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When one is entrusted with the collective unconscious of humanity, one sometimes finds oneself busier than one would like. Not only are there dreams and nightmares of seven billion mortals (and scores more of those for whom mortality is not an affliction) to oversee, but the dreams and nightmares themselves must be kept in order. Further still is the fact that the entire realm of the Dreaming must be ruled over. It would be a near-impossible task for any one person, but for an Endless, it is merely existence.
Still, Dream of the Endless manages to keep a keen ear out for those that he…has been known to share an acquaintance with. He has banished nightmares meant to torment Johanna Constantine about mistakes she has made in her colored past. Solace and friendship have sometimes been found in Hob Gadling’s dreams, where the immortal man and Lord of the Dreaming keep company with one another. Rose and Jed Walker—Jed in particular, who deserves nothing but kindness after what he had been through—are sure to receive good dreams when Morpheus can tell that they are becoming weighed down by their Waking lives. It is his own way of being present for those he has a connection with, even when he cannot do so in the human sense of the word.
So when Morpheus begins to sense that a number of people suddenly dream about Calliope in earnest one night, he finds himself immensely pleased, for that must mean that the Muse is open to bestowing inspiration on humans once more. Though Morpheus continues to remain extremely wary of the human race, he knew that Calliope would be unable to stay jaded for long. She and her sisters loved nothing more than serving humanity, being worshipped in return for gifts of music, song, poetry, and knowledge. Calliope’s mortals have always been particularly creative with their endowments, and even at his most contentious moments with the goddess he once called wife, he still enjoyed reading the stories that filled the library of the Dreaming.
(Morpheus is of the belief that, were he not to encounter young Will Shaxberd in the White Horse in 1589, Calliope would have found him soon after and ensured humanity had the opportunity to read the works of William Shakespeare)
The works of mortals are at their best when they allow the caring and talented hand of a Muse to guide them. He cannot resist and thus dips into the dreamscapes of those who have come to know the name Calliope.
Instead of finding humans dreaming up new works of art, poetry, or song, Morpheus finds to his surprise that they’re dreaming Calliope herself. He recognizes these mortals after a moment—friends of yours. Friends of Calliope’s, too, he supposes. One, Evangeline Rodriguez, sits at a computer that is open on multiple social media sites and search engines. On each webpage, she types in every possible variation of Calliope’s name and scrolls fruitlessly.
“How hard is it to find one woman’s social media or contact information in the twenty-first century?” she laments. “Calliope deserves to know…they were roommates, after all.”
A mental alarm begins to go off in Morpheus’s mind at the last statement. Evangeline must be talking about you. But what is so important that you couldn’t reach out to Calliope yourself using the method she described to you in her last letter? Morpheus moves to the next dream to investigate further.
Ethan Day takes a stack of papers from a police officer. His face is ashen as he thumbs through them, but there’s a look of determination in his eyes that says that he refuses to let any hesitance stop him from facing facts.
“How far is this going to be distributed?” he asks the officer. “We have a friend who’s overseas right now, and none of us has her current contact information to reach her.”
“Where is this friend currently?” the faceless officer questions.
“Greece. We’re hoping that she’ll be able to see that her best friend’s missing and reach out to us.”
Morpheus glances down at the papers in Ethan’s hands and feels the earth fall from under his feet. The papers are missing posters. Missing posters with your name and face on them. The discovery is so jarring that the dream ends without his full consent, and he finds himself sprawled on the floor of his throne room, gasping for breath that he doesn’t need.
Although he would like to chalk both dreams up to nightmares and leave them at that, Morpheus knows that there is likely truth to them. Why would two separate people be dreaming about the same occurrence, hoping to reach the same person, without there being any correlation? Further, now that he thinks about it, he can’t remember the last time that he felt you in the Dreaming.
A visit to you in the Dreaming after Calliope had first returned to Greece fulfilled what Morpheus saw as his obligation to give you the boon you had earned, but he soon found himself returning time and time again. It was…freeing, in a way, to spend time with somebody who had already found out what he considered to be some of his closely-kept secrets and did not expect anything of him. Though he usually saw you weekly, sometimes business kept him away for multiple weeks at a time, which is what had happened recently. Even then, he tried his hardest to feel for you in the Dreaming, seeing it as his duty to ensure that you were enjoying his realm. When was the last time he had consciously made the effort to check in? It must have been almost two weeks ago.
Morpheus’s first thought is to go immediately to the library to find your book, or perhaps to the Waking so that he might find out for himself what has become of you. Before he can do either, he’s reminded of who it is that has unwittingly brought this information to his attention. No, if he’s to do anything, then Calliope must be involved as well. And unlike your mortal friends, he knows just where to find her.
(Lucienne watches the skies rapidly darken as her Lord brusquely explains that he is visiting the lady Calliope and leaving the realm in the Librarian’s capable hands, and she knows without a doubt that whoever is the source of His Majesty’s anger should, perhaps, be praying to whatever deity they believe in for salvation.)
Unfortunately, the easy trip to Mount Helicon that Morpheus was hoping for is immediately dashed upon arrival when he’s met by multiple muses, none of whom are Calliope.
Euterpe, never one to keep her emotions to herself, scowls as she abruptly ceases playing music and sets her flute down. “Ugh, Oneiros? I thought we were rid of you millennia ago.”
Morpheus has to fight to keep his expression level. He never did like Calliope’s sisters, and it appears the feelings are still very much mutual. “A pleasure, as always, Euterpe. Is Calliope available?”
“For you? Never,” Urania taunts from the star she’s resting on.
“Stop that, sisters.” Calliope descends from a set of stairs, as radiant as she’s ever been now that she’s free from her metaphysical shackles. “Oneiros is no enemy of ours.”
“No enemy of yours, maybe.” Clio levels him with a glare, one that Morpheus can’t help but return. There’s only so much patience one being can have, after all.
“That’s enough,” Calliope chides. She wraps her arm around Morpheus’s and begins to walk him down the path. “Come, Oneiros. We shall talk in private.”
Though it has been many thousands of years since he last visited the lands of Greece with any regularity, there is still a sense of comfort and familiarity in the verdant hillsides he and Calliope wander down to escape prying eyes. These were the landscapes that nurtured his own son when he was not with his father in the safety of the Dreaming, after all, and he will always be thankful for that.
Morpheus kisses Calliope’s hand in a friendly greeting when they are sure not to be disturbed. “I wish that I were here under happier circumstances, my dear Calliope.”
“I know why you are here.” Calliope’s eyes reflect the same dread that Morpheus has carried since finding himself staring at your smiling face under a harsh red ‘MISSING’ banner.
