Chapter 2
Something is coming. Dream can feel it, but if asked, he couldn’t say what exactly it was, and that would have little to do with the circle that enforced his silence. There has been nothing out of the ordinary occurring at all, at least as far as he could tell, given he’s confined to this cage. But, the guards had not been uneasy, even when the old shift swapped out with the new. Alex had been by for his regular rant, before being ushered away by Paul.
It had been very much business as usual.
Until now.
Dream doesn’t know what has changed. Doesn’t know what has shifted but something has. He tries not to let on anything to the guards, preferring they ignore his existence, as he tends to ignore theirs. But he can’t help but look through the window when he feels a pull and finds the guards slumping to the ground, out of sight. He can feel their slumbering minds, but he cannot reach for them, cannot even touch their dreams given the still intact circle.
If he could just-
He startles as a fog appears on the glass pane above him as if someone is standing directly in front of the glass on the other side, but there is no one there, at least no one that he can see. The fog expands suddenly and Dream blinks, where once there had been no one, now stands Hob Gadling.
“I should leave you here to rot,” the immortal says, his voice shaking slightly as he looks at Dream the same exact way Orpheus had the last time they’d met. Like he couldn’t believe what was in front of his eyes. Like he regretted ever knowing Dream. Like he couldn’t stomach being in his presence a single moment more. Dream aches at the sight of it, at the knowledge that he has once more pushed away the most loyal person in his life. “These days, I don’t acquire a body count for anyone who isn’t my friend or my family,” Hob tells him, grinding his teeth.
Dream calls Hob’s name, but of course, no sound comes out. Hob’s eyes flicker down, shifting back and forward as he reads through the runic circle. Then he turns away and Dream panics. He screams Hob’s name, but no sound comes out, so he slams his fist against the glass, tears streaming unchecked down his face, but he does not care.
He doesn’t.
If he could, he would go to his knees and beg Hob to free him. To let him go. Pride. Dignity. All of it be damned. He just wants to be free.
It takes far too long to realize that Hob has not walked away. That Hob has simply turned his back and has not moved away. That Hob is… Hob is thinking. Processing. Considering his options. Dream doesn’t dare move. Not even as Hob slowly turns back towards him. Then Hob sighs, his shoulders slumping.
“Lucky for you, the price of your freedom has already been paid.”
He doesn’t understand until he suddenly feels the cool stone beneath his skin, and he sucks in his first breath of fresh air in decades. He tries to rise but his body refuses to obey. He stays, slumped over, on his knees, shaking. He can’t stop shaking and he can barely focus around the sudden, sharp pain that spikes through his head, throbbing away. It is the Collective Unconscious, but he cannot properly contain it, cannot properly embody it as weak as he is now. If he gives in to it, it will consume him.
“Fuck,” he hears Hob mutter from somewhere nearby. He flinches as he feels something fall over his shoulders and relaxes just a little when he realizes it’s just Hob’s coat. “Alright, come on then. Job isn’t finished yet,” Hob tells him, before Dream suddenly finds himself standing on trembling legs, Hob’s strength the only thing keeping Dream up.
“Hob,” he whispers, shocking himself when he hears his own voice for the first time in years.
“Yeah, mate, it’s me. Come on,” the immortal says, leaning Dream against his side, before muttering something Dream thinks might have been ‘right’, before suddenly Dream is back on the cold floor again, with Hob casting some sort of spell. Dream doesn’t think he’s been manhandled like this before in his life. But Hob doesn’t seem to care, and Dream doesn’t have the strength to protest. “Have you ever been side-alonged before?” Hob asks, gripping Dream’s hand, Dream doesn’t even have the strength to curl his fingers to grip Hob’s own.
“Side-along?” Dream asks, the words familiar to him but he couldn’t say why at all, not with the way the mere utterance of them seems to take at least half of his ability to just think.
“Right, guess that answers that, doesn’t it? That’s gonna be fun,” Hob mutters before he turns to cast a spell that Dream doesn’t quite catch. “Sorry about this,” Hob says, Dream barely has a chance to ask what he’s sorry for before Hob is wrenching him up to his feet and hauling him into Hob’s side, pressing him as tight against Hob as possible.
