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Chapter Text

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙" When I met you, truly met you, the concept of 'dream' I always had was torn apart until it took the shape of your face"﹚.

⸻ The Solivagant.

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⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

a dream of the endless ⧸ lord morpheus fanfiction !

⃟✧ ིྀ･. found on a old page in a garden with plenty of paths

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ THE STORY OF THE ENDLESS BEING THAT BEARED THE HEART OF A MAN . . .

. . . AND THE MORTAL GIRL THAT DEFIED THE UNIVERSE WITH HER VERY BREATH.

written in the Book of Souls, told by Destiny of the Endless.

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﹙❝ you know i want you. it's not a secret i try to hide. i know you want me, so don’t keep saying our hands are tied. you claim it's not in the cards, and fate is pulling you miles away, and out of reach from me. But you're hearing to my heart, so who can stop me if I decide you're my desti...?

I can, Sandy. I can stop you. But considering you're reciting one of the songs I love the most and you're blaming your brother for your hubris, I propose this; I agree to this madness, and we spend the rest of eternity making desire burn. What do you say? Do you accept, or are you afraid of success? In other words, Sandman, I defy you. ❞﹚

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┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ What is your soul made of, for how devoted and defiant it is? ❞﹚.

⸻ Death of the Endless / Teleute / Reaper / Amara.

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⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

sinopsis !

⃟✧ ིྀ･. in some world held in the book of a man who sees beyond blindness...

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

What was the saying? Ah, yes, dreaming doesn't cost anything.

Well, what if it turned out that the concept of dreaming was much more than just a concept? What if it was, in turn, a trapped man, and there was once a girl that tried to help him? 

That girl's name was Esther Carrasco, and it turned out that dreaming cost her everything.

Dreaming cost her father Sheridan, it cost her her mind, it cost her her heart, it cost her her own life.

All because her father's great-uncle Paul had said, "Don't go to the basement."

Does it count if all Esther wanted was to find that island called Tír Na nOg, and thus complete the dream that had been handed down to her?

At the time, she was 14 and a half, she had just lost her father, due to encephalitis lethargica, her mother had sent her to Fawney Rig to get away from the suburbs for a while (a twisted, dark part of Esther thought Gabriela just wanted to get rid of her for that while), and she was sick of being considered fragile just because she had decayed like a bird falls to earth when shot.

Besides, the last story her father, Sheridan, had told her, before he closed his eyes forever, was about this mythical island in his homelands, where everything rejuvenates and never decays.

Perhaps it was childish, but Esther cannot be blamed; she was a dreamer, and besides, the worst she could take was disappointment, if what her father had told her, that there were secret passages to the castle of Tír Na nOg in the basement of Fawney Rig, turned out to be the delusion of a man near death.

Lies. All of it were lies. 

There were no passageways or portals there, in the basement. The only thing there was a glass dome, inside a runic circle, and behind the glass, there was a man.

A man with galaxies for eyes, contained in the glass, trapped, during a lifetime.

Needless to say, Esther tried to help him.

Oh, dear Esther, precious Estibaliz, the little one that defied. The one who should not have deflected what was written.

Something changed that night, when her blood stained the prison of Dream of the Endless, and when she, with her last strength, granted this being, the being who was the flesh and the bone of all she loved, loves and will love, what had been taken from him by a greedy man; faith and hope.

So, Destiny of the Endless could only send his sister Death to keep her from perishing, and thus, keep her under the watchful graze of his clouded eyes.

For this girl, this child, so young and naive, yet still knowlegeable, had been able to rewrite the stars reflected in the Sandman's watery eyes.

Now, Destiny of the Endless turns the page, and watches as the spilled blood of Esther Carrasco is used as the ink that writes a new course for the universe, and, at the same time, as the sign that guides a new fork in his garden.

And Destiny, Potmos, the one who has seen and heard what happened, happens and will happen, smiles sideways with skepticism, raises his eyebrows, and mutters to himself: "What do we have here? A Defiant..."

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⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

cast !

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⃟✧ ིྀ･. ━━━━━ the defiant ⧸ the solivagant (poet pseudonim) ⧸ the intercessor ⧸ . . . 

🪡 ⧽. ESTIBALIZ ❛ ESTHER ❜ ALAZNE NAZARET CARRASCO

✒. i dare you by akif kichloo

interpreted by Katherine Langford

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ I wish I could regret going to that basement. But in doing so, I would be regretting my Dream. It's not in me to be that disloyal.❞﹚.

𝆹𝅥𝅯 . dreamer by axwell & ingrosso.

𝆹𝅥𝅯 . I lived by one republic.

𝆹𝅥𝅯 . walk me home by chelsea cutler, illenium and said the sky

.

AND MORE...

⃟✧ ིྀ･. ━━━━━ the sandman ⧸ the king of dreams ⧸ the prince of stories ⧸ . . .

🌌 ⧽. DREAM OF THE ENDLESS, ❛ MORPHEUS❜

✒. i had you by lang leav

interpreted by Tom Sturridge

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ All the songs, all the poems, the smiles and screams, the laughter and words, the blood and tears, every little and big thing you have done to tease me, torment me, teach me and haunt me, will be restored now ❞﹚.

𝆹𝅥𝅯 . morpheus by sonne hagal

𝆹𝅥𝅯: black is the colour (2021) by celtic woman.

𝆹𝅥𝅯 . someone to stay by vancouver sleep clinic.

AND MORE...

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

+ THE COMPANION:

🔎 ⧽. LUCIENNE, ❛ THE LIBRARIAN ❜ ❛ LOOSH ❜

✒. my first memory (of librarians), by nikki glovanni.

interpreted by Vivienne Acheampong.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝My lord, if I may say, I will tell you a truth: as Esther often says, we are screwed. ❞﹚.

🐦 ⧽. MATTHEW, ❛ THE RAVEN ❜ ❛ MATEO ❜

✒. my brother, by veer dhiman.

interpreted by Henderson Wade.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Loosh, why do I feel like the child of a divorced marriage? ❞﹚.

🔮 ⧽. JOHANNA CONSTANTINE, ❛ THE NIGROMANCE ❜ ❛ JO ❜

✒. another chance, by elise johnson.

interpreted by Jenna Coleman.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ I told you, I told you! But the little saint wanted to avoid the spells. What good did it do you, huh? ❞﹚.

🛍 ⧽. GABRIELA CARRASCO, ❛ THE MOTHER ❜ ❛ GABI ❜

✒. i forgot to read the fine print, by karen prisco.

interpreted by Olivia Wilde.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Make 'em pay, Sandman. Make 'em pay for every drop of blood, for every broken bone, and for every desperate tear. Make 'em pay, and never forget it❞﹚.

🌼 ⧽. DAISY DUARTE, ❛ THE FRIEND ❜ ❛ MARGARITA ❜

✒. dear daisy, by reid shannon.

interpreted by Amy Jackson.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Look at our Esther, being friends with death. I don't know whether to freak out or use it to our advantage. ❞﹚.

