Notes: This story is a bit weird and hallucinatory. It owes a debt to "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass" by some British mathematician named Charles Dodgson. It takes place in the present day. And as always, everyone in here belongs to Neil Gaiman, except for Rina, who belongs to herself. I apologize in advance for the lame-ass jar pun in paragraph 8.
C. van. A
~*~
Rina didn't remember most of her dreams. She was surprised how well she could recall the one where she was at the world's biggest funeral, but she fancied it was because that one was so sad. The only other one she could easily recount started off at her old High School. In it, Rina sat in the classroom, which seemed larger than she remembered, and spat teeth onto the floor. Her mouth didn't hurt... they were just loose. They bounced when they struck the Astroturf. Around her the ghosts of everyone she'd ever loved sat, bent over their papers, pens skritching away merrily. The sound of the writing was bothering her... it was rather like birds' beaks scratching at a frost-rimed window in the dead of night. Which, she found upon investigation, it was.
On the desk sat a piece of parchment, certifying the marriage of her parents. Rina turned it over, and found it was an exam paper, really. Her heart beat fast and loud, drowning out the scraping of their pens, and around her the dead clapped hands over their ears and bleated like sheep, unheard.
She hadn't studied for the exam.
She didn't even know the language it was written in.
Rising to her feet, Rina ran, racing recklessly away, the rising tones of her heartbeat ripping through her eardrums. And the dead followed in her wake as she pushed her way through the plasticized, multicolored fabric of the curtains.
As she tumbled through the air their voices fell away behind her, and even the beating of her heart could not be heard through the rushing of wind in her ears. "Well," she thought, staring down at the clouds which were so far below her they looked more like cotton balls than the cumulonimbus mountains they were, "At least it'll be quick."
She landed with a jar on a green field in Switzerland.
The jar was a mason jar with the sort of lid that came in two pieces. Being that this was Switzerland, it was filled with expensive watches and overrated chocolate. Rina carefully dropped it down the bottomless pit that yawned at her feet, and hurried down to the beach. She stumbled over a lesbian couple making love in the sand, wobbled, tilted as the world spun giddily around her, and... was caught. By a woman. Rina wondered how someone dressed like a Goth and with a pallor so complete it probably was some sort of theoretical state (antitan, perhaps?) could blend in on a tropical beach. Still, she clearly did blend, much better than Rina. The pale girl grinned, saying, "Whoa! Careful there."
Rina, whose teeth had grown back by this point, said quite clearly "Oh, hey, Death. 'Sup?"
More often than you'd expect, Death is welcomed by those she comes for. And many of the dying recognize her at first sight. But very few people are so casual about the last meeting they'll ever have.
On the other hand it's really hard to surprise her, so she smiled and replied, "Hi, Sabrina. I'm great! How are things with you?"
"NOTNOTNOT SABRINA. Rina!" shrieked the girl at fire-siren volume.
"What are you talking about? You haven't gone by 'Rina since high school..."
Death looked at the cheap Timex on her wrist. Then she took a long, slow, and deeply perceptive look at Rina, who was behaving oddly, even for a dead person (a bigger pack of wierdzos than the dead you'll never meet). And then she looked at the Swiss mountains merging seamlessly into the beach. And she smiled, and said, "Ohhh... you're dreaming me."
"That's right," said Rina, calmly, "Now you'll have to excuse me, my clothes seem to have gone missing and I've got a meeting with my boss in a few minutes."
Rina wandered off down the beach. Death watched her go, and then sighed, sat, and kicked off her shoes. If anyone had come close, they might have heard her mutter, "Dreamers. Sheesh," under her breath, but of course that couldn't have been, since everyone knows that Death is ineffably patient and charitable. So it was fortunate no one was there to hear her say it.
It was a nice patch of the Dreaming, at least. The sun hung low in the west and was quite realistically warm, hot even. Death opened up her umbrella and stuck the parrot-head handle (she'd copied this from Mary Poppins, yes, but it was just too cool an idea to pass up) into the sand for a bit of shade.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Rina was wading into the sweet ocean waters, flapping her arms frantically at an older woman who was climbing into the pontoon plane from the beginning of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Or possibly the old prop plane from the end of "Casablanca." Evidently the image wasn't clear in Rina's mind. Death squinted at this and murmured, "Now what's she up to?"
"She knows, as one knows things in dreams, that if her mother gets on that plane she will die when it crashes. However, her mother is waving off her concerns as the fancies of a child. She wishes to scream a warning, but her words only come out in a whisper."
Death looked up with hooded eyes at the young man who stood above her. They looked a good deal alike, with their night-black hair and alabaster skins, but where she blended perfectly, he stood out. It was actually impossible to think of anywhere he wouldn't stand out. In a London nightclub playing Siouxie Sioux and the Banshees he would stand out.