“Pestis incendium!” Hob commands and suddenly Dream feels like he’s fallen into the heart of a star, like he did once when he was very, very young. He’d barely survived the experience and vowed never to have such again.
It seems to last for an eternity before Hob wraps his other arm around Dream and spins them to the side and suddenly Dream feels like he’s being stretched and pulled apart. He tries to scream but there is no sound. Hob’s arms tighten around him, refusing to let go, and then suddenly, they are landing on a polished floor.
Hob stumbles and Dream thinks they’re both going to collapse to the ground, but the immortal manages to save himself and steady them both. Dream doesn’t bother trying to step away, he already knows Hob is the only thing keeping him from slipping in a boneless heap to the floor.
He drifts through the next few moments, aware of Hob handing him off to a very happy and healthy house elf, but Dream’s focus is largely non-existent. He’s relatively sure he heard Hob say there was a raven in the pocket of the coat still draped over his shoulders, but it is too much to hope that it will be Jessamy. He has not seen her since she narrowly escaped being shot by Alexander Burgess decades ago.
Thoughts of Jessamy flee briefly when Hob commands his elf to defend themselves against Dream with prejudice. If Dream had any intention of causing harm to the elf such a command would have ensured Dream’s death. But Dream has no ill will towards the elves and he’s not sure how he should feel about the fact Hob thinks he would.
“Come, Dream Endless. Bed be waiting for you!” the little elf, Tink, says, patting Dream’s hand where it rests on her arm. Dream lets himself be led, his awareness drifting away with every shaky step. “Here we are!” Tink exclaims, and Dream has a single moment to notice as the coat is pulled from his shoulders before there’s a snap, and soft, warm fabric settles over his skin. “Bedtime, Dream Endless! Resting is being good for recovery!” Tink tells him, as she ushers him into a bed he hadn’t even realized was before him.
“Tink,” he forces himself to speak, even though it causes the pain in his head to spike. “The raven,” he mutters, even as he lets Tink tuck him into bed like he is a child.
“Oh, yes! Tink almost be forgetting!” Tink says, patting his hair as she turns away. “Dewy! Patient for you!” she calls, and Dream blinks his eyes open at a little pop. When had he closed his eyes?
“Where being Dewy’s patient?” another little elf asks, looking up at Dream with big, bulbous eyes.
“In the coat pocket!” Tink says, offering the coat to Dewy. “Tink not being opening it.”
“Right,” Dewy says with a sigh, gently patting down the coat, until he makes a triumphant little noise and flips open one of the pockets. Dream watches in silence as Dewy reaches both arms into the coat pocket and comes out with a small, black bundle. The moment the little bundle leaves the coat, Dream feels his bond with Jessamy bloom. It is weak and fractured but it is still there. She is still there. “Hello, Missy Raven! Dewy is lookings after you, okay?” Dewy says to Jessamy, who barely stirs, even as Dewy sets Jessamy down on top of the blankets on the bed, his hands starting to glow with elf magic almost the moment he lets go of her.
“Dewy be looking after Dream Endless’ familiar,” Tink says, patting Dream’s hair once again. Dream has the sudden thought that the elf really does consider him to be like a child in her care. He’s not actually sure what to do with that. It’s something to think about later when awareness isn’t something he’s clinging to by the skin of his teeth. “Rest, Dream Endless.”
“Jessamy,” Dream counters, unable to physically say anything else as his jaw locks when the pain in his head spikes. He grits his teeth and tries to resist the welcoming yet demanding pull of the Dreaming.
“Oh, Missy Raven has a pretty name!” Tink says, still petting Dream’s hair. “Sleep, Missy Jessamy be there in the mornings, Tink promise,” Tink swears, Dream shouldn’t trust her so easily, shouldn’t be able to give in just because she says so, but he finds the moment he has processed her words, he can’t fight any longer. “Rest well, Dream Endless,” Tink says, just as Dream slips into the dream stuff at the foundation of the Dreaming and loses all awareness of the Waking.
Dream surfaces slowly, part of him afraid to return to the Waking only to find himself stuck in the cage once more, but another part afraid of returning to the pain that had sent him back to the Dreaming in the first place. When his awareness settles, he knows he is not in the cage and the pain is only a lingering throb at the back of his mind. The Collective Unconscious momentarily appeased by his return to his realm.
