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Hob laid down, and stretched to turn on the white noise machine next to the bed.
Sometimes he missed the silence. The world didn’t have that many quiet places anymore, at least not close enough to the cities, and he just wanted some quiet to sleep, not to be away from where things happened. He liked the noise, liked how there were always things happening these past few decades, seemingly getting more agitated with each passing year, but the constant buzzing of electricity, cars passing close to his window, and his neighbor watching the telly until late at night, all got in the way of his quality of sleep. He supposed he could ask his friend to do something about that, but the rain noises did the job well enough, most of the time.
At least there was one thing that he learned, being a soldier, that hadn’t abandoned him. If he was tired enough, he could simply close his eyes and fall asleep, regardless of any comfort.
Sleep used to be a necessity, nothing more, a waste of the time he could spend living, although at least he had as much time as he needed to waste. But for a few months now, he had been looking forward to it. Ever since he saw his friend, who he was now allowed to call that, for the first time in over one hundred and thirty years, and learned of his true identity after seven hundred years of wondering.
Not a god, not a demon, but the King of Dreams and Nightmares. Somewhere deep inside him, the part of him that still remembered what it was like to be a peasant got quite the thrill out of being friends with a king, even if they only saw each other once every century. At least in the Waking World, as Morpheus had angrily corrected him when Hob called it the real world. That was one lecture that he wouldn’t soon forget.
Hob wouldn’t pretend to understand the exact politics of it, but from what Morpheus had said, he was either unable or unwilling to spend long outside of his own realm, or leave it often, and so he couldn’t promise he would be able to meet Hob in the Waking World any more often than they already did.
The Dreaming was another matter entirely, and Morpheus could occasionally make some time to meet Hob as he was sleeping, usually once every few weeks. It was still what most people would consider rare, but in just a few months they had already met more often than in the preceding seven hundred years combined, so he wasn’t about to complain.
He didn’t feel himself falling asleep, but he was aware once he had fully transitioned into a dream. That wasn’t always the case, but something that he only somewhat recently learned to do, while seeking for a way to defang his nightmares. It was some time after their fight, around the turn of the century maybe, when he found a book, it must have been by a Belgian or a Dutch, something of the sort, these things often got mixed together as the years passed. But it talked of lucid dreaming, and over the years Hob was able to perfect it. It didn’t make the nightmares stop, but it helped him fight back against them. And it was all that Hob wanted, a fighting chance.
Morpheus would probably be able to take them away, if Hob asked, but if Morpheus would be willing to do so was anyone’s guess. At any rate, it would be a violation of their deal. He wasn’t supposed to get involved in Hob’s life, neither help him nor hinder him. Maybe things had changed since then, but not so much. Even if Hob wanted to see him more often, he also wanted to still have control over his own life, not to be the pawn in a powerful being’s game.
And there was another reason for him to wish to retain the nightmares. As much as he wanted something to alleviate them, he knew that he deserved most of them, and it wouldn’t be fair to have them simply gone.
He walked around the apartment he rented when he first decided to give university a try, a boring dream, as far as these things went. At least it wasn’t a battlefield, or the remembrance of the worst things he did in his life. There was a thunderstorm outside, and soon it began raining inside the apartment as well, a clear exaggeration of the admittedly many leaks in that roof. He grabbed the umbrella by the door, thankful for the presence of mind to be able to do so, and opened it over his head. Hopefully this would be one of the nights when his friend would visit him, because this was shaping out to be a strange but boring dream.
Barely the thought had been formed, and he heard a knock on the door. He hushed to open it, and outside found not the hallway covered in mold that should have been there, but a stone corridor, and standing there was his friend, in the stunning black robes he seemed to favor in his realm. His friend was always beautiful, no one would deny it, but there was something special about seeing him in his own element. He might say that he wasn’t a god, despite what a few of his names seemed to indicate, but he still looked like the gods after which the most beautiful paintings and sculptures were made.
Hob opened a large smile. “Morpheus, I’m glad to see you. I’d invite you in, but I seem to be having some rain problems,” he joked, although Morpheus had never entered his dreams.
He always appeared to take Hob somewhere. Either that or he would transform everything around them, but that made Hob dizzy, so he would rather walk, and Morpheus was willing to indulge that.
Morpheus looked puzzled at the ceiling, although he certainly had seen many strange things in people’s dreams, and without him doing anything, the rain just stopped. Hob closed his umbrella and set it by the door, noting that his clothes were dry now. There were certainly advantages to being somewhere where his friend could control everything.
“I was in the process of creating new dreams, but I could feel you calling to me,” he said, still standing by the door.
Hob looked away, self-conscious. He had been thinking about Morpheus, but hadn’t had the intention of calling him. If even that was enough to summon him there, Hob would have to be careful with what he was thinking while he slept. He hoped that didn’t mean that his friend could read his thoughts while he was there, otherwise he might be in some trouble.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to take you away from…” Creating dreams, apparently, which he didn’t know if was part of the job description, or a hobby, or maybe some integral part of his existence, “that. I didn’t mean to call you, I was just thinking that this was a boring dream so I was hoping you would come to interrupt it, but if you’re busy we can meet another time.”
Hob would rather they meet every night, but he learned not to be greedy. It took one hundred and thirty years of wondering if they’d ever see each other again, thirty of those really worrying that he had screwed things up royally and messed up the longest relationship of his life, but he learned his lesson. Small steps.
“There is no urgency in the task, I can resume it once you return to the Walking World. There has been some time since our last meeting,” Morpheus said, extending him a hand.
Two weeks, three days, but who was counting? If Morpheus claimed he had the time, Hob wasn’t going to insist otherwise. He wanted every second that he could get of them together.