“You do?”
“I have heard the desperate prayers of my mortal friends as they tried to figure out how to get in contact with me, but hoped that it was for a different reason. Something is wrong?”
“I believe so, though I, too, continue to hope it is nothing.”
He proceeds to explain the dreams that he found himself witness to; the desperation, the unusual vividness for dreamers who do not typically dream in such a manner. Calliope listens intently, keeping her face neutral during the deluge of information. Once Morpheus has finished his tale, she closes her eyes to think. One deep breath passes, then another, and another, until finally…
“I must go to them,” she says, her chiton being replaced by a white sundress and a denim jacket before she can even finish the sentence.
Knowing that she’s mere seconds away from making good on her statement, Morpheus grabs her hand to stop her. “I will come with you.”
“You will?” She doesn’t hide the surprise on her face, and Morpheus feels himself becoming flustered;
“I have…struck up an acquaintance with your mortal roommate,” he finally says. “Though I originally went only to fulfill the boon I owed, we have found camaraderie in each other in the months since.”
Morpheus does not need to say aloud what it is that makes you good company, for Calliope knows exactly the same, and smiles at the memories of your friendship. “That comforts me. We shall go together, then.”
She closes her eyes once more, searching for the source of those who call upon her. When she finds them, she flexes her hand in Morpheus’s and allows the inspiration to pull them both through space and time. They arrive outside of a bar that looks just like any other bar in the world, but it’s one that Calliope seems familiar with (Morpheus finds himself growing more curious at just what you and she had gotten up to when she was inadvertently your prisoner) by the way that she zeroes in on a woman talking on the phone.
“Evie,” Calliope calls.
When the woman looks up from a spot on the ground she was kicking at, her jaw drops before she hurriedly says something into the phone and ends the call. “Oh my god, Calliope!”
Her gaze is exultant as she looks at Calliope, as most humans are when meeting someone of a Muse’s stature. Only this time, it’s recognition that brings her joy—friendship instead of worship. Calliope tears away from Morpheus to meet the mortal—Evie—in the middle, both crashing into each other in a tight hug.
“Hello, my friend,” Calliope says softly, though not softly enough that Morpheus doesn’t feel like he’s intruding on a special moment.
“Hi. I’m so happy you’re here, that you somehow managed to find out about—” Evie cuts herself off, unable to truly say what has happened, and confirms Morpheus’s fears with her silence. “We’ve been trying to find out a way to let you know, but none of us has any updated contact info.”
“I’m afraid I have not had the chance to get my own phone yet. But I saw on the news, and knew that I needed to be here.” Calliope looks Evie in the eye. “What happened?”
Evie’s face crumples, tears already shining in her eyes as she tries to find something to say. “You and—um.” She looks at Morpheus as though he hasn’t been standing just behind Calliope the entire time.
“Morpheus,” Calliope supplies.
It’s obvious from the shock that Evie is unable to contain for a second before schooling her face back to its previous expression that Calliope has divulged some manner of their relationship to this human, likely at the same time she told you. Lovely. “Right,” she says finally. “You and Morpheus should come inside. Kiara and Ethan are here, too.”
Once inside and seated at a table in the back, the three mortals assembled—three of your closest friends, Calliope explains needlessly, forgetting that Morpheus both knows you and has seen two of the three’s dreams—cobble together a timeline through their grief.
The last anybody had heard from you was Tuesday night, four days ago. You were sending messages to various friends until about 6:30, and then all contact ceased. Nobody thought anything of it—merely chalking it up to becoming busy, or perhaps an early night—until you missed meeting your former roommate for breakfast. Even then, your absence could be excused by a missed alarm or a family emergency. After attempts to reach you failed and the location services enabled on your friends’ devices were unable to track your own, however, the authorities were called.
When they were able to track your phone’s last location to a local park, what they found was chilling. Tire marks scuffed a harsh line in the pavement and across your now-shattered phone. Accompanying surveillance footage showed you being dragged, kicking and screaming, into a car with the windows tinted so dark that there was no chance of seeing the perpetrators inside—not that it would have helped much, since the two physically abducting you wore masks. Calliope watches the computer screen with a shocked hand over her mouth, and Morpheus can barely keep a hold of his human form as the lights flicker dangerously overhead.
From there, it’s as though you and the vehicle disappear into thin air. None of the surveillance cameras in any direction surrounding the park capture the car’s movements—a virtual impossibility, considering there were street cameras at every exit. The mortal authorities believe that this must mean your kidnapping is the work of a sophisticated crime ring that could hack into security cameras, or perhaps a stalker who had managed to map out a little-known alternate route away from cameras and enlisted a few people with dubious morals to help.
Beyond the initial clues about what happened to you, the trail had gone frustratingly cold. Rewards were introduced, then increased as hours turned to days. Police made the rounds on traditional media networks, while your friends and those who cared for you most undertook a grassroots effort to get your story out across social media. Hundreds of thousands of people knew that you were missing, looking at their personal security cameras and asking friends to do the same in vain. There was no trace of you, as though you just disappeared into thin air.
For all of the mortal theorizing, one shared look confirms that Morpheus and Calliope know better: you were taken by someone, or multiple someones, who knew how to wield magic. How else would one explain the complete lack of clues in a modern world? Further, there is no reason why you would be targeted but for your association with two immortal beings of immense power and stature. No, whoever abducted you knew of your friendship with Calliope, and perhaps even knew that the Lord of Dreams had visited you in an attempt to free his former wife.
“We shall help with the search as well,” Calliope assures her friends.
“Great! I have a bunch of posters in my bag that you can have.” Ethan begins to reach under the table for his bag before Calliope stops him with a gentle hand on top of his.
“You will get more use out of the flyers if you keep them; Morpheus has many connections. He and I will start there first.”
By ‘connections,’ of course, Calliope means the collective human unconscious. Optimistically, Morpheus believes that they shall only need to use the Library of the Dreaming to begin to put together the puzzle of where you might be. After all, how hard can it possibly be to find one mortal?
People often wonder how they’ll react in times of crisis. Will they shy away from the situation, shutting down to try and make the trauma as minimal as possible? Will they cry, weeping and begging, at what they’re experiencing? Imagine all one might, they cannot truly anticipate how they would react until they’re in such a moment.
You, apparently, react with anger.
In your defense, how else are you supposed to feel after being dragged into a car and forced to breathe in what was presumably chloroform, if the subsequent unconsciousness was anything to go by, when you were just trying to enjoy a nice evening in the park?