🏇 ⧽. WILLIAM DUARTE, ❛ DAISY'S HUSBAND ❜ ❛ WILL ❜

✒. what's your inspiration?, by mary nagy.

interpreted by Connor Paolo.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Esther, I have to go shopping right now. Please take care of the peques and don't attract any entities to our house. ❞﹚.

🎨 ⧽. MARISOL DUARTE, ❛ THE PEQUE ❜ ❛ SOL ❜

✒. my sister, by surya prakash sharma.

interpreted by Michaela Russell.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ So... she wasn't lying when, every time we didn't obey her, she said she would talk to the Sandman to give us nightmares about a world without potato chips. ❞﹚.

⚽⧽. SANTIAGO DUARTE, ❛ THE PEQUE #2 ❜ ❛ TIAGUITO ❜

✒. my little brother, by daygo juarez.

interpreted by Julián Hilliard.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ A world without potato chips. And without pizza. And without mom's alfajores de maicena. Esther threatened us with all that. I think you should be giving her nightmares.❞﹚.

🏛 ⧽. CALLIOPE, ❛ THE MUSE ❜ ❛ CALLIE ❜

✒. portrait of calliope, by willis martyn.

interpreted by Melissanthi Mahut.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Let me grant you a pearl of wisdom, Oneiros: Esther seems to be someone who chases her dreams, so you would better start running ❞﹚.

🔪 ⧽. THE CORINTHIAN, ❛ THE NIGHTMARE ❜ ❛ CORI ❜

✒. nightmares, by jan valdez.

interpreted by Boyd Holbrook.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝  The Defiant herself, right? How... Conveniently wonderful ❞﹚.

THE ENDLESS:

☥ ⧽. DEATH OF THE ENDLESS, ❛ TELEUTE ❜ ❛ AMARA ❜

✒. death is not the end, by sri chinmoy

interpreted by Kirby Howell-Baptiste.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ You can own every second this world can give, You can see many places and do many things, And in the end, when I come to find you, you can, with every broken bone, swear you lived ❞﹚.

📖 ⧽. DESTINY OF THE ENDLESS, ❛ THE GUARDIAN OF THE COSMIC LOG ❜, ❛ POTMOS ❜

✒. destiny, by aldo kraas

  interpreted by Adrian Lester.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ You are special, Esther Carrasco. Take care of yourself, look over your shoulder, and most importantly, never stop dreaming. ❞﹚.

❤ ⧽. DESIRE OF THE ENDLESS, ❛ THE MEANEST BITCH EVER ❜ ❛ EPHITUMIA ❜

✒. my heart's desire, by paula glynn

interpreted by Maxon Alexander Park.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Look at that, the little star has a sharp tongue. This is going to be more entertaining than I thought it would be ❞﹚.

🪝 ⧽. DESPAIR OF THE ENDLESS, ❛ THE GREY DAMSEL ❜ ❛ APONOIA ❜

✒. the depths of despair, by liam hughes

interpreted by Donna Preston.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Don't you understand how terrible it is to be caught on my hook, Esther? Or do you just ignore it in favor of your dying hope, to maintain what little sanity you have left? ❞﹚.

🌈 ⧽. DELIRIUM OF THE ENDLESS, ❛ THE ONE THAT WAS DELIGHT ❜ ❛ MANIA ❜

✒. the delirium of dedalus, by hibah shabkehz

interpreted by Esme Creed-Miles.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Oh, oh! How about singing Taylor Swift and Ruelle songs while dangling our feet in a Van Gogh sugar cloud and then dancing around a constellation of two-colored fish? How do Mexicans talk? They say something about acceptance... Was that the word? Esther? Why do you seem to be in a reverie? ❞﹚.

🗡 ⧽. DESTRUCTION OF THE ENDLESS, ❛ THE PRODIGAL ❜ ❛ OLETHROS ❜

✒. changing everything, by jane hirshfield

interpreted by Barry Sloane

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Love's the only good reason to do anything. That lass believed in that, so she destroyed herself for that love. She's worth of respect because of it. ❞﹚.

THE OTHERS:

THE FATES

Interpreted by souad faress (the crone), nina wadia (the mother), and dinita gohil (the maiden)

ROSE WALKER

Interpreted by Vanesu Samunyai.

EDWARD SALAZAR

Interpreted by Sean Bean.

OPHELIA JOYCE

Interpreted by Priscilla Shirer.

MARCO PEREIRA

Interpreted by Xolo Maridueña

LYTA HALL

Interpreted by Razane Jammal.

CAIN AND ABEL

Interpreted by Sanjeev Bhaskar and Ashim Chaudhry

MERVYN PUMPKINHEAD

Interpreted by Mark Hamill.

And the rest of THE SANDMAN cast as themselves.

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⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

playlist !

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┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ When your eyes met mine, my soul pointed to you and whispered to my heart, "Him..." ❞﹚.

⸻ Unknown.

available on spotify !

acc: evlaveia.

THERE IS A DEFIANCE... | i. rewrite the stars by james arthur, anne-marie. | ii . neverland by zendaya. | iii . happier by marshmello, bastille. | iv. a sky full of stars by coldplay | v. ballroom of romance by celtic woman | vi. black is the colour (2021) by celtic woman | vii. learn me right by birdy, mumford & sons | viii. hello my old heart by the oh hellos | ix. king and lionheart by of monsters and men | x. tir na nog by celtic woman | xi. morpheus by sonne hagal | xii. song of the sea (lullaby) by nolwenn leroy | xiii. a million dreams by ziv zaifman, hugh jackman, michelle williams | xiv. someone to stay by vancouver sleep clinic | xv. dreamer by axwell & ingrosso | xvi. i wanna be yours by artic monkeys | xvii. daylight by taylor swift | xviii. tie me down by gryffin, elley duhé | xix. til kingdom come by coldplay | xx. the parting glass by celtic woman  | ... IN BEING A DREAMER.

more on the playlist !

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⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

dedication !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

Dedicated to every being capable of dreaming, who defy and defy reality day after day, who carry the power to change their own destiny, who laugh with a madness that keeps them sane.

Dedicated to those to whom Dream of the Endless owes his existence.

Chapter Text

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⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

prologue !

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┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ And we don't repent from our dreams, no matter ow many times they're broken.❞﹚.

⸻ Mahmoud Darwish.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

It began with a dream.

The dream of a child, which, from the way it started, continued and ended, seemed like a cruel trick of Destiny.

But soon, Sheridan Carrasco learned that it was not. Destiny had no time for such frivolities; his work of watching and observing the constant forking paths in his garden was all-consuming. The Fates, on the other hand...

(He was not the one that knew the Fates, by the way.)

He found the answer to this when he was barely an adult, but the question was asked when he was a child.

And that's where his mind wanders, to the memory of that mansion, doomed by the decisions of its owner.

