Lovers, Dreamers and Me
I could be bounded in a nutshell and call myself
king of infinite space if it weren't that I have bad
dreams.
Hamlet
He had his cloak of dreams about him, black as the deepest midnight you've never dreamed of, flames of blood red and faerie rose licking up the intangible fabric. They say you can see the faces of dreamers in those flames.
One of those faces has a little scar, insignificant compared to the others he has seen. Tonight he gathers the cloak about his thin frame, but leaves his helm in his castle. There is a disturbance, a creature tampering with his dreamers, but it is nothing one of the Endless could not handle with his intrinsic powers.
His eerie eyes closed, he feels the dreams of the boy, child with the scar. They are restless, sad, like the dreams of a planet awaiting life. The boy is waiting for the war, for the obligation to end, waiting to live for himself.
He enters the boy's dream. He looks through the things that are as they should be, looks for the disruptor. He sees two parents, fading beyond reach on the other side of a mirror. He sees a red-haired girl smiling playfully, having grown up a bit faster than anyone expected. He sees the terrifying afterimages of a death, a great duel, but these things do not blink him, for he has created nightmares just as dark. In the mist of the boy's dreams, he finds it--the interloper. The one who is where he has no right to be.
Morpheus does not like other beings tampering with his realm.
The interloper is a mortal, bloated on his own power. He has forsaken the proper human form, but he is not the first of his kind that Morpheus has seen. Morpheus knows, from the dreams of certain gifted ones, that the mortals, the mortals with powers (measly as those powers are to him) are playing a war again, or getting ready for one. This is of no consequence to him, as long as his dreamers are still dreaming. However, this mortal, this mortal-with-no-shape has stepped outside its realm. For this, it must be punished.
A magus. Morpheus hates them.
Will it be trying to capture his sister, then, like the one who held him for seven decades? Probably. Ignorant mortals.
The mortal without shape is moving into the boy's mind, now, consuming his dream with its own devices. Before it does so, Morpheus holds out his hand, his cloak of dreams spreading like a raven's wing. He towers, in his realm of power, black eyes blazing with a single, burning star. The mortal flees, a reflex acquired after years of hiding.
The boy will not be troubled in his sleep tonight, and the Sandman will be watching him carefully in the nights to come.