[Home is where I want to be but I guess I'm already there. I come home, she lifted up her wings – this is like coming home (anonymous).]
Melete was unused to having a space she could carve out for herself. The progress of time was difficult to discern in the Dreaming but it had taken much of it to convince herself to unpack, to lay down roots, to convince herself that she need not plan to move again at a moment's notice. She was most proud of the sitting room, where she had hung up landscape paintings next to the window, arranged for a table and comfortable seating on either side of where the light spilled in from Fiddler's Green and placed some small ornaments to make the place feel more like home. Each of her plants was thriving, now they had a space to fill.
The Muse had dressed carefully for the outing ahead. Taking cues from her new liege lord, she had put aside her usual flowing skirts and slender sandals in favour of thick boots, leggings, a shirt and a jacket that would not have looked out of place in twentieth-century Soho. She tried to tie her hair back, mentally resigning herself to trying to repeat this task many times throughout their journey. Lord Morpheus looked more bedraggled than his siblings, which she ascribed to the conditions of his regular travel between realms. Melete had only seen some of the Endless from a safe distance and Morpheus was the first she had spoken to in quite some time – regularly Desire or Despair's power loitered at the edges of her work, typically when the inspiration was either on its way or run dry, but she'd glimpsed Death's kind face too. Destruction had long since vanished, but she had spoken with him a very long time ago. She suspected it had been Death's soothing voice that had told her about her sisters, that had delivered them to some sort of other rest, but her vision had been too full of tears to make out exactly who the stranger had been. She recalled only snippets around the moments of horrific discovery – first Aoide, then Mneme... Song and Memory, lost forever.
But she shook the cobwebs of grief from her mind and stepped outside, taking care to lock the door behind her with a key she kept as a charm on a chain around her neck. There, waiting silently, was the Lord of Dreams and Nightmares. He could have been a statue if not for the slightest tilt of his head, the way his overcoat moved in the wind. Melete bowed and asked if she had inadvertently kept him waiting long.
"No," came his soft reply. The melodious tone, delivered so gently it could be mistaken for the falling of leaves, never betrayed any emotion save calm detachment. "Are you prepared?"
She took a breath but the calm, vivid greenery all around them was soothing. She could picture this lush place in heaven, or in the most beautiful untouched places of the Waking World – full of robins pecking in the long grass, sunlight warming new strawberries and honeysuckles bushes filling the air with their subtle scent. Melete nodded.
To her surprise, he gave her something like a soft smile and beckoned her forward with his hand. The Muse trailed along beside him, watching the breeze play with the branches as they walked.
Lord Morpheus was a patient, if enigmatic, instructor. He led her to the dock and showed the way he calmed the waters, looking for a path. He gave her an example and then let her try three times until she had it right. He observed her silently from the shadows as she followed her intuitions to a mortal, asleep, dreaming of his next piece of literature. She pressed the inspiration into the mortal's dream, adorning it in glimmering light so the sleeper would notice it and take heed. On waking, the dreamer would have the sense of discovery or enlightenment – the Muse having visited them in their sleep. Melete explained to Morpheus that breakthroughs made in sleep were less sure than those she could offer in the Waking World, but this navigation through dreams was safer for her, less exposed. He did not hasten her as she did the work of three beings, rushing through and offering whatever she could where it was suitable, inspiring hope and wonder to such a degree so as it would stick with the person to influence their waking hours. Some faded as the dream did but most of it seemed to stay, of which she was profoundly glad. There had been limited opportunity to test her efficacy from any other realm and she hadn't wanted to embarrass herself in front of her new lord. She felt his watchful presence but never once his reproach, for which she was incredibly grateful; being watched put her on edge and made it more difficult to concentrate on the task at hand.
After she had worked until her arms wouldn't lift anymore, she heard him speak again.
"You need your rest," came his gentle order. "We will depart."
Once again, he demonstrated first the way to find the shores of the Dreaming within the passages of others' dreams, where to navigate away to find her way back to the dock. Lord Morpheus extended a polite hand to help her from the shallow waters, as she found her boots hard and heavy with water. He had somehow contrived to remain both dry and spotless.
"Thank you," she gasped, exhaustion blurring her vision a little. "I… I'll slow down once I get the hang of it." She extracted her feet with difficulty and slumped, panting hard, on the edge of the water. "My quota is pretty high at the moment."
"What happens if you are unsuccessful?" he asked her, letting her catch her breath. Dream was entirely unaffected by the travel but then again, he had been a silent tourist on her work, unable to help spread the inspiration around the way she could.
"Stagnation." Melete managed to say. "No art. Less expression." She managed to raise her head, her hands on her hips. Her back was beaded with sweat. "No more innovation for humanity. Just endless repetition without progress."
"Their dreams unfulfilled and bleak…" he added, and the harsh expression of his eyes seemed troubled. "You do not hesitate, even though they took your sisters from you."