Sheridan had been an innocent twelve-year-old boy in 1980. He had gone to spend an interesting vacation on the grounds of his great-uncle (whose existence was discovered at the time), as his parents had pressing business in Ireland, and Sheridan was still too young to do more than a few equations.

Paul greeted him warmly, and Alex Burgess smiled at him. That looked promising, considering the man's stiff posture, as if he had been carrying something very heavy for a long time, and the slightest movement gave him one of the worst cramps imaginable.

Sheridan cocked his head owlishly, confused by what his young mind had imagined. But it made sense. All that remained was to figure out what could be so heavy.

When his parents left him with Paul, the man gave him a tour, his avid eyes observing every carving, every chalice and every little detail.

But it all stopped in the library; Sheridan didn't leave until Paul came looking for him, calling him to dinner.

"Oh, Sheridan," laughed Paul, patting his shoulder with a camaraderie that warmed the infant's heart, "I'm glad you're so curious."

The boy laughed as he hugged a book of Irish mythology, from his home territory, against his small torso.

They dined on a delicious vegetable stew, amidst somewhat stiff chatter, but which Sheridan found interesting, as both adults in charge of him seemed to share a certain complicity. 

When he went to bed, Paul tucked him in, telling him that in the morning they would unpack his things, and gave him permission to read for only half an hour, by the light of a candle that would burn out by the agreed-upon deadline. Sheridan nods, and waits until Paul's footsteps echo down the hall to pull out the embroidered cover book and devour it like a lion.

The boy absorbs like a sponge as much information as he can, but what stays in his mind long after the candle burns out and the moon is overhead is the story of the island of Tir Na nOg. From what he read, it is an island where everything is young, and nothing decays. It is a place where time does not pass, where you can live lots of adventures, and of course, that is a child's dream.

In the dark, Sheridan says, "I'm going to go to that place."

And it becomes his personal mission to get to that place.

He only manages to discover the entrance, and something else, which is not a passageway, or portal, or entrance, to that dreamland.

It is one of the possessions he bequeaths to his daughter, Estibaliz, several years later; the weight of conscience, disguised as the dream of finding Tir Na nOg.

"You were clever, young man," Teleute says to him, smiling knowingly, "What was it you were hoping to do by sending your daughter there?"

Sheridan looks through the turquoise water reflection, pressing his lips together, and holding back the steaming tears of his specter at the sight; his daughter, Estibaliz, being attended to by scores of doctors trying to save her from the loss of blood.

"That she could do what I couldn't," he whispers, his voice breaking. "That she would outsmart me."

Teleute places a hand on his shoulder and smiles at him. Sheridan turns to look at her, and the mischievous gleam in her ancient eyes is something that manages to give him hope.

"She's not destined to go yet."

Those words seal what, Sheridan knows, is something he will not understand.

Death smiles at him one last time and sends him back to his area in the Sunless Lands, while she goes, at Destiny's request, to the young dreamer.

Far away from there, in another place, dark and gloomy, Atropos squints at the thread she was supposed to cut, but which is tied with a knot that glows in a honey tone. When she brings her scissors closer to cut the knot, it glows a little brighter, and refuses to be cut.

"What's the matter, sister-self?" asks Cloto, arranging the threads of new life on her spinning wheel. "You've got that face of -"

"Death of the Endless is keeping someone from dying," interrupts the Crone, holding the thread over tied to her sisters, "someone who has to die.

Lachesis looks up from her spool and raises an eyebrow at the sight of one thread over-tied to another, forming a knot made of other knots; something impossible to undo.

"Oh, sister-self," she says, and the smile that comes to her lips is something downright creepy, "we are in the presence of something that defied the very Destiny of the Endless."

"But this child must die!" cries Atropos, tightening the knot with a wrinkled but strong fist, "She has already been allowed one deviation! It is too much insolence for a mortal soul! "

"No, sister-self," Cloto whispers, smiling sweetly toward the knot contained in the fist of her older version, whose glow protrudes softly through the Crone's fingers. "You know very well that Teleute is a living being for a reason; she provides a different way of existing. This child's death will not prevent her from being the Defiant of Destinies."

"The Defiant of Destinies?" asks the Mother, turning to the Maiden. "And tell me, sister-self, what does that mean?"

"It means that Destiny of the Endless is going to allow this aberation to continue to exist," Atropos rushes, clenching her jaw at the warmth of the knot in his palm, "and, also-" 

"But wouldn't this child be something like a vortex of dreams?" asks Lachesis, frowning. "Wouldn't Destiny have a duty to put an end to it?"

"Are you forgetting, sister-self, that the greatest of the Endless represents both destiny and free will?" replies Cloto, spinning her spinning wheel as she tilts her head to the side. "This girl did something surprisingly simple; she made a decision, one that created a fork never before considered in the Book of Souls. Ending her, and keeping her alive, pose the same risk, and so, it seems, the Guardian chose to keep her alive. "

"Do you think, sisters-self, that Destiny intends something more... profound?" asks Lachesis, winding the thread coming out of Cloto's spinning wheel.

"This girl is an anomaly," answers the Crone, wrinkling her nose in disgust, in annoyance, at the knot of knots, still glowing with that golden hue that is so... atrocious, "an aberation, something that must be eradicated."

"We can't get our hands on her, sister-self," Lachesis tells her, raising her eyebrows at her older version. "She is protected by two of the most powerful Endless."

"Still," Atropos interjects, frowning bitterly, "because of this... creature, our very existence and that of all beings capable of having a destiny will be metamorphosed into..."

"Metamorphosed? " interrupts the Maiden, and her smile suddenly turns sharp. "Yes... I believe the Shaper of Forms will be partially... metamorphosed, too."

At the mention of the third Endless, Lachesis smiles, as if something has occurred to her that would cause her delight.

"Oh, sister-self," she whispers, biting her lip as she shakes her head, her ancient eyes glinting mischievously. "Not even the Prince of Stories could have imagined this."

On the mortal plane, the physical world, in the basement of Fawney Rig's mansion, the blood of Estibaliz, better known as Esther Carrasco, still stains the glass of the prison of Dream of the Endless, and he stares at the blue notebook that the girl who tried to save him left behind, inside the runic circle that contains him.

And, deep inside him, something metamorphoses when he sees what Esther wrote in her own blood, there on the glass; two verses from the Holy Book, Hebrews 11:1, and Romans 15:13.

Faith and hope.

The dream king looks up and stares at the slight crack in the glass, sprouting just below the golden brackets Esther crashed into, where her blood is already dripping, following the carvings in the fissures.

He remembers Jessamy, his raven, so devoted and loyal.

And he allows a couple of tears to fall, for this girl who advocated for him and was harmed by him deserves his tears, just as his raven does.

And so a new fork in Destiny's garden is born, one that was not even conceived of in his book, and one that, because of that, he will watch closely. He turns the page, and reads a first sentence from a blank page that makes him lift one corner of his mouth skeptically, knowing that this is only the beginning.