He hears the shifting of fabric beside him and frowns, turning his head to find a very young boy sitting on the bed, gently running his little fingers across Jessamy’s uninjured wing. Dream has to stop himself from reacting on instinct to haul his raven away.
“Gentle,” the little boy murmurs, turning the greenest eyes Dream has ever encountered on him. Dream reluctantly finds himself already charmed by the boy.
“Yes, little one, you have to be gentle,” he says, as he sits himself up, leaning back against the headboard. “She is hurt, you have to be careful,” he explains, as memories stir in his mind. Orpheus had been fascinated by Dream’s ravens once, always wanting to pet them, to talk to them. He’d loved them as much as Dream does.
“Gentle,” the little boy repeats, startling Dream from his memories. Dream watches the child give Jessamy one last little pat before the boy turns and crawls fearlessly into Dream’s lap, looking up at him with those green-green eyes. Dream frowns at the inflamed wound on the boy’s forehead, but when he reaches out to touch it, he’s repelled by a little magical barrier that feels like the magic of the little healer elf, Dewy. So, whatever the wound is, it’s being tended to.
“Hello.”
“Hewwo!” the boy chirps, a brilliant smile lighting up his little face. “Stowy?” the boy asks, those too-bright eyes turning pleading.
“Well, how could I resist?” he asks, smiling when the boy cheers and claps his little hands. For a moment, Dream struggles to think of something to tell him. He has no knowledge of the stories that have been written or unwritten, spoken or unspoken since the time of his imprisonment, but… he has stories from all the rest of time.
He settles on telling the boy a story from ancient Greece that has long since been forgotten by mortals. He’s less than halfway through the story, the little one dozing in Dream’s arms when Tink appears with a loud pop.
“Little Master Harry! You be a mission!” Tink exclaims, as the boy, Harry, responds by enthusiastically waving at Tink.
“Tink! Stowy!” Harry says with a brilliant smile.
“You is not supposed to be bothering Dream Endless, Little Master Harry. Dream Endless be resting,” Tink says with a sigh, reaching to take Harry, but the boy cries out and clings to Dream’s shirt, shaking his head.
“No! No! No! Stowy! Stowy!” The boy yells, screaming when Tink tries to grab him.
“It’s fine, Tink. I do not mind his presence,” Dream says, resting his hand on the boy's head when he hides his face in Dream’s shirt, crying.
“Oh, well… Tink supposes that’s being okay,” Tink says hesitantly, a frown forming on her lips.
“You’re welcome to stay as well,” Dream offers but Tink sighs.
“Tink be reminding Pitter and Patter to be making Dream Endless breakfast!” Tink says, disappearing with a pop before Dream can tell her he doesn’t want to eat.
“Well, that was exciting, wasn’t it?” he murmurs to Harry, who peers up at him with teary eyes. “Story?” he asks softly, Harry gasping and nodding.
“Stowy!” Harry exclaims, clapping his little hands.
“Very well then. Where were we?”
Dream watches Hob leave, and he doesn’t know what to think. He had realized, shortly after the 1889 meeting, that he’d made a mistake. By reacting the way he had, he may have ruined whatever it was he had been trying to build with Hob Gadling. He doesn’t even really understand why he’d reacted as he had. He’d thought about it often, in the cage, trying to figure it out, but he’d never succeeded. Always came back to bewildered confusion. He wanted to be friends with Hob and had wanted it even before 1889, so it makes no sense to him why he reacted with such… hurt to Hob merely confirming the state of things.
He startles suddenly as he feels a cool hand pressing against his cheek and he blinks to find Harry reaching up to touch him, with an adorable little frown on his face. The wooden blocks have been forgotten, their oddly shaped castle swaying precariously but not falling, yet.
“Sad,” Harry murmurs, wiping at Dream’s cheek, and Dream realizes that he is crying.
“I’m alright, Harry,” he says, wiping at the last of the tear tracks on his face. “See?”
“Sad!” Harry disagrees, shaking his head. “Hug?” the boy offers, Dream smiles softly.