Melete shook her head. "I won't… hold the whole responsible… for the actions of… the few." She offered a shaky laugh. "They don't even know what they've done, those magicians. They didn't understand the Muses are more fragile than they thought…"
"Death came for your sisters?" Dream asked, breaking an awful silence where Melete choked on her memories. But she wasn't sure.
"I wasn't there," she admitted. "I assume so. I think… she told me she had. But I didn't check." She hadn't wanted to see bodies but the emptiness where her family used to be in the universe told her enough. Whatever state her sisters were in now, their ability to fulfil their purpose was stolen from them and they couldn't reach her anymore.
Lord Morpheus held out his arm again, but Melete protested she could walk if they took it slow. He allowed her to set the pace back through Fiddler's Green, over the crest of a hill that had been simple to walk to the waters but took every bit of mustered energy to get back over for the return trip. He also granted her rest from conversation, which was a gift as she caught air in her tired lungs. When Melete caught sight of her cottage (she was still struggling to think of it as truly hers yet, but Lucienne had insisted) she pulled herself to a halt.
"Thank you, my lord," she addressed Dream with deference and gave him a very low bow. "I'm sure I have wasted enough of your time."
"It was very instructive," he assured her with light politeness. "Be careful you do not exhaust yourself, Muse. I can see the dreamers benefit from your work."
The praise given to her was something sweet and strengthening, and she managed a broad smile that matched the sunlight falling on her shoulders. Mneme had given her a false or outdated account of the Lord of Dreams and Nightmares - words like 'stubborn', 'unyielding' and 'distant' had been used. The being who could at any moment withdraw his generous shelter from her grasp was in fact, not as cold as she had been led to believe.
"I will try," she promised. With shuffling footsteps she bid Dream farewell and retired into the cottage, grateful to sink into one of her armchairs and regain her strength.
Lord Morpheus had no intentions to rest himself. At the palace, he plucked Death's sigil from its suspension and whispered into it.
"I hold your sigil, my sister, and ask a moment of your precious time."
Death's voice was curious and warm with pleasure.
"Join me, brother."
He crossed over into the Waking World in a flash of sand, white light and noise. Death was sitting cross-legged on a rickety old bridge, suspended above a drying pond. Dream turned to avoid stepping into a mangrove and observed the swampland around them. Frogs and insects chirped, disturbed from their hidden groves by Dream's movement. For all intents and purposes, they were alone.
Insofar as Dream could be said to have a favourite sibling, it had to be Death. Her curls were concealed today under an enormous black top hat, without which they would have been almost matching. The silver ankh she always wore hung from her neck, swinging as she leant forward and greeted him.
"Are you well, brother?"
"I am," he gave her the smallest of grins. "No pigeon-feeding today."
"Good thing too," she quipped, her legs swinging. "Waste of good bread." Her eyes narrowed. "You're not here just to catch up, though?"
"The Muses," he began, cutting straight to the point. "What happened to two of them?"
Death shrugged. "It was a shame – lovely, sweet women. Aoide inspired a lot of writings and poems about me, did you know?"
But Morpheus had caught the important omission of her sentence. "Are they in fact dead?"
"I wasn't there at the end. It doesn't mean they're alive, Dream," sighed Death, pulling herself up onto the bridge. Somewhere a creature ploughed through the grasses, and the mangroves shivered. "The only one I know is truly alive is hanging out with you now. None of the others are inspiring anyone in the state they're in."
Dream was sorrowful but only beings like Death, who had known her brother for the entirety of his existence, would have been able to tell. It was there in the pull of his mouth, the way the gleam in his burning eyes went stony and cold.
"I have never seen anyone work as she does," Dream admitted. "It is unsustainable."
Death gave another half-shrug. "Something will replace them when she fails, I imagine. That's the way it usually goes." A sly smile crept across her face. "Why? Worried about your new friend?"
Dream fixed her with his customary glare. "She sought my protection. So long as she remains in the Dreaming, she is one of my subjects."
Death swung her legs over the railing and jumped down from the bridge, landing lightly on the top of a tree. With a skilful shimmy down the trunk, she got close enough to wrap an arm around her little brother and squeezed him. Dream remained immovable but didn't try to free himself.
"You can't help everyone," Death reminded him. "I am sure she'll be grateful for the safety you give her. Anyway…" The sound of a motor interrupted the silence and as they watched, a boat crashed into the shallow waters of the swamp and started to sink. The occupants inside appeared trapped; there was muffled shrieking. "I have to get back to work."
"Take care, sister," Morpheus gave her a nod as she set about her work, crossing through the shallow waters to touch the side of the doomed ship. In the blink of an eye, he poured sand into the air and vanished, returning to the Dreaming.
Meanwhile, a crying Melete was arranging two small pedestals in her cottage, crowning them with flowers from outside and giving each a gentle kiss before retiring to sleep for a while.