It was on a cold, early winter morning that saw Hob hurrying down the streets of London. He was not late for his classes, not at all, he was actually quite early in fact. He liked having some time to himself before the kids started showing up. No, the reason he rushed was because there was a body of a young woman sprawled in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Are you okay? Are you quite all right, miss?" He asked, concerned and slightly breathless. The girl, who clearly did not look all right, had an abundance of colorful hair whose natural color might've been ginger.

"I ah- Yeah! As the pit patter," she answered with an absentminded smile as she made a motion with her fingers on the ground that Hob did not quite understand. He had to suppress the urge to tell her to get her face away from the asfalt, it was disgusting and she was going to get sick.

"I ah… no, maybe. Mmmh." Her face was all scrunched up in confused concentration. "Whats that mean? Oh-kay? I am not that, I am myself. Are you okay?"

"No, I am Robert," he answered, understanding the change of question, but his brow furrowed in worry for the girl and wondered what sort of psychedelics she was on. Cause with the way she was acting and speaking she was most definitely on something. "What's your name?"

"D- Deee- dEel…" she looked up at the sky, suddenly distracted from the question, following something with her eyes that was not there. Her eyes caught his again- and they were mismatched, one green and one blue- it returned her to the question at hand. "Hm, he calls me… little sister."

"Who does? You have a sibling? Maybe we can find them or phone them so they can come pick you up." The girl, Del, if she was to be believed, giggled at what he said.

"No, silly. He can't come for me. He's missing. Ah, hm, but not, he's not the other one that's missing, he's the one that is, aah… underground, under the earth." She told him. "Not the one who went missing on his own, but the one that was pulled down, into the earth."

Hob's heart panged. Dead family maybe? Probably. He knew how that was. It was that moment he decided to sit next to her, all thoughts of dirty sidewalks gone from his mind. He'd text the school that he wouldn't be able to come in today, not in time at any rate. Helping this girl seemed much more important than his history class; his kids would be happy about it.

She curled towards him, her forehead almost touching his knee.

"Is there anyone else we can call to come get you?" He asked her softly.

"Of course! They come when I hold their symbols in my hands, their special objects, in my gallery… somewhere. But it's hmm, hard to get there, if you're not mine. Are you mine?" She looked up at him but then quickly lost track of that and began playing with his pant leg. Hob let her, feeling sorrier by the minute; this was going to be a tough task.

"Do you have a phone? An ID?" He looked at her ragged clothes which barely covered her thin frame, in search of something resembling a wallet or purse but found nothing. She must be freezing, even with that big jacket she had hanging loose from her shoulders. "A phone number we can call, Miss Del?" he tried again.

"Number?" She glanced up at him and he nodded. "For-ty-two," Hob couldn't help himself when he smiled at that. It was worth a try. "Boop." She flicked one of her thin fingers up at his nose, which he scrunched; it itched.

"Oh." The girl exclaimed, looking at him suddenly, as if some glimmer of clarity had come over her. Hob on the other hand, felt as if he was in the trenches again, shaking, shaking, shaking, time was meaningless and all the same and and and an infinite loop. Bullets came and went and came and went and came and went and that was his buddy Cornelius on the mud, his boy would have no father that would return no more he had his face, his own face covered in guts and this time they were not his own. Immortality was a curse when you were stuck living the same horriblemoment over and over again, but that's just how wars are,no one gets-

"I thought…" the girl's voice brought him back from the sudden panic attack that had sprouted out from nowhere. It had not felt quite like a regular panic attack though, not completely, but he didn't have time to dwell on that right now. "I thought you might help him." Her voice was profoundly sad like nothing he'd heard in a long time. The clarity left her mismatched eyes.

"Who?" Hob asked, trying to breathe in deeply and get his heart rate down.

"The starry one," she looked at him hopefully and tried again when he said nothing. "Aah, he has that," Del moved her head from side to side, pointing at her face with her fingers "glimmer-y thing in the look-y things, the- the… The eyes! That thing out there, beyond the thing that tastes like lightning," she pointed up to the sky.

Hob wracked his brain, trying to get an idea of what she was telling him. He probably was wasting his time trying to make sense of the poor girl's rambling, but he was smart, at least, he'd become so with the years, so he tried anyway.

"You mean outer space?" He scrunched up his face in question.

"The blinky one." Del twirled a lock of hair absentmindedly.

"The galaxy?"