Maybe it’s your own fault. Left with a goddess-sized hole in your life after your best friend and former roommate, Calliope, revealed herself to be a literal Muse and returned to Greece upon your freeing her from the servitude you were involuntarily sentencing her to, you’ve been trying to find new hobbies to pass time and avoid thinking about how much you miss her. You tried starting a new video game, learning how to knit, and attempting recipes you’ve always wanted to make. But all of these activities took place in your apartment, where you were regularly passing the empty room that had once belonged to Calliope (and, before that, Avery, whom you also missed—the main difference being that you could call Avery up and hang out with them at any time).
So you decided that getting out in the world would help to cure your melancholy. Visiting coffee shops and perusing book and antique stores was your therapy for exactly one weekend before you looked at your bank account and remembered that you did not make nearly enough money for this to be a habit. Experts always say that exercise releases the same endorphins as shopping, though (at least, you think they do), and you took the opportunity on a beautiful Tuesday to go for your first jog.
The last thing you remember is heading back to your car because your earbuds died. When you wake up with a pounding headache from a sleep you don’t remember closing your eyes for, you scowl. This is what you get for trying to be healthy. Kidnapped! You’re never going on a run again.
The room that you find yourself in is almost completely bare, save for odd, runic-looking paintings along the baseboards, a moderately comfy bed, a little dresser, four chairs—and four people occupying those chairs. You scramble into a sitting position, taking note as you do of the fact that there’s a literal shackle on your ankle keeping you tethered to the bed. Two men and two women stare back at you, silence stretching on until you grow frustrated enough to break it.
“What the fuck do you want?” you snap. One of the men and both of the women look surprised, as though they had expected you to start crying and begging for your life immediately. After a moment, one woman recovers her poker face and stands.
“I think we’re starting out on the wrong foot. My name is Violet, and these are my associates, Stephen, Jonah, and Marie.” Violet looks at you expectantly, and you scoff.
“Oh, do you want me to introduce myself? My bad, I assumed you already knew who I was based on the fact that you kidnapped me!”
Violet’s smile grows tighter on her face. “We did, and though I won’t apologize for that, I will apologize for the unfortunate matter of having to knock you out. You were just doing too much screaming for us to get anywhere productive at the time!”
The halfhearted laugh she lets out, as if to say ‘what can you do?’ is not reciprocated by you. The others in the room try to follow her lead and let out little chuckles, but it’s quickly becoming obvious to you that the tall woman with the sleek blonde ponytail is the ringleader here.
“We’re a part of a society called the Order of Ancient Mysteries, and we need your help and expertise.”
So you’ve been abducted by a cult, then. “How could I possibly help your…order?” you ask, hoping that you’re not about to be some sacrifice.
“Our founder, Roderick Burgess, sought to capture and imprison Death. His beloved son, Randall, had recently died, and the Magus could not bear to imagine life without him. One warm June day in 1916, he captured and imprisoned something. When he found that it was not Death, but rather Death’s brother, he became irate. This being could not bring back the dead, nor could he offer immortality or riches beyond anyone’s comprehension.
“The Magus didn’t see the potential of what he captured. His other son, Alex, didn’t, either, and let the creature escape after a century. But we do. We understand what we could accomplish were we to have the powers that this being possesses, as well as the powers of those associated with him. We could change the world, usher in a new age with a few words and some help from some very powerful beings.” Violet’s smile, which has slowly spread onto her face through her literal villain monologue, stretches to a bright grin. “Which is why you are going to summon Dream of the Endless and Calliope, the Chief of All Muses.”
Oh no. Oh, this is so much worse than a random cult kidnapping you. Morpheus doesn’t talk often about his hundred-year absence, but you’ve learned enough from him to know that it was unwilling, that he was captured similarly to Calliope. Similar to you, now. And not only does this Order know that Morpheus and Calliope aren’t just myths, but they are somehow aware of some semblance of your proximity to them.
Play dumb, your brain supplies. “Who?”
As quick as a crack of lightning, Violet’s proud smile turns sour. Yikes, maybe you played too dumb. “Lying won’t help you here. We know that you once enslaved Calliope, and that you were convinced to release her after a visit from the Dreamlord.”
“I did not enslave her!” At least, not on purpose. “Look, I don’t know how to summon them. And even if I did, I wouldn’t help you.”
“I find it very hard to believe that they wouldn’t tell their little human pet how to contact them in times of need.”
The insult thrown your way is definitely petty, likely a result of the frustration of this grown woman not immediately getting what she wants, but it still makes you bristle. “Why can’t you just do it? Since your Magus managed it last time?”
“After being freed from their respective prisons, both Dream and Calliope made sure to rid the world of any knowledge as to how either of them could be captured once more. A shame, really. The Magdalene Grimoire contained wonderful spells and knowledge that are now lost to history,” Violet laments.
“Then what makes you think I know? Because I don’t, and I’m sorry that I can’t help you. I may have been lying about knowing them, but I promise that I’m telling the truth now.”
“I have no doubt that you are; I can sense your honesty. But though you might not be aware of it, they’ve told you. Gods and goddesses love nothing more than speaking in riddles, and those who spend the most time with them are often unknowingly privy to their secrets.” Violet checks her watch with a sigh, and though she seems to make no cue, her three co-conspirators rise from their seats. “No matter. You’ll remember soon enough.”
They file out of the room that’s to be your prison cell one at a time, until Violet’s the only one remaining. Her manicured hand—cherry red nails, how cliche for a villainous woman such as she—flexes against the doorknob as she stares at you with the cold, calculating eyes of a snake watching the mouse she’s trapped in her den, that uncanny valley smile remaining on her face all the while.
“In the meantime, go ahead and get settled in. We’ll see you in the morning.” The door closes behind her, and you hear the lock turning from the outside.
The angry bravado that’s been fueling you since you woke up begins to leach out of you once you’re left alone, the reality of your situation sinking in. You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t ever imagined yourself in this sort of scenario. With the true crime industry as prevalent as it is, it’s all too easy to fall into a game of ‘what-if’ every now and then. What if you were out at a store and somebody brought a gun? What if a stranger with a cast on their arm asked for help loading something into their car? What if something’s slipped into your drink when you’re out at a bar?
What if you’re snatched from a park when you’re going for a run?
Maybe it’s a side effect of living in a society where one is always getting updates about terrible events happening whenever they turn on their phone. Or perhaps it’s simply that ancient, primal instinct that warns humans to constantly be aware of threats, updated for modern times. Yes, you had imagined what would happen if you were ever kidnapped. In some scenarios, you fight your assailants off before they can actually kidnap you. In others, you charm your way out of your situation. In all of these made-up fantasies, you never took into account how fast a kidnapping would actually occur, nor did you ever wonder what somebody’s motive for kidnapping you would be.
