moment, about how right it feels to see Dream treating this space as his own.
“Hob.” Dream has paused whatever it is he’s watching; but apparently not to speak.
“You all right?”
Dream nods. Hob believes him even less than he usually does, but they’ll come ‘round to that. For now he goes and perches at Dream’s side. The (not-)god has a blanket in his lap, and Winnie, of course, has settled on top; petting her is the perfect excuse to sit close.
“Whatcha watchin’?”
“A documentary.”
“Mm, what about?”
Dream doesn’t even pretend to answer; just lowers his chin a bit and sighs. But frankly that’s not the moodiest Hob’s ever seen him, so he just flashes a smile and accepts the lack of answer. “I’ll come keep you company in a bit. But, if you don’t mind, I’ll shower first.”
Dream nods again, and presses play, and Hob heads off down the hall.
Twenty minutes later, freshly showered and dressed for an evening on the sofa, Hob rejoins him. Dream seems even less inclined to talk now, so Hob just sits, tries to catch up.
It doesn’t take long. Doesn’t take more than a minute or two, for Hob to see what’s happening; still he waits to be absolutely sure. To hear the name, specifically referenced.
That doesn’t take long, either.
But even as the influenza pandemic began to wane, the narrator continues, cases of encephalitis lethargica were only rising—
It’s Hob who snags the remote and presses pause, this time. “Why are you watching this?”
There’s no reply.
“Why are you putting yourself through this?”
Still nothing. Disgusted, mostly that he didn’t catch on sooner, Hob scrubs both hands through his hair. “You’re not watching this.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, I mean— I’m not letting you.”
“I would simply do so elsewhere.”
“You got a Hulu login?”
He fully expects this to elicit a smile—or, Jesus, indignation at the very least. It doesn’t. “I would prefer to watch it somewhere that I feel comfortable,” Dream replies, ice creeping in at the edges of his voice. “But that isn’t necessary. I can, and will, go elsewhere.”
It’s not a bluff; and even if it were, it wouldn’t matter. Hob never stood a chance.
“No— no,” he sighs. “Sorry. I didn’t mean— obviously if it’s something you feel like you need to do. I’m not actually going to stop you. But I’m gonna watch it with you. Okay?”
“If you wish.”
Don’t do me any favors, Hob thinks, a bit uncharitably. Amazingly, no, he doesn’t actually wish to spend his evening watching a documentary about (when it boils down to it) a plague. He’s had enough of plagues, thanks. When he’d first seen that Dream was here, he’d expected to be watching either something arthouse, or the Great British Bake Off.
Ah, well. Obviously friendship isn’t always sunshine and rainbows.
Hob presses play, but passes the remote back so Dream can pause it at any point that he needs. He doesn’t, of course. Just sits, nonreactive, as the Sleepy Sickness plays out onscreen. First come the statistics. Explorations into just how many people died, or otherwise lost their lives to it. Then come the interviews. Doctors and historians and the children of patients, now old men and women themselves, recounting how their parents simply did not wake up one morning.
They watch in silence until the end. Until the last frame, white text on a black screen:
Dedicated to the million souls who dreamt their lives away; and the countless others who waited, in vain, for them to wake.
The tele shuts off. Dream, Hob notes absently, did not even use the remote.
Oddly hesitant, he turns sideways.
The being sat on his sofa is not quite human-shaped, at the moment. Its skin has gone milk-white and its eyes have gone coal-black. Its hair is rippling slightly, as though blown by a breeze; and its features—well. They aren’t quite there. They look as though Hob, with his mediocre visual memory, has been called upon to conjure them with his own mind’s eye; as though Dream itself has forgotten just what its human face is meant to look like.
And yet the expression that face bears isn’t foreign in the slightest.
It’s a look of grief, and confusion, and feeling sick to one’s stomach; and so what if Dream is some omnipotent, eldritch King? It’s also Hob’s friend. It’s Hob’s friend, and those all-pupil eyes are just as bright with tears as they are with starlight; and Hob calls its name until it finally seems to hear.
“Can I hug you?” Hob asks, once he thinks he’ll be understood.
Dream is flickering at the edges; and the space around it feels charged, abuzz, like the screen of an old television set.
It shakes its head.
“Okay. Can I hold your hand?”
Dream nods.
Hob slides closer and takes Dream’s hand in his own; and lungs that certainly don’t need air draw a long, shaky breath, anyway.
“That was a lot to process,” Hob murmurs, adding his other hand. “Just—give yourself a minute, okay? Just take a minute.”