Hob took his hand, and despite knowing that Morpheus only meant to keep him from getting lost, it still made his heart race. They had never touched in the Waking World, although their legs had gotten close to brushing under the table, yet his friend hadn’t hesitated to take his hand and guide him through that fantastical realm.
He really hoped that Morpheus couldn’t read his thoughts, or sense how that made him feel. If he had been offended by the implication of friendship not so long ago, he would certainly get outraged at the hubris of a human, even an immortal one, falling for a creature more powerful than gods.
“Where are we going?” he asked as Morpheus guided him from the corridor to the rest of the palace.
Hob had visited the homes of a few kings and queens, but none was as beautiful as this place. The throne room in particular was huge, as human architecture had only recently been able to achieve, and covered in delicate stained glass that changed at Morpheus’ will. It was the type of place that could only ever exist in a dream, and Hob was glad to be able to see it.
Morpheus would always pull him through the palace, regardless of where they were going, or what place Hob was dreaming of. He wondered if that meant that he often disturbed his friend when he was working, but couldn’t particularly care about that, at least not enough to stop. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have consideration for his friend’s function, but Hob was always a little selfish, and he liked Morpheus’ company too much.
“I took the sky of an astronomer’s dream, she dreams of the birth of stars and the collision of galaxies. It’s an awe inspiring sight,” he said, with wonder clear in his voice.
There wasn’t much that impressed him, although Hob had come to learn that creativity and inspiration were sure to do the trick. He had been jealous, when his friend ignored all his earthly accomplishments in favor of a playwright, but he understood it now. Gold, land or human monarchs meant nothing to him, but stories and dreams were what his realm was made of, and what he most cherished.
“You can’t really watch the stars anymore,” he said, although obviously he never had seen galaxies colliding. “There’s too much light around at night these days, you can’t see them like before. Not that I mind too much, electricity is much better than candlelight.”
He was never too much of a fan of observing the skies. It was beautiful, and he liked it, but he was more interested in the amazing things people could come up with. Still, he had watched excitedly as more and more things were launched into space, and had accompanied the moon landing with apprehension. It was a shame this sort of thing was so quiet these days, people had been promising a visit to Mars for decades now, and he was still waiting for it. At least he had all the time in the world to wait.
“At least you count yourself among the few humans still alive to have seen a supernova,” Morpheus mentioned, as they made their way to the bridge.
Hob frowned, trying to remember what he meant. Sometimes it was hard, holding on to memory. A few of the stronger ones were as fresh now as when they were formed, and he doubted that he would ever be able to forget his son, or the great war, or the conversation that made it so he wouldn’t die, but others blended together, and if they weren’t strong enough, he needed something to help him recall.
He didn’t remember ever seeing a supernova, but thinking of it, there was that time a strange star stayed around during the day, for maybe a few days. It was brighter than the others, and a new addition that later vanished, but other than that, there was nothing special about it.
“You mean in the 1600s? I remember something about that, didn’t that…” he snapped his fingers on his free hand, trying to recall it, “Galileo, he was saying that it proved that the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe. It went right over my head, until they started doing those easy models. I don’t really get any of the math.”
As much as he loved innovation, and he did, he wasn’t that big of a fan of the sciences. He liked them well enough, he simply didn’t have a vocation for it, usually staying in the humanities. At least he could recognize great innovations when he saw them, which led to some pretty smart investments. Well, he could do so now, after getting it wrong so many times. It was one of the advantages of living for so long, he kept screwing things up, but he kept learning too, and each time he tried to do better. He didn’t always have success in that, but at least he tried, and that was the most human thing of it all.
“I suppose that would have been the most visible, although there were others in your lifetime. They can’t always be seen from Earth without special equipment, though,” Morpheus said.
Although they were simply crossing a bridge with only one way out, Morpheus was still holding his hand. Not quite guiding him now that they were walking side by side, but that place was strange, so maybe there was still a chance that Hob would get lost. Once he had just turned to the side to look at a flower that seemed to be a little dancer of the fair folk, and then before he knew it he was lost in dark woods. After that Morpheus started holding his hand wherever they went. Hob certainly didn’t mind it.
“All of these things about stars were very popular for a while, and then people stopped caring about them again. Then there was that whole deal about putting a man on the moon, that made things move fast. It wasn’t long after that we got computers, and that really made a difference. I don’t remember if I mentioned computers before, but they make everything so much faster. And my prediction about the printing press might finally come to pass now,” he said, aware that he was rambling, but Morpheus never seemed to mind.
His friend didn’t talk much, even now that there was no reason to limit their relationship to him teaching Morpheus about the human world, or at least teaching him to see the human world to the eyes of a mortal-ish, since he was never sure how much Morpheus knew of the things he was talking about. They were friends, and a friendship meant a bit more of a two way street, but Morpheus still rarely talked of himself, and kept most of his stories, when he deemed to share them, quite brief.
Hob wouldn’t complain about that, he was learning more about his friend now than he ever thought possible, and he took each scrap of information that he was given, hoping that one day he would be able to understand who Morpheus was, although perhaps that was beyond his understanding as a human, no matter how long his life was.
Their first meeting of this century, and most recent in the Waking World, had been the most illuminating. It was then that he finally received a name, or rather two, Morpheus and Dream, with no indication of preference between them, although Hob had noticed whenever someone talked to him in the Dreaming, which wasn’t often in Hob’s presence, he was called Lord Morpheus. He also did say that he had many other names, listing a few that Hob recognized from mythologies around the world, but Hob took the choice of introduction to mean that he favored these two names now.
He also received a limited explanation of Morpheus’ nature, being ‘of the Endless’ and brother to Death - yes, that Death, which at least explained why Hob still continued to live after all that time, even if he didn’t know what about his little speech moved the siblings into making him immortal -, and having other siblings of similarly great powers, as well as being the King of Dream and Nightmares, responsible for all the collective unconscious of all the universes. Around that time Hob gave up on understanding what was happening, although he still hoped that at some point it would make sense. Many universes seemed like the kind of thing that would appear at the telly or in a book, not something that existed.
