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The smell of lunch—of sesame and honey and spelt—followed Calliope as she slipped into the great shifting rooms of the library carrying a plate with an easy grace.
A slice of honey cake was drizzled with excess honey and chopped dates and sat beside a small bowl of pitted olives, and in another small bowl balanced just as well on the plate was a chickpea porridge with bits of salted meat and olive oil dotted neatly over it.
It had been a habit Calliope had fallen into when she accepted Daniel’s offer of shelter—of safety and time to recover and home and maybe, maybe, more. The Dreaming could provide her with anything she desired, and when she was here—when she was not busy helping those who prayed to her still—she found she often desired movement. The feeling of shaping dough between her fingers, or stirring pots that bubbled and spat, or pitting olives and dates and cherries, were labors sweet and grounding in their simplicity.
When Lucienne came into view, Calliope’s chest tightened.
She was bent over her work as she often was, focus etched into the corners of her pretty, dark eyes, and writing quickly and neatly in some large ledger. She had thrown herself so deeply into her own work, as well, and Calliope could read the need for certainty—for stability—in every sharp ‘T’ crossed, as though if she etched the ink deep enough into the pages it might stay there for good.
Calliope came to Lucienne’s elbow and settled the plate at her side, drawing a soft gasp from Lucienne.
“Kor,” Calliope said, leaning down to catch Lucienne’s face as she looked up, pressing the softest kiss to her warm cheek, “when did you last eat? Neither Daniel nor I would have you work yourself to nothing.”
“I have new volumes to catalog, still, my lady,” Lucienne said, though her gaze lingered on Calliope’s soft lips—and, then, on the dates that were warmed by the curls of steam that rose from the cake’s cut side.
“And they will be there after you have eaten.” Calliope drew a chair over to sit by Lucienne’s side, a conspiratorial smile touching her lips. “Besides which, I was hopeful that you would share one of your personal wines with me.”
Calliope knew well enough how much Lucienne needed to be useful . And no amount of assurance, of ‘you are, you are,’ would convince her half as much as being deferred to would. It was not that Calliope could not find other wines she enjoyed; it was that she requested Lucienne share her own—share the ones she had selected for her own personal tastes.
It was Lucienne knowing that Calliope preferred her wine that finally pried her pen from her fingers, settling it in its stand before she stood from her desk.
“If that is your request,” Lucienne said, “then I would not deny you, my lady. If you wished, though, I could bring a few bottles to your rooms.”
“They would not taste as sweet were I to open them alone.”
Lucienne blushed. On her deep skin, it could be difficult to catch when affection caught her so off guard, but Calliope watched the soft of her cheeks darken ever-slightly with a growing fondness that filled her heart more than she’d imagined it could be.
“I will not attempt to dissuade you, then,” Lucienne said as she went to the small wine rack she kept at the base of her one of her larger filing cabinets. “I’ve learned well enough not to argue with gods.”
“No,” Calliope laughed, watching Lucienne examine her bottles until she found one she felt would go best with lunch, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you need to argue with gods. The few times I’ve been around when they were visiting, you’ve been perfectly capable of convincing them going back to their chambers was their own idea in the first place.”
And if pride sat in the corners of Lucienne’s eyes when she came back to her desk, well, Calliope had always imagined it to be a silly sin.
As Lucienne poured them both glasses of a light, sweet red, she allowed herself a soft laugh. “I don’t imagine I know what you are referencing, my lady, but I am grateful that you think so highly of me.”
Calliope took her own glass, and leaned back in her chair, and smelled the sweetness of the fruits that drifted up over the top of the rim. “One day,” she said as Lucienne sat back down, “I will earn my name from you, Kor. For now, perhaps I could ask your accompaniment by the river, tomorrow.”
“I’m afraid I truly do have a great deal of work to get finished, my lady, or I would like nothing more.” The apology sat neatly in Lucienne’s voice; ages of dancing around faerie customs had taught her how to imply its presence without announcement. There were always trickster spirits happy to turn the word ‘sorry’ into a key that needed just the right lock to get them what they sought.