Now, as you sit alone and chained to a bed in a glorified prison cell, panic rises in your throat at the reality of your situation. You’ve really been kidnapped by a bunch of psychos belonging to a cult that once captured Morpheus for over a century, and now they want you to summon him again. Not only that, but they know about Calliope and want her powers too. That explains the paintings along the baseboards, then; runes that are likely meant to trap both of your friends here along with you.
Your kidnappers were pleasant…ish during your first meeting, but it’s already evident that Violet is quickly losing patience with your attitude and your refusal to do what she wants. Visions of all the terrible ways they could hurt and kill you start to play through your mind against your will, and you have to force your eyes to close as you slow your breathing.
Moonlight shines inside from the small window across the room (too far away for you to reach in your current predicament), and the reminder of the time of day brings you some semblance of peace. After all, what does one do at night but sleep? Your way out is right in front of you, and it’s a simple one: you’ll just fall asleep and find Morpheus so that he can come and show these idiots what happens when they want to summon one of his kind. With the knowledge of your rescue being so near, you shakily pull the blankets of the bed over you and try your best to fall asleep.
Only…something’s wrong. It’s not like you’re not tired—you are, and you’d bet that the lingering after effects of the chloroform have something to do with it. But every time your body begins to feel fuzzy, every time the lines between Waking and Dreaming start to disappear, it’s as though something is physically pulling you back into consciousness. A harsh tug on your consciousness has you gasping awake every time, shocked as though a bucket of ice water has been poured on you. By the time the clock on the wall says 8 a.m., you’ve been through this routine four separate times.
When Violet and one of the men (Stephen, the smaller and more diminutive of the two) enter the room, you’re sitting up on the edge of the bed, already wide awake.
“Good morning,” Stephen greets, setting a tray of bland food down on the small desk.
“What did you do to me?” You ignore the pleasantries and go straight to accusing Violet.
Her lips turn up into a smirk. “What do you mean? Did you have trouble sleeping last night?”
“You know I did.”
“You didn’t really think we would let you escape through your dreams, did you? No, the only way you will be reaching the Dreamlord is when you physically summon him here.”
It dawns on you in horror what she’s done to you. “You took away my ability to sleep?”
“Yes, but don’t worry—I’ve taken great care to ensure that you won’t lose your mind or anything of that effect.” She waves her hand as though it’s a small inconvenience, like a line at the bank or unexpected construction. “No, your body will rest in a state of twilight sleep until you get just the bare minimum to keep you sane, and then you’ll wake once more.”
Your mouth opens as you prepare to loudly voice your indignation, only for Violet to bend down to meet your eyes in a flash and harshly snatch your jaw in her grip. A gasp rips from your lungs as she digs her nails into your flesh, your blood surely welling to the surface to match the red of her nails.
“This is just a taste of what the Order can do to you,” she says, eyes blazing and locked onto yours. “You have one week of sleepless nights to produce a way to summon your friends. If next Tuesday doesn’t bring us what we want, then…I suppose we’ll have to show you what else I can do to you. Care to take some guesses as to how long you’ll last when subjected to the types of spells in my personal grimoire?”
Violet releases you from her hold with a sharp push, and you scramble backwards onto the bed and as far away from her as you can get. When your hand comes up to your jaw in an attempt to rub away some of the pain, it comes away streaked in red. There’s no need to play a guessing game as to what Violet can do to you, for you know in your bones that she’s being deadly serious.
Days pass quicker than you’d like, as they always seem to do when you’re dreading something, with the routine the same. A sleepless night spent rotating on the bed so that you can change scenery from one wall to the next until you inevitably succumb to thirty minutes of the weirdest, awake-yet-not sleep you’ve ever experienced to keep you from losing your mind. Breakfast at eight—usually oatmeal or toast—along with a raised brow and the question, “Are you going to help us today?”
Your refusal remains steadfast no matter the time of day, and the door inevitably slams shut as Violet leaves the room in a fight to keep her cool, with whoever accompanies her awkwardly waiting around for a bit before leaving after her. Curiously, the three henchmen always carry guns with them—likely because they don’t have any magical abilities. Whether they’re armed in an attempt to stop you from escaping or to potentially stop Morpheus and Calliope remains to be seen (you almost hope that they do try to fire a bullet at Morpheus, if only to see the looks on their faces when he inevitably turns it to sand).
After that, you’re always left on your own. Every two hours, somebody comes to check on you—to see if you haven’t bashed your head into the wall out of boredom or desperation, if you need to use the bathroom, if you’ve changed your mind. Violet returns with dinner and threats, having decided that a “good cop/bad cop” routine works best for her, before reminding you of how many days there are left until a week has passed and cruelly wishing you a good night’s sleep.
Besides the doom that’s become your constant companion in your imprisonment, the worst part of being kidnapped is feeling the way that your mind is beginning to crack and fray from the sleep deprivation. Though Violet had given you her word that you wouldn’t be truly and irreparably harmed (lest she lose the knowledge that she thinks you have hidden in your brain), there are still plenty of symptoms of missing sleep that don’t harm you. Tremors occasionally wrack through a limb or two, and it’s easy for your mind to wander and become distracted while Violet attempts to cajole you into summoning Morpheus and Calliope. You find that you’re talking to yourself semi-frequently, or that you don’t remember who it was that came to check on you last (Noah? Marie?).
Maybe Violet lied to you, and you are actually going mad, though. Colors sometimes dance at the edges of your vision, and you can hear the distant laughter of a woman as you stare at the rainbow. Every time you turn your head to see her, she’s still just out of eyesight, leaving you with an otherwise-empty room and the sinking realization that you may very well be crazy.
Come Monday night, you’re at your wits’ end. Violet is going to do terrible things to you in a mere 24 hours, all because you can’t bring her Morpheus and Calliope. You request a shower from your captors, if only to get you out of the room and hopefully relieve some nervous energy by scrubbing your skin raw—you proceed to spend twenty minutes doing exactly that, if only because it allows you to physically feel something harsh and real and not at all like this weird in-between, dazed state you’ve been living in for the past four days.
Swathed in a large towel after the water goes cold and you force yourself to leave your sanctuary, you stand in front of the mirror after the shower and wipe your hand over part of the glass to clear the condensation from it. Dark, sleep-deprived circles under your eyes greet you; all of the showers in the world couldn’t make you less haggard—no, that would only come from getting out of here and being able to get some sleep. You smile weakly at yourself and draw a matching smiley face in the remaining condensation in the hopes that it provides you just a little bit of whimsy.