Still, for reasons that Hob couldn’t understand, a vast and powerful being who lived longer than Hob would ever have the ability to conceive, was interested in his life and what he had to say. It was hard to believe, and he would have doubted it, if he hadn’t been so slowly introduced to the concept.
And the most heartbreaking information that Hob received was that the delay of their meeting wasn’t voluntary, but a result of Morpheus being kept captive for several decades. Morpheus refused to elaborate on that, and Hob didn’t have the heart to question him on it, but it was even worse than thinking that Morpheus had stayed away because he was angry at him. He didn’t want to see his friend suffering, and it was terrifying to think that someone so powerful could still be captured by simple humans.
Anything else about Morpheus, as what his work as king entailed, what he did in the Dreaming, or even how he evaded his captors and how his capture was possible in the first place, remained a mystery. It was likely that he would never have answers to all of these questions, and he was willing to accept that. Anything that he received was a treat, and even if their meetings in the Dreaming rarely gave him new information, he still got to spend time with Morpheus, and that was what mattered.
“I haven’t accompanied the space race, as it was called, although from my understanding the reasons were another demonstration of human pettiness and greed. You have, however, mentioned computers before, when you talked of preparing your classes,” Morpheus said.
Morpheus had a point about that. Those were some scary days, when it seemed like the world might end at any moment, just because some powerful people were in charge of ways to destroy the world and might do it just as revenge. Mutually assured destruction wasn’t so great for the regular people who had to live through the fear, and for the first time in quite a while, maybe for the first time in his life even, Hob wondered if that might be the end of him. He couldn’t die, supposedly, but he assumed that meant things that people could die of, and wasn’t sure what would happen if the whole planet died around him. Maybe that would have been the thing that would make him finally ask for death, although thankfully it hadn’t come to pass.
Then he noticed that Morpheus mentioned his classes. It was always nice to see how much Morpheus remembered the things that Hob told him. Sometimes, even things that Hob himself couldn’t remember anymore. It made him feel some sort of way that he wouldn’t be able to name. Whatever this was, he shouldn’t feel it, he didn’t want to risk their still incipient friendship by exposing his sure to be unwelcome feelings. What they had now was more than he could ever have hoped for, so it had to be enough.
A smile though, he couldn’t keep from displaying, and he hoped it wouldn’t be too much. “Yes, I started teaching before they were commonplace, and they really made a difference. You know, I let it slip once that I had experience with printing, and from then on everyone wanted me to operate the banda machine at uni, even though it’s not hard to understand it, oh and the mimeo, I hated the smell of that. And don’t get me started on the jellygraph, you had to mind your nails with that one, there was this little underground subversive newspaper…”
He went on to detail his minor but still helpful involvement in the propagation of anti-fascist materials in the period between wars. For once he had been on the right side of history on that one, having seen enough wars to know that what was brewing could end up being dangerous. It didn’t help much, or maybe at all, but at least he had taken his friend’s words to heart, and had been trying to make better decisions, decisions that wouldn’t cause him to be haunted by guilt over two centuries later. Nothing he did could ever undo the harm that he had done, but he could still learn, and grow, and try to be better. He might not die, but he was still human like that. Far from the worst, far from the best, and with enough regrets to fill about a dozen lifetimes, if anyone was keeping score.
Morpheus allowed him to speak with not many interruptions, only occasionally adding a comment or making a question. Hob was always surprised by this, how Morpheus could listen to him talking, barely speaking at all, and finding of interest the most mundane things that Hob had to say, while not caring at all about the things that most people would usually concern themselves with.
He didn’t know if it made more or less sense that Morpheus was this way, considering that he lived in a place that could be entirely molded to his will. Hob thought that perhaps he should concern himself with more important things, but maybe that was his reason for wanting to know all those mundane details about human life, which he seemed to not entirely understand.
They walked hand in hand through fields that Hob was sure were filled with all sorts of wonderful things that he could have been marveled by, if only he was able to take his eyes away from Morpheus. It was hard not to be taken by the way that Morpheus looked at him, like only what he had to say mattered at that moment, like he was the most important person in existence. He had to be careful not to let this go to his head, but Morpheus abandoning his duties to accompany him didn’t help matters.
“We’re here,” Morpheus said, after what could have been ten minutes, or ten hours.
Time worked strangely there, and Hob could never quite guess how long things truly lasted. He watched a whole opera with Morpheus once, in the interval of falling asleep between students during his office hours, and one time it seemed like they had just met, and he was startled awake by his alarm clock.
He could probably ask Morpheus about it, but that would spoil some of the fun. He liked the mystery, liked not quite understanding what was happening there. In a way, it made Morpheus and him almost alike, since they were once strangers trying to understand the vastly different lives of one another.
Morpheus had guided him up a small hill, with not much place on top, but enough room for two people to sit side by side, although perhaps a little too closely together. Morpheus had demonstrated in the past that he could change the landscape if he so wished, so that he hadn’t had to mean that he was comfortable with this arrangement. Then again, they had sat closely together when they met at the inn, and Morpheus never demonstrated any discomfort with that, at least not beyond the discomfort that he seemed to feel around people in general, so maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
“So, galaxies?” he asked, not wanting to be the first one to sit down, still unsure as to how Morpheus would want to settle them. Besides, they were still holding hands, and he didn’t want to sit down and risk breaking contact.
Morpheus opened his mouth to answer, but they were interrupted by a raven flying between them and landing a little to the side. Hob had seen that one before, the talking raven that seemed to be something between a messenger and a personal assistant. Matthew, as Hob recalled it, who managed to give him quite the scare the first time they met in the Waking World, and he gave Hob a message from Morpheus.
