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Within the Dreaming, a world of infinite possibilities, beauty and ugliness beyond measure, there is a castle made of shining quartz, gold, and silver. Creatures of myth, wyrms, griffins, mermaids, and gargoyles of all sizes, decorated its ever-gleaming exterior. In the halls of this castle, there lay rooms devoted to all kinds of utilities—a library that carried every book ever written and that has yet to be written, a ballroom of shifting walls and dancing chandeliers, galleries, opera houses, catacombs, the softest beds one could only hope to lay in. The shining jewel of the castle, among the thousands of rooms, was the throne room, where the Lord of the Dream Domain reigned. The throne itself was smaller than one would expect: a skeletal, gothic thing that sat at the top of simple, marble steps. What truly set the throne room apart was the galaxy that sparkled overhead in place of a ceiling, the stained-glass windows that told any story one could wish, and the sheer, unfiltered, power that radiated from the walls of the hall. But if one went looking for the King at this time, they would be hard-pressed to find him in any of the previously mentioned rooms within his fortress.
Within the Dreaming, within this castle, there is a small, private sanctuary that few know of and even fewer are allowed to enter: a greenhouse. High, gold-framed, glass walls cradled hundreds of plants, some poisonous, others wholly edible, most just there for aesthetic pleasure. It was nothing in comparison to Fiddler’s Green—nothing, even in the incompressible vastness of the Waking World, could ever compare to his beauty—but the quiet, comfortably warm greenhouse was not meant for the eyes of the Dreamers. Instead, it was made specifically as a place of respite—though the one who made it would never admit to such a thing.
Said maker stood, tall and imposing in his obsidian shroud, in the center of the greenhouse with a large stretch of white fabric suspended in front of him. In his thin, pianist hands, almost as pale as the fabric before him, was a wooden palate covered in bright pigments and hues and a long brush with silken bristles coated in blue. A complicated description of a relatively simple scene: Dream, the third-borne child of the Endless, son of Mother Night and Father Time, was painting in his garden. To those who didn’t know him, but nonetheless saw his black-clad, statuesque figure seem to glide along the shores and hills of the Dreaming, it would seem to be an odd sight. To the dark-skinned, maroon-clad woman who walked quietly on the terracotta floors, however, it was a relatively common occurrence.
Lucienne, the librarian of the castle and right-hand of the King, knew what others did not when it came to Dream. She knew of his dislikes—most humans, stupid questions, too much exposure to sunlight, loud parties—and his likes, though he would not reveal them to anyone—poetry, Black Forest gateau, auroras, purple wisteria, and music by Kate Bush (though that was an assuredly recent development). But his one truest love was creating; he was an artist, first and foremost, sculpting mountains and valleys, painting the skies of his unconscious domain with ease, and breathing life into countless Dreams and Nightmares to populate the minds of humanity. So, for Lucienne, no, it was not an unusual sight at all.
After the incident of the Dream Vortex—Rose, darling, rainbow-haired Rose, with her kind eyes and friendly grin—the Lord of the Dreaming had set out to fill the cracks in the foundation of his domain. Though she was a librarian by trade, Lucienne was quite an observer, given that she had to look after the whole of the castle library, marking each volume, dog-eared page, and misplaced dust jacket. It was only natural that she would see changes in him that would normally go unnoticed from those like Mervyn and Matthew—and there were certainly changes.
Dream’s stormy temperament was famous to the residents of the Dreaming, stories of his rage and sorrow imprinted for all eternity on his snowcapped mountains and black-sanded beaches. Anyone who upset the King of the Collective Unconscious seldom lived long enough to speak of it and those that did…it was as if they never existed outside of Dream’s memories. However, upon the death of Unity Kincaid and the return to apparent normalcy in the Dreaming, Lucienne’s observant nature could not ignore that her King’s temperament had shifted. Dream was always a quiet presence, lurking behind closed eyelids, but that silence that permeated around him had always been filled with an air of cold indifference. But now that wasn’t the case—and that worried Lucienne, to a degree.
She was pleased that he actually listened to her now, that he was striving to fix what he had broken, and that he was just a kinder man than he was before the Vortex. But there was something else, something darker that had shifted upon his return. There were times when he would appear to be far away, the stars in his pupils growing dim; he would stand at the window for hours, looking at nothing but the horizon line and the faintest hint of his reflection in the glass. These changes were apparent to those who frequented the castle, but only Lucienne could detect the final development: his robes.
Prior to his imprisonment at the hands of the Burgess’, Dream had been freer with his physical body. Though he was modest—almost always covered from the neck-down whenever he wandered into the Waking World—he had always taken to wearing his shroud around the Dreaming with the same air as a Caravaggio subject: alluring in the same way the darkened depths of the ocean or a bloodied sacrificial knife are. Dream’s alabaster shoulders and chest would peek out from the black robes, his rail-thin legs making an appearance whenever he took particularly long strides. It’s no wonder that countless poets and artists were drawn to his bed prior to his disappearance.
But that robe, the long, feather-trimmed, flame-licked shroud the King had so often worn, had yet to reappear. These days, Dream of the Endless preferred to wear a long coat that touched the floor, skin-tight trousers, a long-sleeve tunic, and black boots that took several minutes to remove. Where once he was so free in his physical appearance, now he had made it difficult for anyone other than himself to remove his clothing.
At first, Lucienne wasn’t sure what to make of this development. It was certainly easier to look at him without being drawn to his collarbone, but it made little sense as to why he would recede into such modesty within his own home. Even now, within the warm garden, Dream wore his layers, making him appear more like a statue than a living creature born of stardust and the flow of time. But, as she so often did, Lucienne learned. Dream would never talk about his imprisonment, no, but she knew of the names related to his century away: Rodrick Burgess, Alexander Burgess, Paul McGuire, Ethel Kripps, and the handful of guards who had looked on. All it took was a glance within the books those names had created to formulate the image of her King’s imprisonment: the golden circle, painstakingly painted onto the dirty stone floor by shaking hands, the needless moat, the consistent smell of mildew, and the orb of glass and iron, bolted shut and cold to touch. And, finally, within the orb there lay a figure normally so large, now so small, cradled into itself, naked and defeated. The window from overhead cast an eerie light upon the snow-white skin, making the figure appear to be a corpse. It would have been beautiful had it not made Lucienne want to vomit.
She supposed it made sense, then, that Dream would never wear that cloak again after it had been ripped from his body so easily. And so, as she approached her King in his garden, she made her steps heavier, so as not to alarm him with her light gait. In her hands was a new addition to the library, normally something she would not bother him with, but the dedication page had caught her eye. It was a new, up-and-coming author named Nora who had previously been a medical student. She had become inspired to write a novel that was being praised by the critics and general audience—nothing remarkable to Lucienne, it happened every day—but there, on the dedication page, there was a message that seemed to transcend the author and speak directly to Dream himself:
For the poets, muses, dreamers, and Dreams alike.
Fin.