"Yes! In his eyes, of the dark one." She looked at him excitedly, but the light in her eyes vanished when she took notice of his lack of understanding. "Calls me little," she mumbled to herself and rolled to her other side, giving her back to him.

Hob sat there, not sure how to proceed, staring at this young woman, probably still not out of her teens, thin and unkempt and probably cold as hell even if whatever she was on didn't let her feel it. And damn him, but the way she'd deflated at his lack of understanding was heartbreaking. So he took a moment for himself, looking up at the sky and thinking about all the nonsense she had barfed on him, and tried to put it into a cohesive narrative.

"So your brother… the one underground," Hob could see a slight tension in her body by the way her shoulders stiffened, "he used to call you little sister, and his eyes shone like stars, yeah? Like a galaxy." The way she suddenly turned around had him leaning as far back as he could; on his lap a girl up to her head on drugs.

"Yes! I knew I was right! Right, right, right!" She sing-songed with happiness. "When I came looking for the old English, many, many named, one faced though. I knew that you were smart enough and would help me out." She flopped against his chest, content.

But Hob was too stunned to react or worry what other passing pedestrians might think of him, because what this out of her minf girl had said could not be a coincidence. Could it?

"Do you know me?" He asked a little breathless. "Do you know who I am?"

"Not-okay, not-Robert," she answered "hmm, old new name."

That could not be a coincidence, right? Third time's the charm.

"Del," he grabbed her shoulders and made her look at him. It was… he was sort of dizzy, but he would figure what that was about later. "Do you know who I am? What I am?"

And for a moment, a flicker of the light made it seem as if her eyes were the same color.

"Yes! A friend!" She smiled delightedly at him.

Hob sighed, disappointed. He was seeing things where they weren't, and what's worse, he was projecting his own issues onto this poor girl. He looked at her thin frame again and softened.

"Say, are you hungry, miss Del? My place is not far from here, it's a small pub but they serve a couple of nice dishes." It took him half a second after he'd said that to realize how terrible it sounded. He was about to backtrack, but the young woman stood up excitedly.

"Yes! Food! Foooooood!" Del shouted.

He supposed that was answer enough. Though he worriedly wondered what might happen if she stumbled upon other men who were not as well intentioned as he was. He truly did just want to feed her and give her a place to sit and rest for a couple of hours, but she wasn't in a right frame of mind. If he didn't find someone to call, he didn't know what he was going to do. He couldn't just leave her alone; someone would surely take advantage of her.

He shook his head and placed a friendly enough smile on his face to hide his discomfort.

They walked for a while, not quietly though there was a quality of the like about it. The girl mumbling to herself and looking up here and there with a big smile. She could not keep a train of thought to save her life and many times tried taking odd paths and alleys from which Hob had to steer her away.

"What are you looking at?" He asked after a while, terribly curious of her staring and giggling.

"My fishies," She answered him simply and there was nothing more to do than nod.

He contemplated for another stretch of silence, his own rather than hers, and wondered if he dared ask something else knowing that probably no answer Del gave him would tell him anything concrete.

"Do you miss him?" He wondered suddenly without thinking through, "Your brother?"

"Iiii- ah- he's not very fun, he has no- no eyes, see?" She giggled at that.

"So, galaxy eyes and he's blind, wonderful," he rolled his eyes to himself, of course he wasn't getting an answer.

"Oooh, you mean, the grumpy one, the sweet one. Hmm, yes, it's sad. And he's very blue. He's been blue since the sun star was little." Hob was going to need a couple of aspirins and a long nap after this day was over.

"Two brothers then?" He smiled.

"NooOooO." She flopped against his back and he huffed, amused almost against his will.

"Three then?" He tried again with a raised eyebrow.

"And a sister-brother," Hob blinked at that but took it at face value. Del hooked her arm around his elbow.

"I meant the one who is… under the dirt." His heart panged again at the use of her own words.

"Yep. Yes. It is, sad, like, ahm… when you remember that thing that was special when you are little, but then it's not there any more. You can bring it back again, it was yourself but now you're grown and it's not yourself anymore, though it used to be." And she looked devastated about it, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Hob thought he knew what she was talking about.

Del stopped walking all of a sudden. Hob turned to look at her.

The girl flopped down on the ground and started bawling her eyes out.

"Oh, shit," he rushed to her, kneeling at her side. The words, 'are you hurt?' where at the tip of his tongue, but she beat him to it.