After everything that he saw over the centuries, he really should have been prepared for a talking raven, but somehow he wasn’t. Still, he had gotten used to the idea, even if he continued to find strange hearing a man’s voice coming out of a bird not at all the way that parrots sounded, and he had to ask Matthew not to talk to him if there were other people around.
Hob already had too much of a reputation as strange and mysterious among his students. The last thing he needed was people hearing him talk to a bird, it was the kind of thing that would force him to fake his own death and wait years to come back as his own son or nephew. That used to be easier before digital cameras and people posting photographs publicly of everyone that they met. And with all the records and fingerprints and all the other ways of proving someone’s identity, soon he might be in trouble when it came to making a new one.
“I’m sorry, boss. I know you said not to interrupt when you are on a date unless it’s an emergency, but we have a bit of a problem with…” Matthew started, turning his head to the side as he spoke.
Morpheus shushed him urgently. “One moment, please wait here,” he said to Hob, and walked down the hill, signaling Matthew to follow him.
He stopped just far enough away that Hob wouldn’t be able to hear them, not that he would have tried to. He was too shocked by what Matthew had just said.
Date.
A date.
On a date.
He tried to calm himself, and keep in mind that the word ‘date’ could mean a lot of different things. So many meanings across different times and languages, not that he would know all that many of them, but he had picked up on a few things over the years, especially through trading. Date could be a fruit, a fish, determining how old something was, giving something, just a regular, boring meeting, the end of something, the origin of something, the time someone had to live - that was a good one, he hadn’t heard that one in a while -, a point in time, of course, a day in the calendar… Many possible meanings, none of which would have anything noteworthy to them. And most of which wouldn’t make any sense in that sentence, not to mention a few weren’t even pronounced that way.
It was likely Matthew just meant it as a meeting. People didn’t use it that way all that much anymore, but he wasn’t all that sure that this mattered in a place like this. It certainly didn’t have to mean anything romantic.
He was so distracted thinking of what Matthew had said that he barely noticed the way that Morpheus was arguing with him. Even though he couldn’t hear them, it looked like Morpheus was scolding him. Hob hoped that Morpheus wouldn’t be offended by him and decide to leave, and also hoped that Morpheus wouldn’t have to leave to deal with whatever it was that Matthew was calling him to talk about. They had barely just arrived there, and he wanted to spend as much time as he could with Morpheus, not go back to a boring dream about a leaking roof.
It was only when Matthew had flown away and Morpheus was making his way back up the hill that Hob realized something else. He was so focused on trying to understand what ‘on a date’ could mean that he didn’t give ‘not to interrupt unless it’s an emergency’ its due attention. It wasn’t too often that Morpheus had time for him, even during his dreams, but Hob hadn’t imagined that Morpheus would dedicate his attention to him so fully once he did. Thinking of it, he could only remember a handful of occasions someone had approached Morpheus to speak to him while they were together, and every time he had given them quick dismissals. He didn’t dare giving that any meaning, and yet he couldn’t help but speculate.
“My apologies,” Morpheus said as he reached the top, taking Hob’s hand again. “The situation is dealt with, Matthew won’t be disturbing us again this evening.”
Hob could understand not wanting him to get lost when they were walking around. And really, it was necessary, because no place could be as confusing as the Dreaming, even if Morpheus tried to keep it from changing too drastically while Hob was walking with him. But there was no place for him to get lost standing still at a hill, not unless the hill itself disappeared from under his feet, and it didn’t seem like it was about to do that. Not that he would know either way, but it seemed as solid as anything.
There was no point in Morpheus’ holding his hand now, unless, Hob realized, if he was doing that just because he wanted to. The thought itself was ridiculous, Morpheus was the kind of person who would run away from being called a friend, and who would always stay at a certain distance, there but not quite, not someone who would be holding other people’s hands.
Then again, he had changed considerably since their fight, as indicated by his apology, and his willingness to call Hob a friend. Morpheus had revealed much more about who he was, and was willing to take the time to meet him considerably more often, even if only on his own terms. Maybe the person he knew as his stranger wouldn’t have been the kind to hold hands, but the one he could call his friend was.
“If you’re needed elsewhere, you could show me these galaxies another time, I wouldn’t want to keep you from your duties,” Hob said, to focus on anything rather than the spiraling of his thoughts.
This was a dangerous path that he was following, and although he wasn’t usually too concerned about consequences, not having to think about the big one that almost everyone feared, this time the consequences were potentially devastating. He could live without Morpheus, he knew as much, and had proved that he would carry on wanting to live no matter what happened to him or what he lost. But the last thirty years also taught him how desperate he was to have his friend in his life, even if just for a brief moment every century. He stayed around for longer than he had stayed anywhere since being drowned as a witch, all because he didn’t want to risk missing the chance to meet him again, despite not knowing if his friend would ever return or if Hob’s words had chased him away for good.
It was better to concentrate on something more concrete. Matthew had come to call Morpheus because there was some sort of an emergency, a problem that he needed to deal with, and having accidentally summoned him by thinking about him, Hob was being inconvenient and getting in the way.
“It’s not as serious as Matthew made it seem, he panicked all by himself, still being a young raven. He found a new raven who was very nervous and disoriented, and he didn’t know what to do with her. I’ve simply directed him to talk to Lucienne, as she was a raven before, and is sure to be able to calm the newly reborn raven,” Morpheus said, calmly as if he had said words that made some sense, although Hob wasn’t entirely sure that he did.
Lucienne he knew, the librarian as she was introduced to him, although he had noticed her around the palace, doing a lot more than what he would expect from a librarian - more of an advisor than anything else -, and Morpheus directing her to deal with ravens now seemed to indicate the same. He hadn’t had much contact with her, as the one time that she came to talk to Morpheus when Hob was around, she made a comment about ‘his human’ and Morpheus quickly pulled her away, telling her something before coming back and pulling Hob by the hand away from the palace. At the time, he was so surprised about everything around that place that he didn’t know to find the interaction strange, but having witnessed the talk with Matthew just then, it was impossible not to notice that there was something more to it.