"Any idea what that means? Like, what the symbolism is... since we're on the royal road to the unconscious and all?" asked Death.
"In her case, the loss of her voice is a recurrent image, owing its existence to the sense she has of being ignored in her waking life. Some of the other elements are classic anxiety symbols. And I would strongly suspect that the disconnected nature of the dream is due to having too much to drink before going to sleep."
"You suspect? You mean you don't know?"
"You ..." he hesitated, "You said once that I never saw them on their own terms. I confess you were correct in that. I always concerned myself with what happened to them in my kingdom, and never spent much time wondering about what they did elsewhere. So it is merely an educated guess."
"Ah."
"Sister..."
"Oh boy. I'm guessing ... you're confused and want an explanation. Am I right?"
"Indeed," said Morpheus in tones of exquisite dryness, "I had thought I was dead. And it seems unlikely that I would be mistaken in a matter of such gravity."
"You are dead."
"I thought as much."
"But you're also a dream."
"This, too, sister, I was well aware of."
"No, you're not getting me... you're not Dream. You're a dream. Can't you tell from my voice when I leave off the capital letter?"
He looked bewildered, and Death sighed, digging her toes into the sand. "You know how you... well, how you basically lived in your own head? How Dream is part of the Dreaming and vice versa? Well, when you died... it took the Dreaming out of you, see? And gave it to Daniel? Who, by the way, is doing very well, all things considered, not that you asked. But it couldn't take you out of the Dreaming. This place is made up of memories and emotions and stories, and you feature prominently in a lot of all three of those. And so from time to time, people will dream of you. Like Sabrina down there. Did you guys know one another?"
"Not in the waking world, no."
"So she read a story about you. Or maybe Sabrina's friends with your last flame and heard about you from her ... assuming that Greek witch has any friends. They're both librarians, after all."
"Are they." It was not really a question, but Death replied, grinning, just as if it was: "They are."
She patted the sand next to her, and her brother sat, looking both bewildered and very very young.
"I do not know that I care for this, my sister. I was the King of Dreams. Am I now to be at the beck and call of every dreamer who has heard the rumor of my existence?"
"Oh, you!" she said, punching him, not quite gently, on the arm, "I honestly can't believe you. You're dead, and that's a hundred percent okay, but losing your mandate... oh, no, that's quite out of the question. You totally need to learn to relax."
"Relax? Do I appear angry or upset?"
"Well, you know, sometimes it's hard to tell over the background noise of your general angst, but yes. Why can't you just enjoy yourself while you're here? So what if you're a supporting player instead of the director? That's no reason not to like the show."
"This show, my sister, is pleasant, and I am always glad to see you. It is other dreams in the future that concern me. If I cannot control when I am dreamt of, who knows what else I cannot control? Perhaps next time I will not be myself. Their imaginations," he said, a wry smile just barely grazing his mouth, "Tend to run rampant about me."
"You're always yourself, Dream. Just like everyone else."
"And this state of affairs will persist forever?"
"Well, no, not really," she smiled, tracing with her fingers in the sand, "Eventually, the books which tell of you will be lost and forgotten. Some of the people who knew you will stop dreaming of you, and I'll come for all the others in time. The dead don't dream. Then you'll be dead."
"It seems a more prolonged process than I expected."
"It's like this for everyone. You said once that you were far more terrible than I am... which is true on a whole lot of levels, by the way... but in this particular you... or Daniel, I should say... are also more powerful. The dead don't dream, true... but dreams don't die. And my dominion isn't complete over anyone who is still remembered in dreams." She trailed off, squinting into the setting sun with a thoughtful frown on her china-doll face.
"Perhaps we will meet again, then," said Morpheus, quietly, into the silence that followed this statement.
"Eh... maybe. Not many people can actually dream me. They usually get the Fashion Thing in a black wig and greasepaint. And I find it suspiciously convenient that Rina there happened to dream us both up and then simply ignore us so we can chat. It's great, though," she said hurriedly, seeing the wounded look on his face. "But I suspect this might be a one-time shot. A little gift before we get on with things. Although that's true of every moment."
"So now what?" Morpheus asked, kicking off his shoes and running pale hands through his already disarrayed hair.
"Well, duh! It's a happy moment, you jerk. I'm going to sit here and enjoy this nice beach at sunset until Rina down there wakes up. You're dancing on the edge of eternity... which is an ideal time to try being happy for once."
At that, Morpheus smiled, hesitantly, as though it weren't an entirely comfortable expression. "I believe I will. At least until she wakes."
"Until then."
Some time later, Rina awakened, with a wistful remembrance of swimming out into endless dark seas, with the sun in her face and the land at her back. Endless abysses yawned beneath her, but she remembered no fear, for she was watched over by two pale figures, growing smaller and smaller with distance, until they finally vanished from sight.