 “ Esther's eyes widen with a shuddering gasp, as Death of the Endless smiles at her one more time before walking away.”

Chapter Text

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⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

first act !

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┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Let's run free under starlight... and we'll have all of our doubts behind us where they came from, ans we'll believe. so. much. that que just can't be told different, restless for our dreams and full of wild defiance.❞﹚.

⸻ butterflies rising.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ WHERE THE STORY BEGINS . . .

. . . WITH BLOOD AND TEARS.

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

﹙❝ Falling through the motions. Not lost but in between. Is everything I've ever loved part of this machine? I would only need a glimpse of what is yet to be. So I can dare to dream ❞﹚

⸻ song for a dreamer, by bright city.

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

⃟✧ ིྀ･. ━━━━━ Where Esther Carrasco enters the magical world, and learns to live with one foot on it.

Of course, it has its price.

It is dealing with entities, life as teenager and well, her place as Defiant in the universe.

Let's get into it.

link to the playlist !

Themes of the act: 

defiant by imagine music.

song for a dreamer, by bright city.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter one !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Once, I was a poet, and, like all poets, I spent too long in the kingdom of dreams.❞﹚.

⸻ Neil Gaiman.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

The funeral was everything you'd expect from a funeral: mournful, cold, and... empty.

Esther didn't shed a single tear; she had already spent them all a few nights before, when the beeping of the heart monitor announced that her father's heart had stopped while he slept.

Now she just stared at the lid of the coffin where her father's body rested at that moment, where it would rest forever.

Idly and darkly, she wondered how long it would take for the worms and other creatures of the earth to pierce the coffin and devour her father's remains. Would she be over the pain by then?

The rain was gentle, but it seemed to increase in strength with every second, to the point where every drop of water made the umbrellas of those who were there flutter. For Esther, who refused to carry an umbrella, each drop felt like a small blow.

She remembers when her father told her that rain was something to enjoy, not hate. 

"It may evoke sad feelings," he had said, one stormy night all too common in London, "and various poets have taken it as a symbol of such feelings, but it doesn't. It should not be so. Go and dance under it, let the tears of heaven cover you and grant you a moment of pure joy. Show the sky that its sadness can be transformed into happiness."

The only difference is that now Esther is not dancing.

"Oh, little one," Aunt Clarity (who wasn't really her aunt, just a good childhood friend of her father's) had said, placing a hand on her shoulder as she lifted the umbrella she held over Esther's braid, "if you go on like this, you'll make yourself sick."

"Please, Aunt," Esther had said, clenching her jaw to restrain herself from being rude, "Papa taught me that rain is not a bad thing. "

That seems to suffice, because Aunt Clarity snorts through her nose, nods, and walks away muttering something about Sheridan's weirdness. A couple of steps back, she exclaims that her mother, Gabriela, is waiting for her in a few minutes in the driveway.

Esther stood there, staring at the tombstone that marks the place where her father will dwell forever.

And she doesn't understand. Something, the why, doesn't quite click in her mind, and it bothers her. It bothers her like mosquitoes at night; it won't let her sleep.

She doesn't think she'll ever be able to sleep again, considering the way her father died.

So there she is, a few hours later, staring at the ceiling of her room, headphones buried in her ears, the melody of Right Now by One Direction echoing in her skull, and salty tears burning her temples.

Time passes in a blur. Esther is unable to perceive its effects; a day feels like a month, and vice versa. When she least realizes it, it is the beginning of summer, and she is told that she has failed almost half of her subjects, and that her grades are not enough to make her continue on to the next year.

She can only nod absently, every word of encouragement, or concern, or anger, feels like they are covered by an ocean. She doesn't listen to the headmistress' instructions, she doesn't listen to her mother's cries, not even her conscience with its shrill voice is able to pull her out of that emptiness in her mind.

One day, her mother announces that she will send her to Paul's mansion for the vacations.

That makes her raise her head from her blue notebook.

Paul McGuire was her father's last living relative, his great-uncle, to be exact. He lived in a wealthy mansion called Fawney Rig, in Wych Cross, and was the one her father had turned to for help when treatment for throat cancer had become more expensive. Because of this, the Carrasco family had moved to London, Sheridan's hometown, with the purpose of living closer to this same mansion, at Paul's request. Reluctantly, the couple agreed, as they were very proud, and accepting charity, even from a relative, was reason to wrinkle one's nose in disgust. Esther, with her fourteen years, and her dreamy temperament, had found no problem; she loved to travel, and, anyway, had nothing to tie her to the previous place where they lived. The idea of spending time in a mansion with a presumably magical background was something that kept her expectant as well.

Her father hadn't wanted her to spend much time in that mansion; instead, he had asked her to accompany him during the nights in the hospital, after treatments for throat cancer. They talked a lot, about stories, poets, her father's Irish-Basque culture in general. Still, there were days when she was allowed to stay at Fawney Rig for a couple of days, no more. 

Paul McGuire welcomed her warmly, gave her access to the library, and told her she was welcome whenever she decided to visit.

Paul's husband, Alex Burgess, didn't give her many looks, but he didn't disown her either, if his eternal scowl was a sign of hatred for the world.

So, when her mother sent her packing her things, there were no buts on her part; for the first time in months, Esther lifted a corner of her lips.

She spent a couple of days babysitting the children of staunchly Latina family friend Daisy Duarte, or Margarita, where life seemed to come back to her. Being around the eight- and nine-year-old tornadoes, Marisol and Santiago, was good for her.

And when it came time to leave for Fawney Rig, Esther pursed her lips into a smile.

She couldn't wait to confirm what, she just then remembered, her father told her.

She doesn't smile at the memory of that, but focuses instead on the blurred silhouettes of the trees as she rides with her mother in the car; the night her father died, he had told her, before she slept, that at Fawney Rig there was, in the former bedroom of the one who had been the Magus' mistress, a little door, hidden behind the bedside table.

Esther, a fan of Alice in Wonderland, and Coraline (mostly the idea of the little door, as the rest disturbed her a little), leaned over her father's bed and rested her chin on her hands.

Laughing, Sheridan had told her that he had discovered it at twelve, and that, by crossing it, he discovered a passageway to Fawney Rig's basement. Fawney Rig was said to be part of the resident castle of Tir Na nOg, an island in Irish mythology, and, as such, there were subway portals leading to that mythical land. 

Esther shrieked to herself at such a mine of information. Of course, there was a part of her that doubted, but her hope was stronger.

"Do with this information what you will," he had told her, when he had finished telling her how he could not find the right passage, and because of that, he could not enter Tir Na nOg. "It is yours to act, and mine to remember. Mind you, bring something to break glass, because the passage I found was made of that material, and I wouldn't be surprised if what you find is made of glass as well."