It comes to you as you’re finishing the upward curve of the smile, and you stagger back at the realization. Suddenly, you’re back in your apartment, Calliope standing in front of you protectively and confronting her former husband.
“You called for me again, did you not?” Morpheus asks.
“I did no such thing!”
“Really?” he questions with a raised eyebrow. “You did not write my name down prior to burning it?”
Calliope falls silent, because apparently that’s exactly what she did.
Then, you’re waking up after she left for Greece, for her sisters and her function, reading the note that she left on your nightstand. “Should you need me, you need only pray to me, and I shall hear you,” it read in part.
Was Violet right? Has that knowledge truly been here all along, just waiting for you to remember? Probing into the memories a little further proves that you’ve been unintentionally lying to yourself.
“Oh my god,” you mutter to yourself in disbelief, “I do know how to summon them!”
The woman with mismatched eyes, one blue and one green, standing next to your reflection in the mirror grins and claps excitedly, as if she’s been waiting for you to figure it out all along. Your finger moves from your side to the mirror without you being conscious of the movement, starting to write out their names and getting as far as the ‘M’ in Morpheus before stopping. Your time out of the room that’s become your prison is reaching an end; Marie had already knocked once five minutes ago, which meant there would be another one in another five. If you were to summon them now, chances are they’d appear in that bedroom ringed with runes meant to capture and bind them. You’d play right into Violet’s hands.
No, there can’t be any chance that they might get trapped here right along with you. But you’ll need to buy yourself some time, some way to ensure that you won’t be going back to your room. Further, it needs to be done with enough time left that Violet can’t do horrific things to you. How to accomplish it, though?
“I think I need a plan,” you say to the woman. Her red hair, which had been defying gravity and floating around her head, comes to rest normally as she nods solemnly, agreeing with you without speaking any words.
She’s not there when you turn away from the mirror, though she never is. No matter. You have twenty-four hours to formulate your plan, and for the first time in your weeklong imprisonment, you’re thankful that you won’t need to sleep for any of those hours. By ten the next morning, you’re prepared, and it’s only a matter of picking up on your captors’ schedules for the day before it’s go time.
Is it the best thought-out plan? Absolutely not—you’re running on maybe four hours of sleep in the past week, and your mind is surely being held together at this point by nothing but bubblegum and Scotch tape. But you’re far too valuable to the Order for them to kill you, and you’ve decided that potential torture is a fair price to pay for a shot at freedom.
At two, Stephen comes in to pick up your plate from breakfast, and you fight to keep a smile off your face. Having seen the way that Violet mauled your face that first morning, he’s by far the most sympathetic to you, which is why you’ve been waiting for him to show up. It’s not at all hard to let the control over your emotions slip (because you truly are scared) as you begin to shake and tears well in your eyes.
“Stephen, do you think I can take a shower? I’m stressed about what Violet’s going to do to me tonight, and a shower would help calm me down a bit.”
He falters with the plate when he sees your face, eyes growing sad. Violet isn’t shy when it comes to complaining, and you’ve heard her berate Stephen for his “caring attitude” multiple times and rant to Jonah and Marie about how “he shouldn’t have agreed to this if he didn’t have the balls” countless more. He told you a couple of days ago that none of this was his idea—the only reason he even had ties to the Order was because his great-great uncle, Paul, had been in a relationship with the Magus’s son. He was roped into your kidnapping with Violet positing it as his familial duty, and he seemed far too meek to ever say no to that.
“Of course,” he says, taking a key out of his pocket as he kneels to unlock the shackle from around your ankle. You flex your foot upon its freedom, doing circles simply to enjoy the sensation.
Stephen holds a hand out to help you off the bed, and you almost feel bad about what you’re going to do. A jolt of pain upon putting weight on your ankle quickly sends that feeling running, and you grab a random shirt and pair of pants from the little dresser in the corner before hurrying after your captor.
You follow behind him closely, and when he stops in front of the bathroom, it’s only too easy for you to collide into his back. His hands hit the closed door from the force, and yours fumble against his lower back as you ostensibly attempt to find balance.
“I’m so sorry,” you apologize, sliding the gun from his holster. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“No worries.” He turns to look at you just as you’re shifting the weapon under the clothes you’re holding, seemingly oblivious to the theft. “Happens to all of us.”
Did this really work? You hold your breath as you pass by him into the bathroom, so sure that at any moment he’s going to stop you and the jig is going to be up. Yet Stephen simply shuts the door behind you and locks it from the outside (as there are no inside locks in any of the rooms you’re allowed to occupy), as he always does, and leaves you alone.
“You get twenty minutes!” he reminds you unnecessarily through the door.
None of those twenty minutes is going to go to waste. The shower is turned on immediately, and the handle is cranked to the left until the water coming from the spout is the hottest it can go. You don’t make any move to take a shower, though. Instead, you go searching through the large linen closet, finding the old bathrobes that were first discovered last night and snatching the strings from two of them. After you hide them under the clothes, you stand at the sink, watching the mirror as it slowly begins to fog over. The waiting is agony, but eventually, your reflection disappears, and a test smiley face shows up clearly on the mirror. Your heart jumps, both ready and not for this plan to truly begin.
With a shaky finger, you write both of their names across the mirror, one after the other—“Morpheus,” and right underneath it, “Calliope.”
“Please,” you whisper under your breath. “Please hear me, Morpheus and Calliope. Please find me. I’m about to do something that’s probably really stupid, and I’d appreciate some backup.”
Minutes pass without an answer, and you stare determinedly at the mirror until Stephen’s knock at the door lets you know you’re almost out of time. Phase 2, then, you think, and pull the gun from the counter. It’s a standard Glock, one that’s so user-friendly it would be more difficult to get it not to fire than it would to fire. You slide it into your waistband and arrange your shirt over it.
“Hey, I think there’s something wrong with the shower! It won’t turn off,” you call through the door.
“Okay, I’m coming in.” A pause. “Are you, uh, decent?”
You roll your eyes at the stupid question. “Yes.”
The door unlocks, and Stephen walks to the shower. He doesn’t seem to clock that you’re still wearing the clothes you came in with, nor does he hear the door shut quietly behind him. When he finds that turning the shower off is as easy as, well, turning the shower off, and looks your way to question why you didn’t try that in the first place, he’s met with the barrel of his own gun staring back at him.
“Here’s how we’re going to do this. You’re going to sit quietly and let me tie you up, or else I’m going to shoot you.” Stephen looks terrified as you explain this to him, but you turn the safety off anyway to drive the point home, and he lets out a frightened squeak as your finger moves over the trigger. “Don’t think I won’t. Do we have an agreement?”