Another nod. Dream is shaking, Hob realizes; and to say that it is doing so like a leaf isn’t really hyperbole. Hob is used to Dream seeming not-quite-dense enough. But in the moment its hand feels no more substantial than a phantom’s (though it’s still plenty painful when the nails dig at Hob’s skin, sharp as talons).
“I’ve got you, love,” Hob whispers. “Take all the time you need.”
Dream shuts its eyes. Minutes pass; and though the flickering of its image abates, it levels out at a frequency that’s not quite opaque. Its hand stops clawing at Hob’s, but the grip itself does not lessen.
When it speaks, at last, its voice comes from some distance. “This documentarian is a good storyteller.”
“Yeah?”
“The best storytellers can present a tale you already know, and make it seem like the first time you’ve heard it.”
“Was this a story you needed to hear for the first time, twice?”
“Seemingly not.” Dream opens its eyes; and Hob seems a flash of blue in them, though their outline has grown no steadier. “I should go.”
“Go because you’ve actually got to go? Or go because you don’t want me to see you all—upset and wibbly?”
“Wibbly?”
“Wibbly. Shifty? It’s okay,” Hob soothes. “It’s sort of lovely, really. You look like, like how words looked to me, before I learned how to read. I just wish I could help you calm down.”
“And why should I calm down?”
“I mean. I’m not saying you should. You have every reason and every right to be upset, I’m not saying otherwise. I just mean—I wish I could make it better. I wish I could make you feel better. For your own sake.”
It’s probably not something that should need explanation; but it must, for Dream seems placated by the words. The sofa dips as it remembers to have mass.
“Maybe I could tell you a different story?”
“A story?”
“Just to give you somewhere else to put your mind. Even just for a minute. Would that be all right?”
Dream nods.
“Perfect. Well, I’ve got loads—oh, I know which one I’ll tell you! It’s also the story of how I met Peggy, but, they’re a tale for another day.” Hob settles against the sofaback, wordlessly compelling Dream to lean back a bit as well. “In 1912 I took passage from Bombay to Liverpool, on a ship called the Sea Witch—”
Hob sets the scene for a minute: fleshing out the Sea Witch and her crew. Speaking, briefly, of the handsome cabin boy. And how, of all the ships, on all the seas, another immortal found their way onto his.
Dream listens in silence.
“One day,” Hob continues, “a few weeks into our voyage, the sea went flat. Calm as I’d ever seen it. Smooth as glass. It tricked you, for a moment, into forgetting just how deep it really was. But then it reminded us.
“First we saw the fish. Just, millions upon millions of them, every kind you can think of, barreling towards us. I didn’t say it to anyone, but I knew: they were fleeing. Then one of the men called out that he saw land. Well, we were days away. It wasn’t land. It was what all those fishes had been fleeing from."
Hob draws Dream closer still. “It was a Leviathan. Or—the Leviathan? I dunno if there’s more than one. In any case. It was massive. I mean, there were skyscrapers then, but this thing did more than scrape the sky; it filled the world. Like when you were looking at it, there was nothing else even to see. But I remember, I remember knowing that I needed to look back and see everyone else seeing it, and I’m glad I did. Because I remember so clearly. Nearly all of them were crying. I wasn’t. That’s not me trying to seem cool, either, because we both know I cry plenty. But not then. The crew, or most of them, they were—overwhelmed. Scared, amazed, plenty of other things, but mostly overwhelmed. But not me.
“I guess I knew it was there. Or, I knew that it could be there. I was already about 550, at the time, so. Quite a strange thing on my own. Maybe strange things just find each other. Either way. I don’t mean to say I wasn’t impressed by it, because I was. Or that I understood it, because I didn’t. But. It was a stranger to everyone else. It wasn’t a stranger to me.”
“What happened next?”
Hob looks up to find a rosy feverishness spreading across the colorless plane of Dream’s lips and cheeks. Still it’s nothing close to a human skintone. Hob smiles.
“Nothing happened next,” he replies, with the smallest of shrugs. “At least nothing of note. It was only there for half a minute. Then the winds returned. We docked for supplies and shore leave in Aden, then headed into the Suez.”
“The Leviathan?”
“Still out there, I’m sure. A vignette in my life story. Sure I’m not even a line in its.”
Dream looks as though it wants to disagree, but hasn’t the strength. Hob squeezes its hand, warmly.
“Are you sure I can’t get you some tea?” he offers. “Glass of wine?”
“No.” Though its image has not solidified, the head that comes to rest on Hob’s shoulder has just the weight one might expect. “Another story,” Dream murmurs, “if you please.”
“Well,” Hob breathes, resting his chin in Dream’s hair. “Lucky for you, I’ve got quite a few of those.”