“Sure,” he agrees, gently wrapping his arms around the boy when he wraps his little arms around Dream’s neck and rests his face on Dream’s shoulder. “Thank you for the hug, Harry.”
“Welcome!” the little one exclaims, then closes his eyes and promptly falls asleep. Dream huffs at that, shaking his head.
“Tink,” he whispers, hoping she will still hear him. There is a moment that passes, before a very soft little pop sounds and Tink appears. “He’s fallen asleep.”
“Oh, good! Tink be takings him. Now Dream Endless can rest!” Tink says, happily extracting Harry from Dream’s arms, the boy doesn’t even stir. “Tink be returning later, to make sure Dream Endless and Missy Jessamy eat lunch!” the elf says, wandering away with the boy cradled in her arms. A whisper of a memory surfaces to tell him that elf ‘popping’ is one of the least comfortable methods of instantaneous travel. He’s not surprised, then, that Tink walks away with Harry, rather than pop them both.
Reluctantly, Dream pushes himself up off the floor and climbs back into bed. He does need more rest.
It follows like this for the week after his sudden freedom. Harry visits with him throughout the day to demand stories or to seek his help building towers with the wooden blocks. Hob visits infrequently to check on Harry, or to check if Dream is still there, he thinks. But they do not speak to each other beyond a few words of greeting. Tink is the one who speaks with Dream the most, and Dewy checks in on Jessamy, who has started to become a bit livelier as the week has gone on.
The week of resting has been needed; Dream does feel better than he had when he’d first come out of the cage. But he is unsettled by the fact the Collective Unconscious has not settled on him as it should have. He doesn’t know if it’s a result of his tools still being scattered to the winds, or if it’s simply the fact that the Dreaming must be so very unstable now that the Collective Unconscious barely recognizes him. He doesn’t know. But he does know that he cannot leave, yet. He has tried, yet every time his mind goes to the Dreaming, his physical form remains stubbornly rooted in the Waking. Until he reclaims his tools, specifically his sand, he’s not going to be able to solve that problem.
It is as he’s tidying up the wooden blocks on the floor after a visit from Harry that things change. There are footsteps in the hall, and he looks up just long enough to see Hob be shoved into the room by an invisible force before the door is slammed shut behind him, the lock clicking into place.
“Tink is not be having this nonsense anymore!! Dream Endless and Little Master Hobsie be full-grown, supposedly! They is being talking like full-grown beings!” Tink yells through the door, before seeming to pop away, if the sound is anything to go by.
“Tink!” Hob snaps, managing to catch himself before he can trip over his own feet. He turns to jiggle the door handle, but it doesn’t budge. He takes out his wand to cast a spell over the lock, but that doesn’t do anything either. “Tink!” It is amusing to watch until the realisation suddenly hits him that he is once more magically bound. He can escape to the Dreaming if he sleeps, but his physical form will be left behind. Vulnerable. And he can’t-
He can’t breathe.
“Hey, hey, hey! Calm down. It’s alright,” a voice calls to him, but it seems to be calling to him from so very far away, distorted and wavering. “Dream, love, you need to calm down, alright? You’re safe, you’re fine. I promise.”
Blindly, he reaches through the air, for what exactly, he’s not sure. But his fingers find purchase on something solid and warm, and he grips tight, a gasp wrenching from his throat.
“Yeah, okay, that’s fine. Now, you need to breathe, Dream, okay?” the voice asks, but Dream struggles to obey, shaking his head. “Yes, you need to! You can do it, Dream, okay? Breathe in,” the voice says, before Dream hears them take an exaggerated breath in that Dream forces himself to copy, “And out,” the voice says, and Dream lets himself exhale. The voice repeats three more times before the panic in Dream subsides enough that he can remember where he is, and what’s happening. More importantly, he can remember that he doesn’t need air to breathe!
“Hob?” he asks, slowly blinking open his eyes, and when had he closed them?
“Yeah, it’s me,” Hob says, giving Dream a little smile that Dream had seen on Harry’s face just earlier that day. The Gadling smile is hereditary. “Sorry, Tink used to lock my sisters and me in little rooms when we fought when we were younger. We weren’t allowed out until we’d made up. She’s, uhm, she’s not aware why that probably isn’t a good idea to do to you,” Hob admits, rubbing nervously at his ear, with the hand that is not attached to the arm Dream is gripping like a lifeline.