He nods hurriedly, and you gesture with the gun for him to sit in the bathtub. The weapon is placed within your reach, but out of his, as you grab the strings from the bathrobes and a pair of socks. One string is tied around his wrists tightly, knotted three times. The other is meant to go over his mouth, right after you shove the socks in to create a gag.
“I truly am sorry,” he apologizes, with tears in his eyes. “I didn’t even want to be a part of this.”
Stephen has always been the one with the most sympathy. On your end, however, you feel none. “Then maybe you should have stopped them all before getting in that car,” you say cheerfully, shoving the socks inside his mouth and tying the string around his head.
The last order of business is to grab his keyring, which you locate clipped to his belt. Before you leave, you survey the scene. Something is missing, and you quickly realize what it is. The bathrobe string tying Stephen’s wrists together is just long enough for you to tie him to the mobility bar in the shower. Petty, yes, and it’s probably an action that you would never resort to prior to this ordeal. But you’ve been through hell these past seven days, and you want at least someone to understand what it feels like to be shackled to something.
The sink goes on to provide noise in case he tries to scream, and you grab the gun again. Then, for the first time in seven days, you get to lock a door. You’re giddy as the key turns, laugh coming out a little more maniacal than you’d like for somebody who’s still supposed to be sane. There’s no time to dwell on that, though, not when you’re technically on the run.
It’s almost disappointing when you realize you haven’t been kept in some castle or fortress of evil where you have to fight through an obstacle-riddled labyrinth to find the exit, but rather a pretty normal house whose hallways lead right to the foyer. With all of the protections in your room and on your captors themselves, a single, standard lock on the front door is a major relief to you, and you happily flip it unlocked and begin to pull the door open—only for a heavy gust of wind to shut it and flip the lock back in place. Spoke too soon, you think to yourself.
“Let me guess, you singled Stephen out? Smart,” a displeased voice says behind you.
You turn around slowly, gun raised, to come face to face with Violet. “How did you—”
“With how much fight you’ve had in you and how steadfastly you’ve withstood your sleep deprivation, I would have been far more surprised if you hadn’t tried to have your own Shawshank Redemption moment. Unfortunately for you, there will be no escaping.” Violet walks towards you fearlessly, not thinking that you’ll really use the weapon you have pointed at her. “Now, let’s get you back to your cell—I mean, room—and we can keep—”
You cut her off by firing at the ground in front of her, the bullet lodging itself in the wooden floor. Her face, always so expressive, flickers through emotions as she processes the scene: surprise, then admiration, followed by rage.
“Oh, you’re going to regret that.”
“I’m the only one here with a gun,” you counter.
“You fool. With the magic at my disposal, you think I need a gun? I don’t even need you,” she realizes with a laugh. “Just your brain.”
Latin falls from her lips, and in a matter of moments, the room begins to shake as a horrifying tightening sensation begins to build in your head. She’s doing this, you realize. Violet must be rifling through your head right now, going through every vulnerable thought, every memory, both happy and sad, to try and find out how to summon Morpheus and Calliope. The pain is sharp and blinding, your foe’s figure doubling, then tripling when you manage to see her through the whiteouts to your vision that the agony brings with it. She promised you wouldn’t go mad from a lack of sleep, but did that promise extend to her forcibly extracting information from within your brain?
If she keeps up with it, you don’t know that you’ll be alive to find out. Gasping for air, you squint through the forced blindness and point the gun at what you believe to be her head.
Violet drops right as you pull the trigger, and when the pressure in your head blissfully, simultaneously releases, for a sickening moment, you think that you’ve just killed her. But the window behind her shatters as the bullet hits the glass, and a quick scan of her now unconscious body says that there’s no sign of blood coming from her. So what made Violet fall?
Someone says your name, and you turn to your left with a scream, gun pointed at the source. Staring back at you is a woman, her eyes dark…and familiar.
“Calliope,” you whisper, so sure that what you’re seeing isn’t real. Out of the shadows materializes another, and though you only see pinpricks of light at first, they’re easily recognizable as well. “Morpheus.”
On the night that Calliope inadvertently summoned her former husband, the night that regrets were shared and shame burnt to ashes, you thought that you had seen her furious. And she was; you’ll never forget the way she steadfastly put herself in front of you to protect you from danger as she demanded to know what the intruder in your apartment was doing. That anger must have been nothing compared to now, where she seems to embody the very word fury. Unlike that night, where her anger had been in her words, now it seems to be a core part of her very being. Her eyes shine as they look you up and down, making sure you’re not grievously injured. For the first time since you’ve met, you understand why mortals have revered her and trembled before her for thousands of years, for in front of you now stands a goddess who should be worshipped like ancient humans once worshipped the ever-present sun.
Morpheus, too, is a mass of whirling shadows and whispering voices, so incensed is he that he doesn’t yet remember that becoming corporeal is necessary for communication in the Waking. This raw display of power is unlike any that you’ve seen from him before; the few times that you’ve seen him use his power in the Dreaming, it’s been minor tricks. Books retrieved from out of thin air, objects recreating themselves seemingly at will. Nothing this…eldritch.
“You can drop your weapon. You are safe now,” Calliope says softly with a smile to match. It’s a tone that one would use when trying to coax a frightened, half-feral cat out of a drainpipe—belatedly, you realize that you are the frightened, half-feral cat in this situation.
The gun falls to your side, though you refuse to let go of it. Is this some sort of trap? Has Violet infiltrated your mind and started making you see what you’ve desired most? “I didn’t kill her?”
“No.” The voices all echo over each other until Morpheus materializes into a singular being once more. “Violet Andersson and the others in this house have been rendered unconscious by my own hand.”
“They’re all a part of the Order that originally captured you,” you explain to Morpheus. “They somehow knew that Calliope was bound to me, and that you had something to do with freeing her. I was kidnapped so that I could summon you both—the Burgesses didn’t know the power that they held when they captured you, she said, though supposedly this group did—but I said that I didn’t know how. I thought I didn’t know how.”
Calliope has been drifting closer to you since you began explaining your predicament, until she’s able to take the gun out of your grip and place it on a side table. With both of your hands now empty, it allows Calliope to hold them in her own. “But you remembered,” she says proudly.
You let out a sob as she gathers you into her arms. “I remembered.”
It’s imperative that you don’t completely break down—you are, after all, still technically kidnapped and needing to escape—but it’s impossible not to let a few tears fall and a few cries to shake your shoulders, especially when Calliope whispers, “You are so brave, dear one.”
