Dream of the Endless stepped into his father's realm and found himself alone. Neither Dream of the Cats nor Hope Beautiful Lost Nebula had come with him. This wouldn't affect him, he would carry on.
He walked down the sprawling garden and stumbled then upon a young boy wearing his father's sygil in a purple cloak, not unlike one his father might use when seen by humans.
The boy stopped dead in his tracks when he saw him, the tilted watering can still spilling its content with no end in sight.
"Uh… hello?" He asked tentatively, the can still tipped. "May I help y—?"
"Who are you?" Dream asked bluntly, straightforward, looking at this child whose identity and dreams were blurred to him, being from a different time period than him, and his father's realm not being a Soft Place nor Dream's jurisdiction.
"Oh! That's- I'm… not supposed to just give my name to strangers." He trailed off, and finally straightened the watering can. "I'll… go get my grandpa." He turned and flew away, giving the perplexed Lord Shaper one last look before vanishing from sight.
"Dream." His father's voice had him turn around and there he was, shifting in shape through ages.
A toddler, a child, an old man, a younger man, if time could truly be described as a man, but always, invariably, with a jagged scar going across his eye.
Next to him stood the boy, looking between father and son with green eyes full of human curiosity, but ultimately leaning towards Dream's father with ease.
"What do you want?" His father asked as his beard vanished to give way to a toddler's impassive face. "You only come here if you want something."
"Can't a son see his father with no motive other than to wish him well?" He asked instead of answering.
This was unscripted. As it often did with his father, being in his presence was to step in loops and whorls of someone else's design, leaving Dream wrong-footed, regardless of where he stepped.
But for that same reason a strange child trailing after his father and referring to him as 'his grandpa' would not deter him from what he had come here for.
It did make him wonder, though…
"Of course you can," Father Time was saying, "but you never do. If any of you or your siblings visit is because you need my help."
"Siblings?! How many children do you have?" The boy almost shouted in what he seemed to believe was a whisper.
Dream turned his gaze upon him, the intense cosmos in his eyes having him shrink, abashedly, behind his father's figure once again.
Dream's father closed his eyes for one second – or a dozen. Or a year, or seventy, or a century – and then opened them again and turned his head towards his companion. "Seven." Was all he said.
"Damn!"
And against anything Dream would have thought, his father smiled, small but genuine. Fond.
"As you well know, I am older than dust."
They were making their way through the garden, where some plants grew and flourished or perished or even returned to seeds as Time approached them, and his father picked two apples, one of which he handed to the boy –who was now floating after Father Time–, and the other he offered to Dream.
"I'm not hungry."
"You will be."
Dream disregarded his father's remark and ignored the proffered fruit, even as the boy happily bit into his own.
"I wasn't travelling alone." Dream said. "Why am I the only one here?"
"You were planning on bringing your friends, uninvited, to my domain, son?" His father asked, his youthful face at odds with the rotting fruit in his hands.
"Not friends, no. A cat, who is also me. And a girl."
His father held a hand to his forehead and sighed, before looking back up at Dream whilst he handed the fresh apple to… his grandson.
"What do you want, Dream?"
"Help me, father. Help me."