[Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance – Edgar Degas.]
Fiddler's Green had made a clearing that took Melete's breath away every time she returned to it. It was a tranquil place, shrouded in the most incredible array of ancient trees that she had ever seen – a perfect, green cloak that somehow enveloped and let her music ring out at the same time. The edges of the clearing were adorned in lavender, poppies, tulips, in thousands more flowers, all vibrant and luxurious. She would bring her instruments into the middle of the fairy-tale clearing, tie her hair back and begin to play. As though the music birthed the night, darkness would filter lower through the trees; it seemed as though most dreamers pictured revels at twilight.
With her body lifted in song, the Muse would notice the local subjects of the Dreaming emerge first from their own paths, to join her in the clearing together. Cain and Abel with Goldie eagerly on their heels would walk over, closely followed by some of the other denizens that had been camping around their houses. Gault and her fellow dreams would come then, emerging sometimes from the tallest trees, sliding down the moss and into the grasses to start a dance. Long-term residents would bring drinks and food and nestle in familiar groups to watch Melete play or swap stories. Then the mortal dreamers would stroll in, sometimes looking thoroughly confused, to behold a menagerie of beings enjoying her music. When the dancing began in earnest, then she would occasionally spot Lucienne, who would be taking a quick break from her work in the library and adored the dances to unwind. Melete would play uplifting and fun songs for a few hours and then she would slip into beautiful, if more melancholic pieces. The tone would change gradually, and the crowds would lower their voices; more of them would turn away from their friends to watch her sing in respectful, awed silence. There was always a high number of people who appeared to be sailors (or dreamt of being sailors) but even as they drank and sat in droves, their mood would shift to fall in line with the sombre notes. Someone would start something that looked and felt very much like a bonfire would in the Waking World, and people would become hypnotised by the crackle of the fire, the dimming 'night' sky and her softest music for time unknowable.
But for the very first time, ending one song to begin on another, Melete noticed Lord Morpheus in attendance. She spotted him standing at the back, deep in the shadows of the flowers but when he did nothing after she caught his eye, she simply continued to play as though nothing was wrong. The Muse seated herself at a piano, delicately pressing notes and accompanying them with nothing but her own exquisite voice. She spied him several times out of the corner of her eye, but he could have been a statue, fixed between the hydrangea and the sunflowers, with no expression on his alabaster face. Nerves fluttered low in her stomach. She hoped she had not affronted her gracious host.
Her final note sounded, and the Muse stood to a gentle ripple of applause. The sunlight seemed to come back gradually, without any golden sunrise. Dreamers trudged away, to find other spots within Fiddler's Green to discover. Some of the subjects of the Dreaming gave her a wave or a call of gratitude but they too eventually wandered off.
Dream commanded her attention without any movement or word at all.
"I hope we didn't disturb you, my lord?" she called out, addressing him while she packed her violin into a case. The piano would disintegrate into the forest, to be covered in floral life until the next time she came to perform. Fiddler's Green was very helpful in that regard – everything was always ready and in tune when it came time for her to play.
He shook his head once to assure her the music wasn't a burden. "You play well," came his soft reply.
They stood at an awkward distance. Melete shuffled her bare feet on the grass, wondering what she had done this time to warrant the King of Dreams' attention.
"This is not a social call," Dream admitted. "There has been a threat to you… and my realm."
Melete's mouth went dry as Morpheus walked towards her, something in his hand.
"I won't impose on your work however, you will need something to raise an alert should you need to." He raised a thick dark bracelet. "I have borrowed this…"
"Wait…" the Muse tried to slow him with a protest, but Morpheus put the bracelet onto one of her arms and held it gently in place, showing his sigil carved into the side. It glided to sit just above her wrist, slightly too big for her arm.
"If this is removed, or should you press my sigil," Morpheus explained in his usual gentle insistent way. "We will know you face danger and send aid."
"My lord…" Melete spluttered. "I…"
"I will always know this mark," Morpheus pointed again to the sigil of his helm, rendered deeply into the dark metal. "We will be able to locate you."
"What's happened?" the Muse watched Morpheus's face, looking for the answer.