“It-it’s fine,” Dream admits, refusing to think on it as he hastily lets go. Refusing to think about the door that is most likely still locked, and his body that still refuses to return to the Dreaming with his mind no matter how hard he commands it.
“Right. Suppose she is right, though. We probably should… talk.”
“Talk?” Dream asks as Hob steps around him to go and sit himself down on the edge of Dream’s bed. Jessamy glances up at him curiously, then sets her head back down and closes her eyes to sleep. She’s been getting better, but most of her time is still taken up by sleep.
“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this yet, Dream, but I’m quite angry with you,” Hob points out as if it should be obvious, which it is.
“I am aware.”
“Good. Then, we should talk about it, don’t you think?” Hob asks and Dream sighs. He waves his hand the little wooden blocks all stack themselves into a passable replica of his palace as he sits himself down in the empty spot of floor their absence reveals. Hob makes a considering noise and Dream raises an eyebrow.
“What?”
“Nothing. I just wasn’t sure if you actually were recovering or not, but you wouldn’t have been capable of that when I freed you,” Hob says, shrugging.
“Recovery is… slow,” Dream admits, the words fighting against him. “Little things like that are easy.”
“Right. Is there anything I can do to help speed things up?” Hob asks, Dream hesitates, before shaking his head. “Dream?”
“My tools of office are gone. Without them…” he pauses, shaking his head again. Even he does not know what exactly will happen if he doesn’t reclaim them.
“Right. I’ll ask the goblins if they know anything,” Hob says before he sighs. “Alright, no more detouring. Why did you react like that at our last meeting?”
“I do not know.”
“Dream,” Hob starts, his eyes blazing but Dream simply shakes his head.
“I do not know, Hob,” Dream repeats, slower this time, more purposefully. “I have been… actively working towards a friendship with you throughout the centuries. I… do not understand why I…” he shakes his head, at a loss for words.
“Oh,” Hob mutters, frowning. “Well, then.”
“Yes,” Dream says with a sigh. “And I was going to tell you who I was at the 1789 meeting, but Lady Constantine interrupted us.”
“I knew I should have sent her a howler!” Hob exclaims with a scowl, Dream hums.
“When-when did you become the Duke of Peverell Vale?” Dream asks, getting out his own interest, given he’s answered Hob’s question as much as he could. “You were not the Duke when we met.”
“No, it was my Uncle,” Hob agrees with a nod. “Well, sort of,” Hob corrects with a furrowed brow. “About three weeks after we met, the goblins called me to the bank. Their summons was issued to ‘Heir Gadling’ which should have been my cousin, Alaric. But, by the time I arrived, my Uncle had been claimed by a plague, same as the rest of his line, and I was sworn as the new Duke Peverell in the bank. Tried to hand it off to my sisters, but they all said no. Tried to hand it off to Iolanthe, but she said no and moved out. So, here I am.”
“Here you are,” Dream murmurs, looking down at the carpet. He hadn’t realized at any point during the centuries that Hob was magical. Hob hadn’t done anything obviously magical during their meetings, not even in 1789 when confronting Lady Constantine and her thugs, so Dream supposes he couldn’t have known. But he should have. Gadling was a magical bloodline. Even those in the muggle world had ties to their magical kin.
“You didn’t know?” Hob asks, stunned.
“No, I did not.”
“Well,” Hob says with a sudden laugh. “I guess we’re even, then,” he declares, Dream sighs.
“No, we are not,” Dream says, slowly looking up to meet Hob’s eyes, as the immortal frowns. “I am sorry for how I treated you at our last meeting,” Dream tells him, the words coming easily to him, for all that he’s always hated apologies. “It’s… I should not have done it and I do not know why I did, but I am sorry for it, Hob. You are… one of the only bright spots in my life beyond my own creations,” it was true even before the last few decades worth of monotony, indignity, and… yes he will have to admit it to himself some time, may as well be now, fear.
“Oh!” Hob exclaims breathlessly, eyes wide, before they suddenly narrow. “Wait. You’re being very forthcoming suddenly; do I need to call Dewy? Did you manage to get yourself a concussion or something?”