Esther nodded profusely, and after some more small talk, over one of the poems that had been written in the girl's blue notebook, her father slept, and so did she. The only difference was that, when dawn broke, the heart monitor beeped with that eerie sound, and Esther woke up screaming for her father to wake up. He didn't, and in the end, a brunette doctor had approached the girl in the hallway of the high-end hospital and told her that Sheridan Carrasco had died in his sleep.

Esther threw up the red berry tea she had taken with her in the thermos of mate that Daisy had prepared for her, and the oreo's she had nibbled on, onto the ceramics. The nurse was kind enough to brush her hair aside and stroke her back, nor did she scold her for soiling the immaculate whiteness of the tiles. She just handed her a glass of water and took her to the waiting room to doze in a leather chair until Gabriela arrived.

It didn't feel like sleeping; it felt like solivaganting (from the noun "solivagant," meaning "a lonely wanderer") in the darkness of an abandoned place; Esther remembers even the rubble of what, she imagined, had once been a proud castle, far away from the wasteland in which her subconscious wallowed in self-pity.

She laughed bitterly; her mind had felt like one.

Presently, she shakes her head, and pulls the headphones away from her ear, as Fawney Rig, tall and proud, towers over the roof of her mother's 
car.

They get out, Esther with her backpack, and Gabriela with her purse, and head for the front door.

The older woman raises her finger and rings the doorbell, the sound of which reverberates like church bells within the walls of the mansion. That single introduction makes Esther's old soul writhe with anticipation. 

Outwardly, she bites her lip to keep from smiling.

Gone is the depressed state that had her crawling across the floorboards of her living room. Ahead is the mansion with a mysterious air that practically looks her in the eye, defying her to explore.

Defiance accepted.

A few seconds pass before a woman in an attendant's uniform opens the door, acknowledging the widowed woman and her no-longer-spectral 
daughter with a polite smile.

"How are you, Alice? " asks Gabriela, giving her a little hug as a greeting. "I haven't seen you since the funeral. "

"Very well, Mrs. Carrasco," she nods with a smile, and turns to Esther with a soft look. "And you, Esther, you look better."

In response, the girl nods repeatedly, like a child.

"The prospect of spending an interesting few days here granted me a sense of anticipation."

Gabriela and Alice blink.

"She's doing much better than I expected," the nurse replies, and narrows her eyes at the younger one. "You're not planning some kind of revolution against the crown?"

Esther purses her lips, and shakes her head with a guilty smile. 

She wasn't planning something like that... but something else.

"Though it is a considerable option, no. I just plan to write several poems. Balconies can be a great source of inspiration, as can gardens," she replies, settling her backpack back on her back. "I'll certainly think about that revolution, though. Someone has to teach Prince Charles that, even though Princess Diana is no longer present among the living, he won't have an easy time with Lady Camilla."

Gabriela raises her eyebrows at her daughter.

"Well, if I had known that coming here would cheer you up like that, I would have brought you here much sooner," she says, eyeing her daughter suspiciously. "I mean, you even dressed like you used to dress."

Esther looks at her outfit; most striking is her blue dress, whose skirt falls long in the back and reveals her knees in the front. Next comes the jean jacket that reaches her waist, and her country boots. Most colorful, at least, are her multiple rings and bracelets, and the small necklace resting on her chest. Her long hair is braided into a strange set of knots decorated with the old earrings she collected from the four maternal generations that came from her, each charm tinkling like a bell with every movement of her head.

When Esther raises her head, she wrinkles her nose at her mother.

"You never let me dress like that," she says. "I saw the opportunity, and I used it."

"Because it's ridiculous," Gabriela replies, in a tired tone, "and because nobody we don't trust in will see you."

"Ridiculous is the origin of Valentine's Day," Esther counters, frowning, "and that such a thing is celebrated in the world."

"But it's Valentine's Day," says Alice, with a mischievous smile. "When you are in love you will understand."

"I understand that when you love someone, every day is Valentine's Day. There doesn't need to be a specific day to give chocolates and close padlocks in Paris. "

Alice smiles again, and is about to open her mouth, when a soft laugh is heard coming from the hallway to the right.

The three women turn, and see Paul McGuire there, with his gray hair and warm smile. 

"Well, well, if it isn't dear Esther," Paul greets, advancing forward with outstretched arms. "The one who makes us feel like the most uneducated people on the planet."

The girl rolls her eyes and smiles at the man as she steps forward to receive his embrace.

"You were missed, little one," Paul comments, pulling away from the embrace as he squeezes Esther's deltoids.

"Yes..." she murmurs, lowering her head. "I missed me too."

Paul gives her a small, knowing smile and nods.

"As far as I know, you couldn't get ahead in school," says the man, cocking his head to the side. "But a few days here will do you good. Soon you'll be able to wipe the floor with the notes of those who made fun of you."

Esther purses her lips tightly, holding back the urge to laugh. From the side, she glances at her mother, who shakes her head, as if it's hopeless. When she looks back at Paul, she gives him a smile that promises trouble.

And the man replies.

"Come, we'll take you to your room upstairs."

Esther anxiously grabs a handle of her backpack, and the handle of her luggage, and follows Paul up the stairs.

Behind them, Gabriela and Alice watch them disappear as they chat animatedly.

"She'll be fine," Alice says to her mother, when she sees her rubbing her lips with her fingers. "We'll take care of her."

"I know you will," Gabriela replies, lowering her gaze to the floor before raising it to the stairs once more. "I'm just worried..."

And the silence that followed was as deep as that of an entity locked in a basement.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

"This will be your room," Paul murmurs, opening one of the doors on the right. "It was used by a woman before, I hope it will be helpful."

Esther frowned when that sounded familiar.

"Were there women here?" she asks innocently.

"Alex's father had a mistress once," Paul replied, oblivious to Esther's heart almost leaking out of her throat. "In some ways, she reminds me of you."

"Huh?"

Paul laughed: "She was quite... eloquent."

Esther narrowed her eyes.

"I mean, she knew how to express herself. She spoke cultured and was quite determined."

"And I remind you of her? "

"She would have liked you," Paul says, and the look on his face makes the younger woman wonder exactly what kind of things this man knows. "And you would have liked her. That's why I'm giving you her room."

Esther could have fallen backwards at how easy it all was. As if it was meant to be.

She raised her eyebrows at the thought.

She smiled at Paul one last time before he left her to take care of her things, muttering that he'd come for her in an hour, when dinner was ready.

And what did Esther do?

She decided that, for the moment, she would not let them suspect her; she put on one of her favorite playlists, and began to unpack some clothes. When she was done, she smiled softly, sitting down on the balcony of the room to read some poems by Nikita Gill.

And, a couple of hours later, along with Alice and Gabriela, Paul comes in, announcing that there's a delicious stuffed chicken waiting downstairs.

Esther jumps up, comes downstairs, and prepares to share a lively evening with everyone present, but as she descends to the top step of the stairs, her smile trembles a little.

