Sandman protects children.
He watches over all dreamers, of course, and all the myriad dreams that flow from each one. He always has, and Moon willing, he always will.
Children are special, though.
Humans are so very different from what they once were, and he can't blame them. As beautiful as it was, the world through their eyes (fluid and illogical and wild and strange), it was also harsh and cruel and pitiless, and he can't begrudge them the need to survive and grow.
And for every belief that flickers and dies and fades into an ashen smudge on the pages of the world, something new and grand takes its place. Even as their thoughts turn from dreams of the small, their eyes open to dreams of the infinite.
All the same, he misses the old dreams. Once they slipped away slowly, gently; and then the scale tipped farther, faster, and now within less than a century they are nearly lost and he can only grab at the falling scraps.
He has seen friends (his friends, his friends, as dear and as old as the stars themselves) drained and withered and reduced to a whisper on the wind, until even the whispers have faded away and they are gone.
(He can't blame the humans, but it eats at him inside how very badly he wants to.)
Children are different. Children believe. In a race that has sharpened so many cold, hard edges into itself in its slow, ruthless, inexorable struggle to wake up, children are a remnant from the dreamstate of beginning. He treasures them for it, even if the images he seeds in their sleeping hearts have never managed to bring anyone back.
Whether they know it or not, they hold all dreams inside themselves; they remember every dream that ever was, and every dream that hasn't yet been. He just helps them to find those dreams, and gives them his own for safekeeping.
It is branded into his heart and hands, and written on his soul: Sandman protects children.
And, sometimes, Sandman fails.
It's a little thing that first tells Pitch something is wrong. He can't name it now, and he won't later. A blur on the wind, a taste in the sky, a whisper of worry in the endless soft shushing of the trees.
It's a strange feeling. He lives in the wrong, he thrives on the wrong, twisting and taunting and playing with it and giving it to others. It is his spiteful and warning and darkly joyful gift to the world.
This is not his wrong (at least, not his wrong from inside, his side, the proper side). He does not know it, and it does not belong to him, and he does not like it.
His first thought is to leave it be. Perhaps it will go away. Perhaps he just needs rest. Perhaps being turned on by the fruits of his own madness (screaming, begging, over and over, eaten and drained and cold and so, so hungry) has had side effects, and he has yet another item to add to the list of things to avenge himself for.
(It is a very long list, and occasionally he prunes it a bit, because he has enough professional pride to admit to himself that 'stabbed in the hand by a ten-ounce tooth fairy' looks more than a touch ridiculous.)
But the wrongness grows, and grows, and there is a tugging inside, and he feels a door opening to him that hasn't been for eons. It calls him, pleads with him, speaks without sound to the gold in his eyes; and before he can think or understand what it is asking he finds himself murmuring, of course.
And then the world is moving and not moving, weaved across infinite dimensions, an endless sea of colors that make up and are made up of gold, things that are and are not and can never be anywhere but here.
He knows this place. When last he left it, so long ago, it was to turn his face away for (he thought) ever. He has never found a way back, and never planned to see it again.
Now he is here, in the space of a moment, at the behest of a whisper on the wind, and he has no idea why.
All he can think of is that Dreamland has changed.
Have some ambiguous Quicksand! This was a Quicksand Week entry/kinkmeme fill that refused to behave, stick to the prompt, or let me know just where the hell it's supposed to go, so it's been on a shelf for a while. It's started to untangle itself in my head a little, though, so I thought I'd post it to break the gap, since I can't work on my Lorien Legacies fics until the next couple novellas come out and no way in hell am I showing the colorfully awful results of my NaNo until they've been cleaned up. A lot.
A lot.