But Dream was his usual stoic self, betraying nothing no matter how much she interrogated him with her stare. She tried to find the right words to reassure them both that she was willing to compromise.
"If there is a threat… If I need to stay here for a while… I am willing to…"
"No," Dream laid a hand against her arm. "I am certain that is what Desire intends to do, to slow your work and mine by communicating a threat." He informed her of Death's message. "Desire is never this open – they are conniving, more subtle than this. It is a gambit aimed to slow you down." His voice dropped into an intimate whisper, directed seemingly only towards himself. "I warned them what their interference would bring about."
Melete considered his words, and he eventually removed his hand.
"You don't want me to stop working?"
"No," he instructed. "But the risk would be if you were ever captured." He pointed at her new jewellery. "Do not remove the bracelet."
"My lord…"
"I have one other instruction," Dream continued, as though all her attempts to have a conversation were meaningless. He turned from the sweet clearing and pointed at the shore. "This way."
Thunder rolled overhead – a sunlit storm was closing in, something never seen before in the Waking World. Clouds gently stained the sky but they were in tiny distinct groups so the sun could shine through. Did the weather in the Dreaming reflect its' monarch's temperament? The Muse didn't think it an appropriate time to ask.
Melete picked her way carefully after Dream, down the valley and along the wide pathways frequented by many dreamers until they reached the Gates of Ivory and Bone. She admired the images carved into them, pictures Lucienne had told her Morpheus had carved himself aeons ago. Standing next to the behemoth of towering art made her feel tiny and so very young. It was hard to reconcile those images with the being before her, who was truly nearly as old as the universe. There was always an echo of that in his face and voice but trailing along behind his sweeping form, Melete could imagine that he was just another ordinary man in a trench coat, on his way through the doors and out into the wider realms.
She bit her lip though and obeyed. You didn't upset a king in his realm, and you certainly never forgot the power they could wield, not if you wanted to survive.
Once the Gates had swung shut behind them, Morpheus faced her and explained that there was a window, a zone between the Waking World and the Dreaming which was difficult to voluntarily stay in but was void of anything. It was a place he assured her that she could hide inside of, should she ever need to, for an almost infinite amount of time.
"I have found Delirium caught there a few times," he admitted, holding his hands up as though he was about to grasp the clouds. "But it is otherwise unoccupied."
It was the Gray Lands, he explained – that strange, soupy place between the Dreaming and the Waking World. It wasn't connected completely to either and was a tightrope most slipped across without even realising they had.
His fingers gently touched and something extraordinary happened. A million points of hovering light appeared, as though he'd pulled a curtain away. The beach grew grey and drained away into this colourless void, leaving the shining lights to glimmer. Gravity started to lessen, and Melete watched Morpheus's jacket lift into the air, then felt her own body start to rise. Thankfully, when her toes were the last point of contact she had with the ground, gravity seemed content to hold them both in place. Melete's long hair snaked up into the sky, dancing in between the lights.
"These are the start of imaginings," Morpheus taught her, gesturing at the sparkling lights.
"They're lovely," the Muse gasped, delighted in the sensation of weightless almost-dreaming they stood in. They were more uniform than stars but shifted more rapidly than lights – winking in and out of existence in flashes as their dreamer moved on to one realm or the next. She wondered what it would be like to hold one in her hand.
Dream hovered comfortably, as though underneath the water, his hair and clothes floating about.
"You will know the Gray in between dreams and waking," Morpheus encouraged her. His eyes were confident, and Melete didn't want to disappoint him with her doubts. She watched the bracelet creep up her arm but never leave contact with her skin and tried to give him some sign that she would follow his directions.
"And…" Dream added, lowering his hands and letting the world of the Dreaming swallow them once more. Gravity reasserted itself and they stood once more on the familiar shore. "I will see you again in Fiddler's Green."
"My lord?" the Muse was distracted by the last perfect light dimming into the sky. Colour and firm ground reasserted themselves, the curtain back in place between the realms.
Morpheus was as unfathomable as usual. "Your music is a worthy addition here." Without giving her any time to respond to this compliment, he walked steadily away, presumably to return to his palace.
But Melete stopped and stared at the sky, listening to the music of the thunder until the rain finally started to fall.