For there is Paul, whom she sees first, and next to him is his husband, Alex Burgess, in his wheelchair.

Esther presses her lips together at the sight of the last of the Burgess line.

She always thought he needed a wheelchair because life took care of withering him, like a flower without sunshine. A sad existence, doomed by the unknown but suspected actions of his progenitor.

When the old man looks up and sees her, he smiles politely, and Esther has no choice but to answer him with the same smile.

There was always some animosity between them, or at least, some kind of reluctance to remain in each other's presence, as if there was something between them, something hanging menacingly like a butcher knife over their heads.

Or Esther has a rather wide imagination.

That's probably it.

Everyone takes their place around the table, and when they serve the delicious stuffed turkey, Esther thinks of nothing else but eating to gather energy so she can execute her machiavellian plan.

Sheridan and she never made plans as such, but Esther was deadly sure he told her such a thing for a reason.

She smiles inwardly; she and her father had always shared a certain complicity, one that transcended words, and, apparently, transcends death as well, since she can almost feel him breathing down the 
back of her neck, announcing to her that the time is near.

"Esther."

She shakes her head and looks up at the voice of Alex Burgess at the head of the table. She nods to signal that she is listening.

The older man takes a deep breath, as if building up his courage (or patience), and then speaks in a husky tone of voice:

"From what Paul has told me, you'll be staying a few days," the man puts a piece of vegetable in his mouth and chews a little before continuing. "I hope you can use this recreation time. But, we have a couple of rules to follow."

Esther takes a drink of water, using the glass to hide her grimace.

Rules.

"I'm listening."

Don't misunderstand this; Esther is pretty obedient, but when she feels defied, she takes it personally. And she knows these rules will be a defiance to her intentions.

Still, she'll listen to them, and obey them... for now.

Alex nods, pleased, and looks at Paul.

The other man looks at Esther with a strict but warm face.

"The first and foremost is that you don't make messes," he says, then smiles sideways. "Like, go to the library and leave the utensils you used untidy."

"Of course not," Esther replies, poking a piece of chicken in her mouth. "Libraries are sacred. They are places dedicated to the greatest treasure of all; knowledge. And as such, they should be respected."

Everyone present, from Alex Burgess, to the charge nurse, Alice, raises their eyebrows.

"It amazes me what such a young mind is capable of understanding," says the last of the Burgess line.

"Don't kid yourself, honey," says Paul, eyeing Esther suspiciously. "She is young, but she has an old soul. That makes her knowledgeable, and, dare I say, dangerous."

She raises an eyebrow at the man.

"Are you defying me, Paul?"

"God forbid I should defy you, Esther," the old man replies immediately. "Before everything, I remember you were a savage. Now that you've recovered, I can't imagine what you're capable of."

"I'm glad you know me so well," the girl replies, smiling with tight lips. "But don't worry. The rules exist for a reason. I will respect them as such."

"That's good to hear," replies Alex Burgess.

"What are the other rules?" Esther then asks.

The faces of the two elders take on an old age that is not human, or so it seems, to the observant eyes of the younger one. She shares a glance with her mother, then, more out of suspicion than complicity.

"There's only one more, but it's the most important," Paul sits up straight and sets the silverware on top of his empty plate. "Don't go to the basement."

The first thing that comes to Esther's mind is: Why does everything happen in the basement?

The second thing that happens is that her whole being lights up at the last sentence, so, drawing on the drama lessons she hated, but which were necessary, she softens her features and takes a drink of water before raising her eyebrows and making a nonchalant gesture with one hand.

"Don't worry," she assures him, "I have no intention of digging up the past you're not proud of. Rumors are not pleasant."

"There's no such thing as the devil down there," says Alex Burgess, hurriedly. "Only artifacts and things that had been my father's, and that must be guarded so that no occult fanatic gets too close. Still, it needs to be secured."

"Don't worry, Mr. Burgess," Esther adds, taking another drink of water, before feigning a yawn. "Businesses that belonged to your father are not something I'm interested in. The most daring thing you'll see me doing will be sorting the flowers in the garden with what's on my head," to prove her point, Esther tilts her braid to reveal the multiple charms and hook earrings that decorated her hair.

When she lifted her head, she was delighted to hear soft laughter coming from Alice and the mansion patriarchs, as well as a temple rub from her mother.

She had succeeded; the first step in her Machiavellian plan to discover the passage to Tir Na nÓg.

She smiles politely, though inwardly, she is surprised at her own vivacity.

"It's all right, Esther," nods Alex Burgess, the smile he gives her is one that makes a part of her squirm with cold compassion. "I trust you."

Which only made her feel worse, but not enough to give up. 

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Esther resolves to first find the little door her father told her about before proceeding with her intentions.

Her mother bids her farewell with a hug and a warning not to give the benevolent elders heart attacks, and then goes off to her borrowed room to rest so that the next day she can return to London.

So Esther pretends to turn out the light to sleep, and lies in bed, already bathed and changed, waiting patiently until all the lights go out and the footsteps of the residents fade away.

When it's two in the morning, and there is no witness but the moon and its soft glow, Esther gets up, trying not to make any noise. She pulls out from under her pillow the candle and the matchbox she took from the kitchen, and lights the wick. 

She feels like she's in a period movie as she places her feet on the wooden floor and tries not to move suddenly. The candle provides enough illumination so that she doesn't trip over anything, and also so that she doesn't draw attention to herself. She restrained himself from putting on his headphones to listen to background music, and squinted as she slowly and gently moved the bedside table away.

When the bedside table moves far enough away, Esther holds her breath. 

There it is, the little door.

It appears to be part of the wall, painted to go unnoticed, but the frame and the small protruding billet belie what it really is. It's small, but that's not a problem.

Esther smiles, looks up at the moon and laughs quietly.

"I found it, daid (1).

For a moment, the sky seems to grow brighter.

Esther puts the bedside table back with the same softness and silence, and with a new conviction, goes to sleep.

She does not dream.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Knowledge is a powerful thing.

So Esther simply refrains from keeping up appearances.

For the first few days, she wanders around the mansion, reads in the library, writes poems, helps in the kitchen (because she loves cooking), and spends her afternoons drinking orange juice in the garden while watching the flowers.

Paul and Alex seem increasingly relaxed, trusting what she had said, and lately, demonstrated. 

Honestly, Esther had no regrets. Her father had told her about that little gate and the possible portals to Tir Na nOg with every intention, so she will find them.

With three days left to stay, on June 22, Esther finds something in a secluded part of the garden near the forest surrounding the mansion.

Hidden from plain sight thanks to the willow leaves that cover it, there is a small wooden headstone, nailed to the head of a small square of disturbed earth covered with piles of flowers used at funerals.

On the wooden headstone, there is a name, roughly carved, by an inexperienced hand.

"Jessamy," Esther reads, squinting.

The square of disturbed earth is very small, so it's not a person. A pet, perhaps? It can't be a cat, or a dog, either. Maybe a bird?