“What? No! I’m fine!” Dream exclaims, perhaps a bit too quickly, because Hob’s eyes only seem to narrow further. “Well, I… if you must know, I’m not fully convinced this isn’t… some dream I’ve created for myself, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was wrong.”
“I mean, no, but it does change things a bit if you’re only apologising because you think this isn’t real?” Hob says with a frown before his eyes light up. “Wait! Tink! Bring Harry!”
“Hob?”
“Tink be not trusting Little Master Hobsie to not be tricking Tink, but she be bringing Master Harry anyway,” Tink says as she suddenly appears with a slumbering Harry cradled in her arms, though without the telltale pop of elf-travel. Dream wonders if Tink is one of the elves old enough to remember how to walk the Paths of the Yggdrasil.
“Give him to Dream, please,” Hob says, Dream throws him a look, even as he raises his arms to take the baby. “Thank you, Tink. That’s all for now,” Tink narrows her eyes at Hob before she disappears with a pop. “I don’t know if I should be offended by the fact she apparently thought I was going to… what? Bodily make her free us? As if she doesn’t have more magic in her pinky finger than I have in my entire body,” the immortal says with a roll of his eyes.
“Why did you want Harry?” Dream asks, settling the child against his chest easily. He can feel the threads of the child’s dream and he could follow them into the Dreaming, but he’s not sure if he has the strength yet to control himself properly in the dreamscape of a baby. So, he will not risk it.
“Well, look at him, Dream. I know you’re the personification of dreams. If you were going to build a dream for yourself, is this what you would build?” Hob demands to know, his gaze dropping to Harry and going soft for a moment, before flicking back up to Dream’s.
“I-I do not… think so,” Dream admits, and he’ll stand by that. After Orpheus… children are not in the cards for him. He accepted that a long time ago. So, no, he wouldn’t have crafted a dream like this, not even if he knew it wouldn’t be real as he was crafting it. He doesn’t remember crafting it, either.
“Also, I doubt you’d dream up… well, you hurt me a lot, Dream. I might be willing to forgive it, but I really doubt if I’m going to be forgetting it any time soon. I don’t know why you’d ever think to dream up me being angry with you,” Hob says, and Dream feels suddenly exhausted, that same bone-deep weariness he’d felt after being freed.
Hob is right, sort of. His… loved ones being angry with him is… well, it is his usual existence. He is always doing things that anger half of them and amuse the other half. He can never win. If it were up to him, if he were shaping dreams for himself they… would not be like this.
This means this isn’t a dream and he should know that because he is dreams. But… even knowing that, there is a terror inside of him that he’s going to let himself have this. Let himself sink into it, let himself believe in it. Let himself care for Jessamy, and tell stories to little Harry, let Tink and the elves fuss at him like mother hens, and try to salvage whatever he has left with Hob… only for it to turn to ashes, to all fade away as he wakes from the dream still trapped in that damned cage.
It’s not helped by the fact that he cannot return fully to the Dreaming. That he cannot do much more than sink down into the dream stuff at the foundations of the Dreaming and drift, slowly recovering his strength. He’s not sure if he’ll believe he’s truly free until he’s physically standing in his own realm, and he won’t be able to do that for who knows how long it takes him to recover his tools.
“Hey, where have you gone?” Hob asks, Dream blinks slowly looking up at him, isn’t sure exactly how to feel about the concern Hob feels for him. The immortal is still angry with him, of course, he is. Dream deserves that, even he knows that. But still, even with all the anger, Hob cares for him. Worries for him. Dream doesn’t know what to do with that.
In his arms, Harry fusses, his dream shifting slowly towards nightmares but Dream frowns at that and gently nudges Harry back into sweet dreams. His nightmare grudgingly backs off and seeks out another target. Dream may not have much power as he is currently, but he has enough to guard the dreams of a child.
“Dream?”
“Hmm?”
“Okay, one second,” Hob says, sounding like he’s made a decision about something, what exactly, Dream wasn’t paying enough attention to know. “Prickles!” Hob calls, turning away as a pop sounds.
“Master Hobsie be calling Prickles?” a tiny little elf exclaims, staring at Hob with wide eyes.