"I remembered myself, and it hurts. And now, now Dreamy- he- he is in the dark place, cut off from himself. No air, he can't- can't breathe, he hurts, and they look at him, like he- he's a thing and- it hurts himin his chest andskin aroundprikles. Can't call me little anymore cause he's not here. And his heart's gone darker under the earth and it's dark in there and- and- and…" Del stopped talking, staring out into the distance, a little lost.

Hob's heart was beating wildly in his chest.

"I'm… I'm sorry I brought it up, I didn't mean to upset you, Del." He told her softly.

When she turned to him, wild colorful hair like a halo around her, she was smiling but the tears streaming down her face had not stopped.

"I'm not sad. I'm happy, like a butterfly. Like a dog who caught the car, and can't let go, dragging around until it's teeth go ouch and then…" she stopped again "I'm not sad. M'not!"

"Okay, okay," Hob breathed out. "Let's get you up, we're almost there. We'll get you something warm to drink, how's that sound?"

"He amm- We call him Sweet Dream, everyone calls him that, even though he's not very sweet, he's prickly, like a cactus. Mean." She proceeded to tell him.

"You brother?" Hob asked, a little exhausted.

"Mhm," She nodded and hopped along.

"Is it like a joke then? Calling him sweet?"

"He was very, hmm, very feel-y, he laughed a lot, ha ha. But then am- then not. He didn't do those things anymore." She took his gloved hand and twirled herself with his arm.

"Why, what happened?" Hob asked despite himself.

"Heart cracked, like hammer to glass, crash. Then it cracked again, and again. Crash, crash, crash." She kept dancing, having liberal use of his arms so he indulged her in it. Giving her a turn to one side and then the other. "Dreams are fragile things, yeah?"

"I suppose," dreams were fragile things in a sense. They tended to be dissolved quite easily, or they were often left behind because they weren't realistic and people needed to settle for things that would sustain them. Dreams did not sustain anyone. But that was probably not what she meant. She probably really didn't mean anything at all.

"Now he is prickly, see?" Hob nodded sagely at that. He guessed it's the right course of action because she gleamed at him then.

"We're here," he told her when they reached the New Inn.

"So now you understand why he hurt you?" Del told him and he had to do a double take because what?

"What?" He asked dumbly, even though by this point he's well aware she was not very well. He shouldn't take all of her words as an actual meaningful conversation.

"He cut you, cause he's sweet, am… was sweet, hurts to be again? Always was, is, but now it's hard. It's hard to be sweet, like it's heart to be the me who used to be," Hob held her eyes a moment and felt like the ground beneath him might be tilting.

"We're still talking about your brother, right?" He asked.

"The one which is starry," she clarified, in case he forgot again.

"Right," Hob nodded. He needed to get out of his head and find this poor, young woman, some help. But first, some food and a warm beverage were in order. "Hungry?" He asked her with a smile.

"Oh, yes!" She nodded.

As Hob sat her down in one of the booths, he took notice of the wetness that lingered on her cheeks. Whatever she might be on, that pain was real, and raw. Hob knew about that kind of pain, had felt it across the centuries. He was filled with conviction then. He'd find this girl someone who cared for her, one of her many siblings, anyone. If need be, he'd house her in his apartment for a couple of days; he could sleep on the couch well enough.

He returned from the kitchen with a creamy and rich tomato soup. The girl wasn't where he'd left her. He put the soup down at the table and looked around.

"Del?" He called out loud. Maybe she was in the bathroom. "Del," he called again when enough time had passed. Then he went out and looked around. Then he asked people outside if they had seen her. He went out back and searched amongst the trash cans.

The girl was gone.

Hob felt a pang of grief and worry in his heart, he needed to find this girl, she was not well.

A few weeks passed until his colleagues and employees told him to let it go. She was homeless and had gone back to her haunts, they told him. Hob kept an eye open anyway.

He never found the girl.

Abril: SO, this is another story I already had on the works, so it was kinda easy to finish it and cleaning it. This feels like it could have a chapter two or a sequel, but eh, I've got a lot of other wips to work on so I probably wont make anymore for this.

I realized later that I made her more disperse than her actually comic self so… sorry about that hehe.

Also, many thanks to tiltingheartand (Ao3) for helping me beta this jumble of words. It's a pain haha.

Also, also, you get a cookie bite for everything you figure out that Delirium is saying XD