“I’m sorry, your librarian was a raven?” he asked, taking this opportunity to learn more about these mysterious talking ravens, rather than focusing on why Morpheus seemed to not want his subjects talking about Hob where he could hear them.
“Like Matthew, she was a person first. When a dreamer dies while still within the Dreaming, it is given to them the opportunity to become one of my ravens. Otherwise, they may be escorted out so that my sister may take them to the Sunless Lands,” Morpheus said, reminding Hob of why he didn’t make all that many questions about the way that things worked there. It seemed the answers only made things more confusing.
Still, he could understand some of that. Since Morpheus mentioned dying, he presumed the sister in question was Death - to whom Hob would have to apologize at some point for the unflattering things he said about her while not knowing she was a person, although he didn’t know if he’d have the opportunity without choosing to die, and he was never going to choose that -, and it didn’t make much sense why dying would mean turning into a bird just because of where it happened, but stranger things had happened.
“Are you sure you don’t need to deal with that?” Hob asked, figuring it was safer not to try to understand anything else about what was happening.
People who died in their sleep turned to ravens, sure, he could accept that. And apparently ravens could turn back to people again, hopefully without dying again in the process. If he could have escaped Death by catching the attention of her and her brother centuries ago while ranting in a tavern, this could happen.
“Lucienne is more than capable of dealing with issues such as these. During my forced absence, she was able to keep many, although not all, of the functions of the Dreaming working in passable order, and I should grant more respect to her efforts,” Morpheus said, in a way that indicated that maybe he didn’t, at first.
Perhaps Hob wasn’t the only person that Morpheus had mistreated and kept at a distance over the years, and maybe he was learning to be better when it came to other people as well.
“Well, in this case, I’m glad that you don’t have to leave,” Hob said, satisfied that he had done his duty as a friend in assuring Morpheus that it was fine to end this… whatever this was, in favor of dealing with the conflicts of his work, or whatever it was that Morpheus called what he did.
He tried not to think about what Matthew had said about a date, because he was convinced that this would only lead to conflict, and possibly heartbreak. It was better to accept what he had and not be too greedy, instead of hoping for something that wasn’t meant for him. He always wanted too much, too much life, too much out of life, and now too much of his dreams too.
Morpheus gave him just a hint of a smile, and sat down, pulling Hob by the hand.
Hob followed, finding the grass was softer than he would have expected, but things in the Dreaming often were different from what he expected them to be. Better, more often than not, stranger, nearly every time, more confusing, always. It made sense, from what he understood, people influenced what happened there, and people were always a creative bunch. Even so, he still liked the Waking World better than he did the Dreaming, although he made a point not to mention this to Morpheus. He might seem to be in a much better mood these days, but that didn't mean that he wasn't still proud, or that he wouldn't be offended if his realm wasn't respected as he thought it should be. His reaction to Hob saying 'real world' proved as much.
The sky was like nothing he had ever seen, so full of stars. More than it could ever be seen on Earth, at least in his lifetime, and most of them so large and bright that he couldn't even recognize any of them. Even if he wasn't that much of a fan of stargazing, he had to admit that this was a sight to behold.
"I don't recognize any of these stars," he mentioned, still looking up at them.
He knew a few by name. The most important ones, or at least the most useful. He never forgot how to find the North Star, not since shipping became more of a thing, even if he didn’t spend any significant time on a boat. It seemed prudent, always being able to find his way back, especially since he had a standing date that he couldn’t miss. Well, not a date but… still a date, just as a meeting.
"They are stars that exist, but there is no place in the Waking World where they can be seen together. The astronomer brings them together in her dreams, as she flies through space," Morpheus said, pointing through some unseen path.
Hob nodded along, although he still didn't understand the process that Morpheus used to do this sort of thing. One time he mentioned that he just ‘took’ these things, but that didn’t clarify anything.
"They are beautiful," Hob said, smiling at him.
Morpheus laid down, bending his free arm behind his head, but still holding Hob’s hand with his other one. Again, Hob couldn't help but wonder why Morpheus was doing that. It wasn't as if Hob was going to get lost there, but maybe there was a reason that he didn't know about. Things in the Dreaming were always changing, to the point of being disorienting, so Morpheus could be trying to make sure he wouldn't get lost no matter what happened.
Hob laid down next to him, and nearly rolled down the hill, being kept in place by Morpheus holding him firmly by the hand. So maybe there was a purpose to that, after all. The hill was small, just as he thought, barely enough room for both of them, so he scooted closer to keep from falling.
Morpheus could change things, although he refrained from changing the ground under Hob’s feet as often as possible. Still, that Morpheus had given them just this much space… no, he couldn't think about that, it was too much of a temptation to convince himself of the things that he wanted, rather than the things that were.
"Do you want to see the galaxies?" Morpheus asked, turning to him.
Morpheus was so close that Hob thought he could feel his breath, which took him by surprise, because he never even thought if Morpheus needed to breathe. Then again, it could be something that he could choose to do, rather than something that he needed to do.
Strictly speaking, Hob didn't need to breathe, although he wasn't able to hold his breath indefinitely, or even that much longer than a normal person would be able to. He figured he probably was as good at it as a diver who didn’t use oxygen, less because he could use his air well and more because he could push away that despair that said that he was going to die if he didn’t catch a breath for longer than most people. He still remembered what it was like to be drowned, knowing that he had to hold his breath but not being able to, having his lungs fill with water, burning with the pressure, but he was still alive.