“Is this real?” Although this is the most grounded you’ve felt in days, you still need to ask. You don’t know that you could bear this being a mere mind trick, just one of the terrible things Violet promised she’d do to you.
Even as the words leave your mouth, you know that it is. You can smell Calliope’s signature scent, honey and pomegranates and sunshine, cloaking you like a favorite blanket. A cold hand touches your shoulder lightly, and you pull away from the hug to see famously touch-averse Morpheus doing his version of a hug; he even allows you to put your hand over his own for a moment, the faintest of smiles on his lips as you squeeze lightly before giving him his space once more. No, this is all real. Never in a million years could some magician even hope to recreate these little details that only you know.
“Did you not believe that we would come when you summoned us?” Morpheus asks gently.
“I did, but couldn’t let them take me back to that room. There were runes all along the baseboards—I don’t know a ton about your world, but you’ve told me enough that I think they would have been able to keep you trapped in there as well. I had to do something, and that something was fighting my way out of here and hoping you’d meet me along the way.”
His eyes turn black with stars for pupils, as they do when he’s in the Dreaming. After mere seconds, he’s back to blue, with the declaration of, “These wards have power no longer.”
You didn’t need him to tell you that, for you can feel the moment that every spell and ward cast by the Order of Ancient Mysteries is wiped away. Fatigue like none you’ve ever felt washes over you, and your knees buckle as sleep tries to claim you almost instantly. Calliope and Morpheus both grab for you, making it impossible to tell if it’s one or both of them that catch you and lower you to the floor.
“What’s wrong?” Calliope’s panicked as she tries to find an injury that she surely missed.
“Violet cast a spell,” you mumble, a yawn breaking your sentence up, “so I couldn’t sleep.”
Understanding dawns on Morpheus’s face immediately, as does rage. “She took away your access to the Dreaming?” He’s apoplectic at this gross invasion upon his domain, and casts a heated glare towards the still-unconscious body of your main captor.
“The spell let me get the bare minimum to keep me sane, but even then it was just a ‘twilight sleep’, and now I’m so—” this yawn is so large that your jaw pops, “—tired.”
You attempt to fight sleep with the ferocity of a toddler refusing their naptime, while Calliope and Morpheus share a look above you. “Let us take you to the Dreaming, so that you may recover,” Calliope suggests.
You’re already nodding before the elephant in the room stops you. “Don’t we need to call the cops? I’m still technically kidnapped, and they could wake up any minute.”
“You need rest far more than you need the authorities. Time works differently in the Dreaming—you shall go there and rest as long as your body needs. When you are ready to return, mere hours will have passed here, and I assure you your captors shall remain in nightmares of my own making.”
“Okay,” you say, as if there’s any possible way you could come up with an argument right now. Instead, Morpheus and Calliope help you struggle to a sitting position before a cloud of sand envelops your trio. There’s a split second where you’re admiring how soft the surface underneath you is (it’s called a bed, genius, a snarky part of you snaps) before your body physically can’t hold out any longer.
Then, for the first time in a week, you sleep.
And sleep.
And sleep.
When you do finally resurface from the depths of unconsciousness, it takes you a couple of moments to orient yourself. The bed you’re lying on is just as soft as you remember it from the twenty or so seconds you were awake upon arrival, and a quick run of your fingertips over it reveals that the sheets must be something akin to the finest satin. The ceiling above you isn’t a normal ceiling like you’d find in your room or even the prison you were recently spending your nights in, but is instead all stone and high arches. You can feel the warmth of somebody sitting next to you, and when you look up, you find your best friend staring back at you.
“Good morning,” Calliope greets warmly with a smile to match.
“Hi.” You blink harshly, holding back tears at how comforted and loved you feel. Though your captivity lasted only seven days—the longest seven days of your life, and yet a captivity that’s a mere blink compared to those of your friends—you wondered if you would ever feel such a friendly touch again. Calliope helps you to sit up, and you rub at your eyes with a yawn. “How long was I asleep?”
“We have only been gone from the Waking world for three hours,” a sonorous voice that could only belong to one being says on your left. Turning your head from Calliope, you look to see Morpheus sitting in a large armchair next to the bed. “In the Dreaming, you have been asleep for what would be sixteen mortal hours.”
“Damn.” Somehow, it feels both like you’ve been asleep for far longer and way less than that.
“How are you feeling?”
“Much better. Everything feels a lot…clearer now.” Truly, it’s as though you were at the optometrist and they were flipping the lenses around during the eye exam. Where before, life itself seemed to be fuzzy and off-kilter, now you’re seeing the world in startling clarity.
“Were you physically harmed?” Calliope asks. “I did not want to touch you without your saying so.”
“Not too much. Violet got mad at me on the first day and grabbed my chin too harshly,” you gesture to the small, half-moon cuts on your jaw that have scabbed over, “and my ankle hurts from them chaining me to the bed, but other than that, I’m fine.”
“They…chained you?” Calliope shifts the covers until she locates your right ankle, bruised and a little swollen.
“Yeah. There was a window in my room that they couldn’t risk me getting out of.”
Calliope runs the tips of her fingers over your ankle with the lightest of touches, worried that she may cause you any undue pain. She doesn’t need to say what she’s thinking, for you already know; she must have been chained in the same way, whether by Fry or Madoc or both. The blooming of blood loosed from its vessels, the skin made tender from a tight, ever-present hold—it’s far too familiar for her. You’re now the same in that aspect.
When she looks at you, her brown eyes are blazing once more. “They will suffer for what they have done to you,” she declares.
You’re a little taken aback at the ferocity of Calliope’s statement. You haven’t known your friend to be okay with violence; indeed, you would have thought that she, as a muse, was against violence, as it doesn’t seem as though it inspires much more than tragedy. “Oh, you don’t—”
“Calliope is right,” Morpheus says. “Not only did they hurt you, but they cut you off from the Dreaming, from my realm—” He cuts himself off with a disgusted scoff. “The gall of humans, to act as though they have any power over forces they cannot even begin to comprehend.”
“I really appreciate your anger towards what those weirdos did to me, but you don’t need to avenge me. You heard my call and came to help me, even knowing that there was a chance that you could be captured again. I can never thank you both enough for that.”
Morpheus hits you with one of his signature looks, this one conveying that he thinks you’re quite foolish for saying what you’ve said. “Did it ever occur to you that either one of us would gladly have been captured once more if it meant we had the chance to free you from your torment?” he asks.