“Prickles, I need you to grab the compass from my mother’s dowry vault,” Hob says, seeming oblivious to the way Prickles recoils.
“No one is being in Missy Star’s vault since you is being a boy,” the elf exclaims, Hob sighs.
“Yes, I know. I need the compass, Prickles. Bring it to me, please?” Hob asks, Prickles frowns at him, makes a grumpy little noise, then disappears with a pop. “His name continues to check out,” Hob mutters.
“What is the compass?”
“Well, you’ll see,” Hob tells him with a brilliant grin. “You might even recognize it, I’m not sure.”
“Why would I recognize it?” Dream asks, carefully shifting Harry in his arms.
“Oh, you can give him back to Tink, if you want,” Hob says, looking down at the slumbering child.
“No. He’s fine,” Dream says instead, resisting the urge to clutch Harry to him. This child is not his own, but Dream has come to care for them greatly in this week that he’s known him. More than that, though, the child is proof that Dream is free. He cannot allow that to become a dependency, but for now, it harms no one to let himself care for Hob’s grandson.
“Prickles is finding the compass,” the little elf exclaims as they appear with a pop, a very old compass resting in their hands. “Prickles is being giving the compass to Master Hobsie under protest!” the little elf says, before handing the compass to Hob and disappearing again with an even louder pop. It makes Harry fuss, but Dream has just enough power to soothe him before he can wake.
“He is very grumpy,” Dream observes, Hob laughs even as he fiddles with the compass in his hand.
“He was my mother’s, and he really would have rathered that she be the one who became immortal, not me,” Hob says, before shrugging his shoulders. “Anyway, the Heart’s Compass,” Hob states, and Dream can’t help the way he flinches.
“Truly?” he demands, leaning forward to look down at the compass.
“Oh, you really don’t know who I am, do you?” Hob asks, his eyebrows raising in surprise. Dream frowns.
“You are the Duke Peverell.”
“Yes, but you don’t know who my mother was. That’s new,” Hob says, before clearing his throat. “Right. I will swap you; you take the compass and I’ll take Harry.”
“And why would I want the compass?” Dream asks, even as he moves to allow Hob to take the child, his hands closing around the compass the moment he’s free to move his arms.
“You’re going to use it, so I can find your tools,” Hob says as if it should be obvious. Truly, it should be.
“How did you come to have the Heart’s Compass?” Dream demands to know, running his fingers over the compass’ lid. He can feel the echo of Desire’s power, the remnant of them that lingers in the device and makes it work. A compass to point to what your heart desires.
“My mother was Steorra la Beauté,” Hob answers, Dream blinks at him, the name not meaning anything at first, before he realizes what it means with a sudden jolt.
“Princess Steorra la Beauté was the eldest daughter of Queen Fiammetta of the Veela,” he says, frowning at Hob. “You are a prince?”
“No. My sisters were all little princesses, but males can’t inherit in the succession. If I had been born to Aunt Alora, I might have been called a prince, since she was Grandmother’s heir, but… no. No princely titles for me, I’m just a duke.”
“Just,” Dream scoffs, Hob snorts.
“Well, you know,” Hob says with a huff. “Anyway, when Mother died, my sisters and I received a breakdown of what was still contained in her dowry vault. We’re pretty sure Grandmother didn’t realize she’d never actually taken the Heart’s Compass back from Mother when she abdicated her place in the succession to Aunt Alora so she could marry my father. Thus, the Heart's Compass is mine by right.”
“Is this the part where I apologize again for insulting you in 1889, because-?” Dream starts to say, turning the compass over in his hands but he pauses when Hob glares at him.
“You already apologised, and I only want an apology from you if you mean it,” Hob tells him with a scowl. “Now, are you going to actually use the Heart’s Compass, or should I annoy Prickle by asking him to take it back to the vault?”
“Right,” Dream mutters, running his hands over the markings on the compass, soaking in the remnants of Desire’s power. His sibling who was once the only one to heed his call for aid. His sibling who has always been hot and cold with him, but mostly cold. His sibling who, once again it seems, will be his salvation in one form or another. “Well, here goes,” he says, thinking on his sand as he flicks open the compass.