Those things seldom weighed on Lucienne. She loved the challenges of picking through language for just the perfect phrase to get from where she was to where she wanted to be. The riddles and labyrinthine entanglements fitted to her comfortably and she reveled in escaping their trappings.
Lucienne could not help but feel she was dancing through something far more delicate, now. Still, she watched Calliope drink her wine and she wanted . The dust still hung in the air around something like a partnership born from loss and a need for comfort and from fear and Lucienne wanted . The goddess had survived so much, had borne every bit the impossible weight that Lucienne had borne, and still Lucienne looked upon her and she wanted.
“My lady?” Lucienne started, and Calliope did not sit fully up though her attention moved wholly to Lucienne. “May I ask something of you?”
Anything, Calliope wanted to say. Please, Calliope wanted to say. Show me how to help you shoulder the impossible weight of this wretched century, Calliope wanted to say.
“Of course,” Calliope said.
“Would you,” Lucienne asked, “when you’re finished with your wanderings tomorrow, come and spend some time with me again? We could open some windows upstairs, and you could make yourself comfortable while I re-organize the upper shelves.”
“Lucienne,” Calliope chided, sweet smile playing at her lips as she sat forward at last to take one of Lucienne’s hands in her own, thumbing over the sturdy callouses on her nimble fingers. “Do you not think I would do more for you? Have I been so unclear in my affections?”
Lucienne’s breath caught in her throat; Calliope was so close to her, now, and she could smell the way the wine played with the soft scents of the goddess’s breath. She swallowed.
“You are direct,” Lucienne admitted after a stretched moment. “I am… uncertain. Not through any fault of your own—”
“It feels ephemeral,” Calliope guessed. Lucienne nodded. “It feels ephemeral, and you do not know when this, too, will be torn away.”
“I have, if you will excuse me this directness, felt the weight of my years for longer than you have been alive, Calliope. I’ve seen that there is no true permanence—not even among them. But… I want this. Whatever this is between you, and me, and him, it is welcome. I am just afraid that if I love it too much I will be lessened when it ends.”
“You are afraid of obsoletion. You think the only way you can be loved is if you are useful.” Calliope did not need to see the pain that etched into Lucienne’s features to know she’d found one of the sorest places in the still-healing sea of scars her lover hid.
Lucienne did not answer; she did not need to.
Calliope set her glass aside, and reached out to Lucienne to tug the tall woman into her arms, into her lap, finding only the faintest moment of resistance before Lucienne let herself be held.
“When I was young,” Calliope began, and did not give Lucienne time to protest that she was still young—at least to her, at least on the wild and unreasonable and unfair cosmic scale she lived within, “there was a story wherein the Western Wind killed the mortal lover of another god, and it was all the man’s lover could do to remake him in the shape of a flower.”
“Hyacinthos, and Apollo, and Zephyrus,” Lucienne provided, the names coming to her easily; she knew all the stories well. Every story ever written, and those only dreamed.
“Hyacinthos,” Calliope confirmed. “And that is where the story as it is told ends. It does not tell of how Apollo forevermore cultivated those delicate hyacinth flowers within his garden, or came to them each morning to speak the day’s prophecies to them, or to tell them the stories he’d heard or the business he’d attended to, or simply to sit within their company.
“Lucienne, if you were reduced to nothing more than a flower I would sit by your side and tell you stories until you bloomed.”
It was not like Lucienne to let herself weep. She had not wept when the last of the Major Arcana left the decaying realm. She had not wept when the library had vanished. She had not wept when Morpheus had returned, nor when he had left for the final time.
As the first tears spilled over her cheeks, she wondered how long they’d been hiding. How deep did the wells run that once the dam broke she could not stop the flow of them? Her vision blurred as Calliope gently took the glasses from her face to set them aside, and soon she found herself pressing her face against Calliope’s warm shoulder, her body shaking against her own will as she found she could no longer stop herself from weeping.