“I could never do that to you or Calliope, especially after I remembered that you had both told me how to summon you. The thought of writing your names and saying them, only for you to be forced into a trap because of me—” you stop before you can get too upset. “I already accidentally enslaved you once, Cal. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I did it to you again because I was too weak to figure out a way to escape on my own.”
Even though you’ve been staring resolutely at the large, stone fireplace across the room in an attempt to keep your emotions in check, you can practically feel Calliope’s own heartbreak next to you. Perhaps that’s part of her gift? A mere touch, glance, or thought can inspire somebody to create; was it so unexpected that her emotions could bleed into those of mortals?
“Audacious, foolish mortal,” Morpheus begins, “thinking that you know better than beings far older and more powerful than yourself.” Even as he chastises you, he’s got a slight smile on his face, likely charmed at some preternatural piece of the puzzle that you, in your human simplicity, are not privy to.
“Your worries are sweet, my dear, but it would not have worked like that,” Calliope says. “Surely you remember that I had a mission when I left you, to work with my sisters to change the laws that allowed me to be captured by a human?”
You nod. “Violet mentioned that you were successful. They couldn’t find any information on how to summon either of you.”
“That was by design.” Calliope takes your hands in hers, ensuring that you make eye contact. “We did not come when you summoned us because we were forced to. We came because our friend called us, needing our assistance, and we chose to answer.”
In the throes of sleep deprivation, when you were at your most frightened and emotional, you looked forward to a future where you would be well-rested and wouldn’t be tearing up at will. That must come after another sixteen hours of sleep, for the first sixteen still have you weepy. This time, tears do run down your face, and Calliope lays her head against your shoulder as she wraps her arms around you tightly.
“Thank you,” you say, turning and pressing a kiss to the crown of Calliope’s head. “Thank you for choosing me, even if I am just your mortal friend.”
“You are so much more than just anything,” Morpheus tells you, giving you a rare glimpse of vulnerability.
You know that Morpheus is not the biggest fan of touching/being touched, but how else are you supposed to react when the being you thought only barely tolerated you because you were his ex-wife’s friend/kind-of savior reveals that he actually cares about you? Caution is thrown to the wind as your arms go around him, and he stiffens in your grasp. While this is the first time you’ve hugged him, part of you wonders when he was last hugged at all. When he finally relaxes into your hold, one arm even coming to rest loosely on your back, you endeavor to hug him more frequently from now on.
“We should probably go back to the Waking,” you say once you pull away from Morpheus to give him his space once more. “Now that I’m not at danger of passing out, I’d like to be un-kidnapped.” Neither of them asks you to tell them more about your experience, which you appreciate; they both know from experience that you’ll share in your own time, on your own terms.
“Are you sure that you would not like us to handle the fates of those who captured you?” Calliope asks once more.
“I cannot harm mortals unless they are a direct threat to myself or my realm,” Morpheus reminds Calliope. He looks pained as he says this, like he wishes more than anything that these rules did not apply to him.
She smirks. “I am under no such ban.”
Truly, you’re flattered that the most powerful beings have ever met want to fight this battle for you, to enact vengeance on your behalf. It makes you feel a bit like a maiden from the Middle Ages being swept off her feet by chivalrous knights. And while part of you does think that that sounds appealing, another, larger part has a different idea of how these four kidnappers might pay.
“Do you both remember how powerless you felt after your captivities? How you wanted those who had taken you to feel just a modicum of what you went through?” They each nod. “Let me decide their fates. I want them to face justice in the mortal way. To be arrested, to have their faces plastered on the news, and people thinking they’re so evil for kidnapping somebody. I want to be able to look at their faces in jumpsuits, knowing that they’re going to have to go to prison for many years. That’s justice for me.”
It’s obvious by their respective displeasure that neither Morpheus nor Calliope is entirely on board with your wishes. But since it is your wish, you all know that it will be respected. You gently take a hand from each in yours and squeeze lightly to convey your gratitude.
“If it makes you feel better, you can submit them to horrendous nightmares and eternal torment after they’ve all been prosecuted,” you suggest.
Morpheus actually shows some teeth with his smile. Calliope laughs, that beautiful trill that you’ve missed so much, and pulls you into a hug. “That makes me feel much better, treasure. Thank you.”
When you’re returned to the Waking world, the first thing that you do is steal Violet’s phone off of her unconscious body and call the police. The second thing that you do is sit patiently outside, enjoying looking up at the sky and not taking it for granted as dusk begins to paint its blues, pinks, yellows, and oranges across its canvas. Scores of sirens getting louder and louder begin to greet you, and it comforts you to know that your captors, who are just starting to wake up (courtesy of Morpheus), are hearing the same and must surely be realizing that this game is coming to an end.
Reintegrating into society is tougher than you had anticipated. It’s just as wonderful as you imagined to see your friends and family, of course—your daydreams of reunion scenarios were sometimes the only thing that could make you smile—but the trauma of being kidnapped means that you can’t just go to karaoke nights with your friends or even walk across a parking lot without a second thought like you once did; now, you’re always looking over your shoulder, always second-guessing every interaction with a stranger, always wary and tense. Everybody’s so patient with you, though, accompanying you to and from places or stepping outside with you when you need a moment. It makes you feel like a burden sometimes, even though you’re assured time and time again that you’re not.
Calliope unofficially moves back in with you for a bit. At this stage of healing, being alone gives you a lot of anxiety—those same worries that follow you when you’re out in public seem only to intensify when there’s nobody around who would be able to help you immediately if somebody were to break in and try to kidnap you once more. So every time you arrive home, Calliope’s there and ready to keep you company, making tea and watching bad television with you, just like old times.
(You’re especially thankful for her presence as you learn to sleep normally and without fear again, the goddess joining you in your bed and making sure that you know you’re safe)
On the rare occasion that she can’t make it, Morpheus leaves his realm to join you. Most of the time, you just sit in silence with him, each of you reading your own book. You can’t help but smile when you glance up at him, thrilled that the King of Dreams cares about a mortal (cares about you) enough to shirk his very important duties for a few hours.
The quartet that kidnapped you faces your version of justice. As the ringleader, Violet gets 25 to life, while the others receive 15 to 30-year sentences. They all had the decency to plead guilty and save everyone from having to go through a trial, but you still get the pleasure of seeing them sentenced and led off into the bowels of the courtroom, Calliope and Morpheus sitting on either side of you the entire time.
Coincidentally, all four of them begin to suffer from unending nightmares you’ve read described as “appalling,” “torturous,” and “ghastly,” among other such adjectives, shortly after their sentencings. Somebody else’s version of justice, and one that you can’t say that you’re upset by after finding yours.