Nothing could make him give up on wanting to live, it was not in his nature, he loved to live too much, but some moments were almost enough to tempt him. At times, the only thing that kept him going was that things had to get better eventually, and there was still so much to live for.
"I do," he said, looking at the sky rather than at Morpheus.
They were too close, if he turned as well, it would be almost impossible to resist kissing Morpheus, and that would be the stupidest thing that he ever did, or at least a top contender. Hob knew he was too impulsive, although he was always trying to learn to be better and think before he acted, after how much trouble he got in for acting too hastily. He had to be better than that now, because last time lost him Morpheus for too long.
Morpheus told him that he had been kept away against his will, but that didn’t mean that he would have made it to their meeting, had he been free. He was a different person now, since he was released, he was more open than he had been before. So all the regret that Hob felt through the decades, wondering if he would ever see his friend again, not even knowing who he was or what he was called, all of that was still there.
It was a strange thing, being filled with regret over something that he didn’t think was wrong, and yet it was how he felt. He was right to call Morpheus his friend then, although perhaps he could have worded it with a little more tact. It was Morpheus’ reaction that was disproportionate, but that didn’t mean that Hob could count on Morpheus seeing the error of his ways and coming back on his own, admitting that he was wrong. Morpheus hadn’t actually quite admitted that. He called Hob his friend, and offered an apology of sorts, as well as a justification, for his delay, but even after months, he hadn’t said anything about being wrong to leave the way he did.
This was the way that Morpheus was, take him or leave him, and Hob didn’t need Morpheus to recognize he was wrong, as long as he acted like it. An apology wasn’t as important as correcting the offending behavior.
Morpheus raised the hand that was holding Hob’s, not letting go of him aside from raising two fingers, and gestured at the sky. From each side of the horizon, giant nebulae as Hob had only seen in artists’ renditions appeared, moving slowly across the sky. They were spinning lazily, with each rotation coming closer to one another.
“This is your galaxy, and a neighboring one. They are approaching each other. This collision will take place billions of years in your future, although it’s happening much faster here,” Morpheus explained as he lowered their hands.
Hob had seen a documentary about it once. Most people didn’t worry about this sort of thing, like galaxies colliding and the sun turning into a red giant and swallowing the Earth, but then again, most people could be reasonably certain that they would be dead by then. Even if he couldn’t conceive of what a billion, or five billion years meant, he doubted he would want to die by then.
“Any chance I can get a ride somewhere else? I don’t think I would want to be around for that, not that this means I’ll want to die,” he said, mostly as a joke.
He never thought that far ahead, especially not since all the times when it seemed like the whole world might be destroyed. He had long term plans, especially for his finances, wanting to make sure that he would never be so poor again as to starve past the point of death and then just keep going, but that meant centuries, nothing beyond that. He had learned that things changed too much for anything like that, and he wanted to change with them. If he started making too many plans, that was a sure way to get stuck in a century, and although the process wasn’t quite linear, he thought that he quite liked changing with the times.
“Will you still want to live then? In around one billion years, the Earth will be uninhabitable to anything that can die, but you would still live, with your flesh burning from the heat and unable to breathe. In another billion, the Earth will no longer exist, taken by the growth of the sun. The collision of these galaxies should have no worse effects than that,” Morpheus said, seemingly taking him at his word.
Morpheus made a good point. Hob wanted to live because there was still so much to see, so much to experience, and even the worst of times always had a sliver of hope. He couldn’t be sure that the same would happen once all was destroyed. Would there be a point in living if there was nothing left to live for and no future?
“That’s where you’re wrong. You don’t know people, not really. We’re an industrious sort. If people can keep themselves from killing each other, and destroying the planet before the sun gets the chance to do it, then I bet we’ll be on other planets by then. People die all the time, but humanity is like me, it doesn’t want to die,” he said, and he meant it this time.
He couldn’t be sure of what was going to happen, but he saw humanity pull through a lot of times when people thought that it would be the end. If they kept fighting against it, kept pushing for survival, then he didn’t doubt that there would be a chance for humanity to survive even that.
He was optimistic like that, a consequence of seeing so many horrible and seemingly hopeless situations giving way to improvements. He might even volunteer for something like that, on the telly they always said that every other possible planet was too far away and generations would die on the way there, but he wouldn’t, and he could reach the destination even if all water, food, and air ran out. He was the perfect candidate, except for how he’d be crawling up the wall with boredom if he had to do something like that alone. Maybe not so much if he could do so with a handsome king to share his nights…
“I suppose we’ll find our answer, if you still wish to live after all that time. A life whose years can be counted in the billions, and carrying on without an end in sight, it can be… you may not think so now, but even you may yet grow tired of living,” Morpheus said, turning his head to look at the sky.
The way he said it, Hob couldn’t help but wonder if he spoke from experience. Hob had no idea how old Morpheus was, only that he was there since ‘nearly the beginning’, whatever that meant. Trillions of years probably, the age of that universe and of others, numbers that no human mind could truly understand. Could it be possible that Morpheus was tired of living? Was that the reason why he was so interested in Hob’s experiences, wanted so much to understand why he still wanted to live after everything that happened?
Hob wouldn’t dare to ask, it seemed too sensitive even for the friendship that they had now. If Dream couldn’t talk of his own pain over being captured, Hob doubted he would talk about this… existential dread or whatever this was.
“I’ll never grow tired of living. No offense to your sister, but I told you, Death is for suckers,” Hob said, fully believing in his words.
Maybe he would change his mind in time, but right now he believed that he wouldn’t, so it had to be enough for him to be able to say this. If he ever changed his mind, he’d deal with it then, there was no point in suffering in advance.