“I am here,” Calliope soothed, and held Lucienne close, and let her weep as loud and hard as she needed to. “I am here,” Calliope said, and spoke it as a prayer. “I am here,” Calliope said as she pressed soft kisses to Lucienne’s brow and rubbed her back through the thick of her coat. “I am here,” Calliope said, and Lucienne did not notice when Daniel came wandering into the library, alerted to Lucienne’s distress by Mervyn.
He kept his distance, standing awkwardly half-way across from where Calliope held Lucienne close until the goddess met his gaze.
Is she hurt? Calliope heard in the back of her mind, and she did not jump at the intrusion. Reality obeyed its master, here; Dream could speak to her when and where and how he needed.
Not so visibly. Calliope turned her attention back to Lucienne, the woman slowly beginning to calm in her arms. She has lost her home twice, now. I do not know how to make her feel safe.
I fear only time will heal that hurt. Am I welcome with you both?
Calliope smiled, soft and sad and earnest. You are , she answered. Will you call her to you? She will rest if you will rest.
He nodded, and as Lucienne raised her head to take notice of her surroundings once more—to take notice of him—she did not have the chance to greet him before he spoke.
Lucienne? I would not pull you from Calliope’s side.
With a soft sniff, embarrassment bloomed in Lucienne’s chest and she moved to quickly slip from Calliope’s lap as she pulled her handkerchief from her pocket, dabbing quickly at her eyes. “You are not, my lord. I was—I am cataloging books. Calliope only meant to encourage me to take a break.”
Calliope did not correct her, letting Lucienne do what she felt she must to retain her dignity.
Then finish your break. When you have time—and not before—I would speak to you in private. I will be in my quarters until then.
With that, Dream vanished from the library and Lucienne took a moment to remind herself that he was not Morpheus. He did not need to have a fondness for moving physically between rooms as her lord had had for so long.
“My lady, I—”
“Don’t,” Calliope interrupted, standing from her seat to take Lucienne’s face between her hands. “Please. Don’t ever apologize for letting yourself be soft in front of me.”
“I do not want to burden your further—” Lucienne began, only to be cut off once more as Calliope stood on the tips of her toes to press a quieting kiss to her lips, gentle and warm and affectionate.
“I wish that you would,” Calliope said. “I wish that you would let me carry everything for you, even for only a little while. Does it not ease your own burdens when I share mine with you, my heart? Do you not think that I would feel the same?”
“I—had not thought of that,” Lucienne admitted, her shoulders going slack once more as she held Calliope’s gaze, brown eyes warm and pretty and soft as earth. “I will try,” she continued, still glowing in secret to be given sweet nicknames, “if only to help ease your pain. I will try. But my lord has called for me, and I will not leave him waiting.”
With a warm smile, Calliope nodded and at last let go of Lucienne. “Go to him, then. I will see you both when there is time.”
And, without more delay than she could justify, Lucienne slipped off from the Library.
The distance from one room to the next changed from day to day, and sometimes it could take her hours to find Dream’s quarters; toward Morpheus’s end, she had spent days searching for the door only to find herself over and over in the empty throne room.
When he’d come home, she had told him she had never felt abandoned by him; when she’d said the words, then, she’d meant them. The stretching years between his disappearance and his return were painful in a way she had not yet reconciled with her new life and even so she had known he would come back. He had told her he would come back.
When he had hidden from her, then; when the air felt tense and far too still, when the storms had gathered out over the sea, when the castle was full of busy and bustle and don’t talk about it , in the creeping days before the Furies descended, she knew what the others, then, must have felt.
In those days, she felt abandoned .
Today, Lucienne found Daniel’s quarters down the hall and up a single flight of stairs from the Library door. She knocked, but it was only a formality; she’d been requested. Out of ritual or habit, she waited for Dream’s voice to invite her inside.
Come in.
She did, shutting the door quietly behind her as she made her way over to where Dream sat on the side of his bed.