Esther's curious little fingers trace the carved name, wondering how beloved this creature was, to the point that a grave was made for it.

Esther doesn't give it much thought, in the end. She concentrates on what she plans to do that night.

At dusk, she returns to the mansion, and quietly takes the poker from the fireplace in the living room when no one is looking, and hides it under her bed. When night falls, she takes his small wallet, and keeps her blue notebook and pen there. She takes her phone, and waits for the lights to go out and the footsteps to stop.

Once that happens, Esther changes into comfortable clothes, takes the knitted blanket from the sofa, puts on her purse, takes the poker, makes a messy bun on the top of her head, and without turning on the light, puts the small table away, and takes a deep breath.

"Well," she says to herself, clenching her jaw as she shakes her head, "let's do this.

And Esther leans over, opens the little door as quietly as she can by pulling the handle gently, and the wood swings aside to reveal a dark space that seems to stretch into infinity.

With a smile, the girl crawls inside.

And she doesn't come out again.

Well, at least, not through that way.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter two !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.❞﹚.

⸻ Mary Oliver.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

She scrapes her knees as she makes it out of the passageway. 

Esther just opens her mouth and doesn't make a sound, other than the sound of her barefoot steps. She moans silently, and pulls herself together before continuing.

She shakes out her phone to activate the flashlight, and lowers the brightness so as not to attract attention. She points it straight ahead, and begins to walk.

She smiles and bites her lip hard, but no blood comes out. This whole secret operation thrills her in a childish way. Mostly because she is living up to her poet's pseudonym, "The Solivagant". 

She comes to a fork in the road and chooses the left, without giving it much thought. She comes to another, and this time she chooses the right. Then she comes to a door, which she examines with fixed eyes.

It is old, very old. The wood gives off a foul musty smell, and the doorknob is rusty. Taking a deep breath, Esther grabs the knob and turns it to the right, gritting her teeth in a hiss as it squeaks. She pulls it away slowly, which only seems to amplify the creaking of the wood, and leans it gently against the wall behind her. She is about to shine the light to the front when she sees that there is a light of its own protruding in the distance.

The light is accompanied by echoes of human voices.

The young woman's heart leaps against her ribs, and in response, she turns off the phone's flashlight, puts it in her purse, and takes the poker tightly in her right hand.

She moves forward a little at a time, tiptoeing, getting closer and closer to the light, which she now sees is a yellowish hue. She swallows the memories of a hospital corridor and forces herself to keep going until she gets there.

When she does, she notices that light and voices filter between the small spaces of a wall, variously, as there are many cracks. One catches her eye; it surrounds the silhouette of a brick in the shape of a circle.

It can't be a coincidence.

Esther takes another deep breath, and concentrates on the voices as she hears what they say;

"What if we're going to take a detour?"

"No. We have to keep an eye on him. That's what we're paid to do."

Keep an eye on him?

"Come on, Lia, it'll only take a few minutes. For all we know, he's been like this for years. A few minutes won't do any harm."

Who do they have in there? Wasn't there only supposed to be artifacts?

Looks like the rumors are true after all.

No voices are heard, just the sound of chairs scraping the floor, and then, hurried footsteps that fade away as they walk away.

Esther takes it as a divine sign, takes another deep breath, closes her eyes tightly, and presses lightly on the circular brick.

It doesn't budge, until she presses a little harder and it sinks abruptly.

Esther almost falls over as the wall pulls away forward, sliding to the left with a rattling sound that makes her bite her nails.

Still, the euphoria is greater.

"This I have to write," she mutters to herself, smiling breathlessly. She starts walking towards the light behind the wall where the passageway was hidden, moving her head every which way, absorbing every little detail. "No kidding," she reaches the edge of the wall, and rests the poker against the base, reaching into her satchel for her notebook and pen, "who knew there really were passages in...?"

When she looks straight ahead, she gasps.

Because there is no portal, no passageways, no entrance to Tir Na nOg.

There is only a glass dome bordered with golden bases, floating above a worn circle made of unknown symbols.

And there, behind the glass, is a man who looks back at her.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Her jaw drops like an anvil, so that the muscle is jammed. Esther blinks repeatedly, lifts her jaw by herself with her hand, and rubs an eyelid, as if to make sure she's not asleep.

She's not, and she doesn't know what to make of that, so, for the moment, she devotes herself to analyzing what the fuck is going on.

She watches the man behind the glass; the first thing she sees is that he gives a whole new definition to the word "pale," if you go to one extreme. The hair is short and messy, a black that reminds Esther of a raven's feathers. He is naked, sitting in a manner in which he can retain what little dignity he has left, and he looks at her with clear eyes. As she gets closer, the young woman sees that they are blue, and that they shine like a sky full of stars.

The song A Sky Full of Stars reverberates in the side of her head. She shakes it slightly to shut out the thought.

"For God's sake," Esther murmurs, more to herself than for this man to hear, and she moves closer until she reaches the front of the circle of symbols (which she can see a little better now, they're runes), not daring to brush against it. "What...?"

The man is still staring at her. But after a few seconds, he blinks, and looks away.

Esther purses her lips, not convinced that this being is what the rumors claimed. But she is convinced of something; he is not human, because no one would survive long in these conditions, nor would he be as pretty as him.

That's the word that pops into her head; pretty. But it makes no difference. He is trapped, like a circus attraction, and there is no beauty worth such a situation. This can't go on like this.

"How did you end up there?" she asks, voice pressed against her throat. The man... supernatural being, doesn't answer. Nor does he look at her. "What have they done to you?"

He does look at her now. From the corner of his eye, and Esther catches a glimpse of sparkles reflecting off the ceiling lights. Tears.

The very idea of that, that this being of dubious but supernatural provenance is capable of crying, and that he does, squeezes her heart like dish sponges. 

She moves a little closer, reaches across to hold her notebook and pen in one hand, and extends the other over the glass.

"Have you been here long," Esther asks. The being doesn't answer. "Can you talk?"

His only answer is a couple of blinks.

The girl shakes her head; he clearly can't speak. Whether he can or not is off the table. She has to do something. 

Esther scratches her head and squats down in front of the sphere, looking closely at the symbols drawn on the floor. They are a rusty hue, as if they have been there a long time. As she pulls her notebook and pen away from her arms, absentmindedly setting it down somewhere, the girl manages to make out a golden border; these symbols were made with gold, either liquid or powdered, she doesn't know and doesn't think it matters.

Esther tenses when she hears a dull sound above her head.

When she lifts it up, she sees the enclosed being pressing his forehead next to the size of her own, and his eyes are glowing so brightly that the young woman feels something wrap itself between her ribs.

"Why do you look so hopeful?" she asks in a whisper, more to herself than for the being to hear. "I haven't done anything yet."

He shakes his head imperceptibly, and his hand appears beside her.

He does nothing more.