The galaxies started to collide, their edges blending together. It was funny, every time he heard about how the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy would eventually collide, he always imagined it would be destructive, obliterating everything in their path, planets and stars hitting each other and breaking everything on the way. It wasn’t what happened. He didn’t see any explosions, only stardust mixing together, stars moving from the sky but not disappearing. Seeing it like this, it didn’t seem catastrophic, but beautiful. Just one more change in an ever evolving life, only not of a person or a planet, but of the universe.
“You are fascinating, Hob Gadling,” Morpheus said, turning to him again.
Hob couldn’t take his eyes out of the spectacle, but he squeezed Morpheus’ hand, showing that he was listening. The words burrowed into his heart. It wasn’t always that he could impress Morpheus, especially like this, but he was glad every time it happened. It was so odd to him that Morpheus would call him fascinating, when Morpheus was the mysterious one, a creature impossibly old and so fundamental to the universe, as important of an element as Death.
The galaxies seemed trapped together now, mixing more stars at every rotation, as if they were dancing in the sky. A few of the stars seemed to be tossed away, flying from the galaxies and into space, but most of them remained, finding a new place to fit.
It could have taken a billion years, or maybe just a few seconds, but the dance of the galaxies ended, and a new one was formed in their place, a huge, elliptical galaxy, still full of stars, although seemingly more stretched than the other two had been.
It was brilliant, and he turned to say just that, forgetting that he was trying to not look at Morpheus from so close. Morpheus was still looking at him, had been for most of the time, as if unmoved by the demonstration that he had put up for Hob. It seemed like the kind of thing that should move even someone like Morpheus, but instead he was staring directly at Hob, as if he was more worthy of being seen than all of those stars.
Seeing Morpheus like this now, Hob realized he was wrong to look at the galaxies, because the spectacle he had in front of him now was much better than even the most impressive sights of nature. With the way that Morpheus was looking at him, so close, Hob had no hope of being cautious.
Hob leaned forward and kissed him, for a moment not considering the disastrous consequences that this could have. He acted without thinking, kissing Morpheus because he couldn’t bear not to, he had held back for too long, and this was more than he could take.
Morpheus shifted next to him, and Hob thought that he was going to pull away and show all his wrath, but instead he shifted his arm so he could put a hand on the back of Hob’s neck and pull him closer, deepening the kiss.
It was more than Hob could have hoped for, that Morpheus would be interested in him in this way. Maybe Hob had been more hurt by their fight than even he realized, by the way that he was trying to be so careful, to the point of ignoring all the signs.
It took him over a century to get near the water again without panicking after he was drowned, a lot longer than that before he was able to swim. He was so scared of being destitute again and starving like that again that he sought profit without caring of the consequences, and although he tried to be more conscientious now, he still took great care to have funds in places that couldn’t be tied to him, in case he needed to disappear and start again.
He called Morpheus a friend and was rejected, so he never dared thinking of him as more than what Morpheus was offering. When something terrible happened, he might compensate for it too much, and not even notice it until it was too late.
He didn’t need to breathe to stay alive, and he was almost sure that people didn’t need to breathe inside of dreams, but old habits die hard, so he had to break the kiss, although he barely pulled away.
Hob studied Morpheus’ face, trying to understand what was happening there.
Matthew’s words came back to him, ‘I know you said not to interrupt when you are on a date unless it’s an emergency,’ if date meant something romantic there, then the words implied a regular occurrence. It didn’t have to mean that it was about Hob, he wouldn’t want to presume too much, but they had been meeting somewhat often since Morpheus came to meet him thirty years late in the Waking World.
Although, if that was the case, he didn’t know why Morpheus would be so quick to hush Matthew away from Hob when he said it, unless… Unless Morpheus also didn’t want Hob to think that he was presuming too much. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but few things between them did.
He had to admit, thinking of it this way, walking around holding hands and bringing Hob to watch galaxies colliding was pretty romantic. Definitely date material.
“I…” Hob licked his lips, trying to think of what to say. ‘I loved you since before I even knew your name, I would have never stopped waiting for you,’ seemed a bit too intense for a first kiss. He couldn’t think of anything that would be good enough to say, nothing that would express his feelings while not risking sending Morpheus storming off again. So he said the first thing on his mind, “So, this is a date, right? Pretty fancy, bringing all these stars here.”
Alright. It could have been worse. Not by much, but it could still have been worse. He wasn’t entirely sure how it could, but in all the infinite combination of things that he could have said, there had to be something worst than that.
Morpheus raised an eyebrow. “I thought my intentions were clear,” he said, with just enough of a teasing tone to show that he probably knew he wasn’t being all that clear at all.
Or maybe Hob was projecting, hoping that they had both been fools, rather than just him.
Whenever they would meet in the Dreaming, Morpheus would always take him to the most impressive places, displaying his power and control over that realm. One might say he was trying to make a good impression, or maybe showing off a little bit, although Hob was sure that if he accused Morpheus of showing off, then he would be up for some dreamless nights, or at least some Dream-less nights. Taking the kiss into consideration, he could see how these things could be seen as part of courtship.
“Just making sure here. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you can be a little… mysterious, cryptic, indecipherable,” he said, trying for a flirty tone, and hoping it would land the mark rather than offend.
With Morpheus, it was hard to know. Hob himself had started flirting with him centuries ago, and he thought that Morpheus did some flirting too, especially with those eyes, that way he looked at him, but that didn’t mean Hob could risk acting on that hunch.
It seemed to be the right thing to say, because Morpheus smiled at him and caressed the back of his neck with a thumb. Hob liked where this particular dream was going.
Then, Morpheus frowned, and Hob could tell immediately that someone was wrong. Was it something he said? Something he thought? He didn’t know yet if Morpheus could know what he was thinking when they were there.
“Do you have something important in the morning?” Morpheus asked, turning his head slightly as if listening for something.