“My lord? You wished to see me?” Lucienne began, and wished in quiet that her eyes would not betray the tears she’d shed before; that he had seen her weep felt humiliating enough. The continued evidence only ached more.
I do. Daniel held out a hand, and with only a brief steadying breath Lucienne took hold of it, letting herself be pulled closer until she came to sit at Daniel’s side. I would see you without pretense, Lucienne. I would… speak plainly, if you would hear me.
“I prefer when you are direct,” she said, and still let Dream hold her to his side. It was a different kind of comfort than Morpheus’s touch had been—and that, too, was rare enough. If there were one thing she could admit to herself in the quiet of her own mind, it would be that Daniel was more affectionate than the Dream that had come before him had been. He did not hesitate in showing her how much he longed for her touch. She wondered, now and then, if that had been the point—or, perhaps, some part of it; was Morpheus finding his self too small for the love he held? Did he shed his old self like a spider, peeling off the old molt to allow himself more room for all the warmth he found himself at the heart of?
It was a nice dream, at least. In truth, she did not think she would ever ask.
Daniel touched her chin, and tipped her face up to meet her gaze, and Lucienne watched the stars sway in his eyes as he watched the warmth of sweet, dark brown in hers.
I am not good at resting. You knew this of me, before; I find it is still true, now.
“I have said before that you overwork yourself, my lord.” There was affection in her tone, now; the growing map of her new lord held so many familiarities.
His amused smile lifted a light back into his eyes. You are no better, keeper of my stories.
Lucienne felt her face warm. “You are recovering, still; I will rest when you are settled.”
Or we could rest, now, together—and find the time to do so often. I could rest more easily if it was for you. I could hold you for an age if it eased your mind.
She was hardly a girl, now, and she prided herself on her composure. Still, to have both of them fuss so sweetly over her today had softened her somewhat, and Lucienne let out a soft sigh as she nodded. “I could… delegate, I suppose, some of my own work. Perhaps you could dream Matthew a second self—a form with hands that could help me with library work when I find myself overwhelmed.”
I would give you a dozen assistants if you would ask.
“I’m picky,” Lucienne said, and saw the teasing look as Daniel opened his mouth to speak, changing his mind at the last moment; she knew he knew. “Matthew knows how I like things done. And… I think expanding his duties in your change might give him something more to focus on when he finds himself spiraling.”
Daniel nodded. Matthew, too, had been through much more than any of them should have had to survive. If that is what you want, it will be done. Now, will you come and lie with me, my light? I am weary, and you will not convince me that you are not also exhausted, and I would know your warmth.
“You and Calliope, both,” she said with the softest laugh, barely there but honest, real, and she moved to let Dream undress her.
He was gentle with her; he always was. Daniel still did not know his own strength, or how far he could go before hurting her—before hurting either of them—and he did not trust the echoes of memories and instinct enough to let them be his sole guide when he touched Lucienne. She was precious to him. He would be sure she knew it.
When she was naked, she climbed beneath the covers of his bed and his robes dissolved to nothing as he climbed in beside her. Still, she’d seen his body, void as an angel’s; this was about warmth and touch and comfort. He was asking nothing more, now.
“Will you hold me?” Lucienne asked, and could hear in her own voice how fragile she sounded. Calliope’s voice chided her the moment her pride tried to tell her she was being childish. ‘Don’t ever apologize for letting yourself be soft in front of me,’ Lucienne heard, and did her best to press those words to her heart.
Happily. And what Dream said, he meant , pulling her in against his cool chest and wrapping spindly arms around her, delicate hand cupping her head as he focused on matching his breath to hers.
Dream did not sleep; Lucienne knew that. Even so, as she settled in his arms she found herself fighting against an exhaustion she had thus far evaded out of sheer determination, and she stifled a yawn as Dream hugged her tighter.
Sleep, Lucienne. I will be here when you wake, and we will discuss, then, a schedule for us both to rest by.
Lulled by his soft voice, by his cool body against her own and the warm covers over them both, Lucienne closed her eyes and did not fight sleep as it pulled her gently from her own mind.