In the dream worlds, a boy sat with a small circlet on his head, silver shining in black hair, on the very edge of the castle walls. His mother, the Queen, Bride of Dream and daughter of one of the former princes, Sylver, had told him to go elsewhere and amuse himself - lovely though she could be when she wanted to, Poppy had never been the mothering type, and Felix now approached the age she looked. Everything had been awkward thanks to that, and his already distant parents rarely saw him. Being free to do as he pleased hardly pleased the young prince.
He waved a hand, and the landscape changed, to a darkened edges of a city, whose streets he was now standing in. People, indistinct and hazy, moved slowly in a trance like state around him. Searching through the crowd of dreamers, he soon found what he was looking for. A boy was stood, looking around at the buildings in a panic. Bingo.
He'd been waiting, waiting for them to be of age to enter the landscape properly, to become more than just a hazy projection (he'd met his mother's cousins, tall adults with love in their eyes and dark features matching the portrait paintings on the castle walls), and now here was the boy. The girl would probably be around somewhere.
"Where am I?" the boy called out, and Felix was by his side in an instant.
"You're in the dreamworlds." He smiled. "Your parents didn't tell you, I guess?"
"Tell me what?!" The boy looked frightened by the blurred people around them and Felix sighed.
"Tell you about Poppy," he said slowly, and the boy shook his head slowly. This was a small shock, but he guessed that Bethany had not wanted the children to think them mad. A passing dreamer stumbled against the boy, and he looked around in fright.
"Who are they?" he whispered, and Felix smiled.
"Other dreamers. That's what most people look like when they dream. You used to, you know. Your sister should be around somewhere."
With that, he left the boy, reappearing near the palace, where a girl with long white-blond hair was hunched over, miserable, hair forming a opaque curtain over her face. He gently tapped her shoulder.
"Excuse me." The girl looked up with wide, scared eyes.
"Who are you? Oh, don't answer, I don't want you to be my subconscious at all!" She shivered. "Did you see all those horrible blurry creatures?"
He nodded. "I see them all the time. They're just the dreaming people." He offered her a hand, but she stood up, brushing off her red jacket and shaking slightly.
"Oh, I see...So this is a dream? Why does it feel so real?"
"It's as real as you make it, Margette. You should ask your parents when you wake up."
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "How do you know my name?" she asked slowly. Felix shrugged.
"I know a lot of things. I know your brother is wandering the outer city streets, and I know your parents have been here before. I know your grandfather was a painter called Felix Greenwood, and that your great uncle had a daughter named Poppy, who your mother used to despise."
She blinked. "I didn't know Uncle Sylvester had a daughter!" she said, before looking at him in that suspicious manner again. He couldn't blame her for that.
"How do you know?"
"Ask your parents, like I told you," he replied, and disappeared again, to stand on the ramparts and look over the city.
He'd waited for this day for years, ever since Poppy and Bethany had told him about his cousins - second cousins, truly. Margette and Jonathan Greenwood, twins to Rivalaun and Bethany Greenwood. Although the blood of the dreamlands ran more firmly through his veins, they were still the descendants of the three princes, and he had been very much wanted to meet them.
They were the only other true people, to him. The fairies were constructs, and constructs could be gone with a sweep of his hand. All the constructs had seemed exciting when he was very young, but now they simply bored him, always being the same. The 'assistants' for him were merely blank faces, because he had never really known anyone outside the dream world. Everything that enchanted others were everyday and so, so very boring to him! But the thought of these children visiting, of these children teaching him about their world with magical screens and monsters you held in a box and controlled...His mother had told him they were boring, but his father and he when he was younger had gone through the dreams of others looking at the marvels within.
He knew which parts of the dreamscape are his mother's doing - they are flashy, like a child's vision of a fantasy novel - and he knows which parts she has altered. They have more edges and darkness in them. He has before been in the maze of streets, and gotten out by walking away.
He's seen everything but the world his mother came from. And it feels as though it is calling him, and he can finally find out what it is like.