It was Hob’s turn to frown, in his case confused at the sudden change in this conversation, especially when morning seemed so far away. They couldn’t have been there more than a couple of hours, he thought, even if time seemed strange there. The last thing he wanted now was to think about the morning, but Morpheus had made him a question, and he would do his best to answer.
Did he have something important? He couldn’t quite remember, not seemed important right then and there, nothing besides getting to kiss Morpheus again. Then he remembered.
“Oh, it’s finals week. I have to give the finals to my students, and monitor as they take it. Nothing too serious, but it’s important to them,” he said.
One time, he got in one minute late, and he could see the anxiety in their faces. A dozen or so were all crammed at the doorway, trying to see if someone was coming. He tried to always get there fifteen minutes or so early after that, he didn’t want to cause them so much anxiety.
Morpheus nodded, and gave him a quick kiss. “Then it’s time for you to wake up,” he said against Hob’s lips.
“Wait, what….” Hob asked, but realized that he was talking alone.
He wasn’t at that hill anymore, laying down next to Morpheus. He was in his own room, his own bed, his alarm ringing. He reached over to his phone to shut it off, noticing it was three minutes past the time of his alarm. He shut off the white noise machine as well, tired of the sound of rain. Maybe that had been the reason why he was dreaming of rain so often these past few weeks. Come to think of it, the machine was new, he had tried noise canceling headphones before, but found them to be uncomfortable to sleep in.
He laid back down, covering his eyes with an arm, although he knew that he had to get up. He wondered if he could fall back to sleep right then and go meet Morpheus again, but he knew that he couldn’t. He still had a life to live, and commitments that he couldn’t ignore. Besides, his students were counting on him to show up, and he wouldn’t compound their anxiety over finals by disappearing. It might not be important in the grand scheme of things, but it was important to them, and so it was important to him as well.
Still, if only he had set the alarm to ten minutes later, maybe they could have talked about this, because right now Hob wasn’t sure of what happened and what it meant. So Morpheus wanted to kiss him, and wanted to date him, that was the good news, but he still needed to understand what that meant for them.
If the last times were any indication, it would be weeks until he saw Morpheus again and got his answer. Until then, he’d have to live with his own doubts, and overthink every aspect of that night.
He got up and checked his phone again, he still had time for a quick shower before leaving if he hurried. He could worry about what happened afterwards, when he was bored out of his mind keeping a physical presence in a room just to keep students from overtly cheating, although he never tried to catch anyone who wasn’t too brazen.
Before he could reach the bathroom, he heard a faint knock at the window, like a tree branch on a windy night. Except he didn’t have any trees close to his bedroom window, so he opened the curtains, finding Matthew there, hitting the glass with his beak.
He unlocked and lifted the window, only slightly worried about what it said about him that he could recognize Matthew among all the possible ravens that might appear in the city. He hoped that he never accidentally talked to a normal raven thinking it was Matthew, because that could turn embarrassing for him quite fast.
“Matthew, is there something wrong?” he asked, already accustomed to talking to him.
The funny part was, aside from not dying, and the strangeness of the once a century meetings, his life used to be quite normal. The attack from Lady Johanna Constantine didn’t count, as that was still within the strangeness of those meetings, and she had only attacked him because she was after his friend. Hob didn’t even have to lift a finger, with how easily his friend defeated her.
But in everything else he had managed to keep a quite eventful, but still plenty mundane life. Morpheus had been back for only some months, not even a year, and Hob was having dates in the Dreaming and talking to a talking raven on his window, as if that was normal. He couldn’t complain, but still, that was really something.
“The boss wanted me to tell that he’s sorry to have to wake you, but you were ignoring your alarm and he doesn’t want to make you miss important stuff. He said he has stuff to do now, but is sure to get to you tonight, so wait for him if he doesn’t show up right away,” Matthew said, although Hob was sure that Morpheus wouldn’t have said he had ‘stuff to do’. Hob could almost hear him saying ‘I must tend to other duties’ or something of the sort. “I mean, it’s not like you have much choice since you can’t control your dreams like that so it’s not as if you could go anywhere, but he still asked you to wait.And I’m saying he’s probably going to ignore all of that stuff and go running to you as soon as you arrive, but don’t tell him I told you that. And don’t tell the boss lady. Lucienne told us to pretend that we don’t notice that the boss has fallen heads over heels for you. Actually, don’t tell anyone that I said anything other than the message that I was supposed to give to you, the boss explicitly told me to say his words exactly and nothing else. I don’t remember his exact words, but I’m sure this is enough for you to understand.”
At least this explained why Morpheus didn’t want Matthew talking to him. Matthew did seem to have a tendency to editorialize messages, as well as adding his own comments. Not that Hob minded, in this case. Even if Matthew was adding a little color to the story, it was nice knowing that apparently it was an open secret in the Dreaming that Morpheus liked him. Adding to that the fact that Lucienne had called Hob ‘his human’, it painted quite the picture as to how the denizens of the Dreaming saw their relationship. Which meant, as a relationship.
He wouldn’t dare thinking too much of Matthew saying that Morpheus was ‘heads over heels’ for him, but it probably meant something good, that Matthew was able to notice something there. And Lucienne the librarian - and probably royal advisor - too. The people who were closest to Morpheus thought that he liked Hob, that was great news.
“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. Thank you for the message,” he said. “And you can tell him that I’ll be there, waiting for him.”
Matthew nodded, which was still a little strange coming from a bird, and flew away, so Hob closed the window so he could finish getting ready. He’d have to hurry now if he didn’t want to be late, but he couldn’t find it in himself to mind. Maybe he could give every student half a mark up as an apology.
He would have his answer that night, and by what Matthew had said, he was willing to bet that it would be something that he would like. If he thought that he was looking forward to sleeping before, that didn’t compare to how he felt now. He could hardly wait to see Morpheus again. Even if they still had so much of it, he hoped that they would finally stop wasting time.