Esther tacitly understands, for something clicks just above her ear. She can't explain it in words, she doesn't think there are enough to do so, but it's something that makes her jump from her position to go back the way she came to get the poker.

She trots back, and sees that the being is sitting squat, with an immaculate expression, looking at her as if she were his salvation.

Possibly so. 

Esther shakes her head, raises the poker as if it were a baseball bat, and speaks:

"I don't know who... what you are," she raises the poker a little higher, and takes a deep breath before loosening her tongue "but you have to know something; you didn't deserve this. However long it's been, however things have been, you didn't deserve it. Now I understand why my father sent me here." the being frowns, or well, Esther thinks so, because, among the sudden distortion of his watery eyes, she caught a glimpse of a slight movement in his forehead "I'm going to set you free."

Esther takes a step closer, to the edge of the circle of runes, and takes another deep breath, filling herself with what courage she can.

"I'm going to free you, so step aside if you don't want to hurt yourself."

The being says and does nothing, but its face transforms into a mixture of feelings that Esther does not stop to analyze.

She raises the poker once again, to shoulder height.

The being seems to be about to jump, as it moves into a ready position.

Esther closes her eyes, and is about to swing the tip of the poker toward the center of the sphere when....

"Esther! Stop!"

The girl misses by a hair; the tip of the poker lands on a golden edge of the sphere, shaking it like a ball, and it's not enough.

The being's expression metamorphoses into something dreadful; anger, sadness, hatred, and a host of such things.

Esther looks over her shoulder and sees those she didn't expect to see; Paul, and Alex Burgess. They both look older than natural, or so it seems. 

"You..." Esther murmurs, the realization feels like a shot of adrenaline straight to the neck.

"I told you not to come to the basement," Paul says, and the phrase alone makes the girl rise above herself and breathe like a wild animal, chest rising and falling rapidly as her knuckles turn white from her grip on the poker handle. "Where are the guards? Come, let's go back upstairs."

Esther moves a little closer to the sphere, deliberately skimming the circle, and places a hand flat on the glass, feeling a sudden, irrational need to cover the enclosed being from view.

"I'm not moving from here until you tell me the truth."

Alex Burgess leans back in his chair, "Esther...."

"You," the girl snarls, and raises the poker to point at him as a judge points at the guilty. "It was your father who locked him up, wasn't it? Why? Who is he? How on earth were you able to live with him trapped here?"

"We'll explain it to you," says Paul, approaching with one hand raised high, like a white flag. "But please come with us."

Esther gives them a sharp look as she lifts her chin and looks down her nose at them, defiantly.

"No, not until you explain everything to me, in as much detail as you can get across their consciously knowing brains that what they did, or, rather, didn't do, was wrong."

The silence Esther has grown accustomed to every time her poetic side comes out doesn't feel like she's being judged for her weirdness; it feels like the silence that follows an executioner's hatchet.

Paul lowers his hands and sighs audibly, as if recovering from holding something heavy, and turns to look at Alex Burgess, who watches the imprisoned being with a look that reflects weariness.

Esther raises her chin once again, this time, accompanied by an arched eyebrow, as if she is asking, "What the fuck are you waiting for?"

Alex Burgess takes the wheels of his chair and walks over until he is a few feet from the glass sphere, and peers at the being inside. He corresponds to him, but his starry eyes are cast in darkness. To accentuate this, he peers at Alex through the space between Esther's middle and index fingers, which makes him look more menacing.

An ageless instinct whispers to her not to pull her hand away, so she does not.

"He is Dream of the Endless," Alex Burgess begins to say, and Esther's brain travels a million miles a second, analyzing. "He is the anthropomorphic personification of the concept of the word "Dream," and is better known as Morpheus, or, more accurately, the Sandman."

The Sandman.

Esther blinks, and she's no longer in that basement, she's in her childhood bedroom, curled up in her bed, and there's her father, Sheridan, auburn hair falling across his forehead, one hand on her knee above the blanket, and they both look out the window toward the stars as he tells her the story of a shapeless being that visits children and sprinkles sand in their eyes to make them dream, and the evidence of such an occurrence is the eyelash that collects on their eyelids in the morning. Thereafter, her father encouraged her to dream, and she has.

The girl blinks, and returns to the present. She watches Paul, who looks at her with something akin to embarrassment, Alex, who looks at her with resignation, and when she pulls her hand away, she sees the being, Dream of the Endless, Morpheus, the Sandman, look back at her with galaxies, nebulae, constellations and countless amounts of dreams reflected in his irises.

The next words that sprang from Esther's mouth felt like the seal of something in the infinite:

"Jódeme."

Of course, at that moment she was no longer her father's solivagant, but her mother's Estibaliz girl, the one who was, from the tip of her toenail, to the tip of her hair, latina.

She's acting like her mom when she gets hysterical, a voice in the back of her mind reminds her. It doesn't matter.

Paul, Alex and the Sandman all raised an eyebrow at the same time, with an almost comical timing.

Esther filed it away for later; now, she would have answers.

"Why is he here?" she asked, standing up straight, "How did you get him? For what purpose? What...?"

"My father didn't want him," Alex interrupted, and turned, wheelchair and all, to Esther. "My older brother, Randall, had died in the Gallipoli campaign, and my father used his knowledge of the occult to summon death. But the one he trapped was him" and he nodded at the being, Dream of the Endless.

Esther will end up in the psychiatrist if she doesn't keep asking.

"And he didn't let him go right away?"

"He couldn't bring my brother back," Alex continues, closing his eyes with a tiredness flowing in his wrinkles, "but he could make himself powerful, rich, and healthy, using his tools."

Esther's forehead aches: "What tools?"

Alex seems reluctant to continue, but the girl will accept no such thing; she raises her eyebrows, opens her eyes until the muscles of her eyelids twitch like the frayed threads of a sweater, and makes a crazed gesture with her hand.

"When he appeared in the circle," the old man looks down, and the young woman follows his gaze to see the worn runes, "he had three objects; a strange-looking helmet, a necklace with a ruby, and a sandbag. And underneath his tunic, a bird, a raven. "

"A raven?" questioned Esther in a strained voice, tilting her head as she feels a tug on the back of her neck; a memory. "Jessamy? "

Alex Burgess looks up, suddenly, like a child caught with his hands in the cookie jar. Paul looks the same, and the Sandman's eyes, watching her intently, begin to fill with water.

"How did you...?"

"Today, walking in the garden, I found a grave," Esther answers, immediately, turning her head toward the pair of old men so that her loose locks fluttered, "and on the headstone, that name was engraved. I assumed it was a pet, but judging by that," she moves her hand away, and looks at the being inside the dome, who looks back at her with regret and sadness, "it wasn't yours, and it wasn't a pet per se."

Alex Burgess lowers his head, it hangs over him like an apple, and the girl has to lean in to hear what he says: 

"I foolishly thought that, by killing her, I would succeed in pleasing my father. I did, when she came down to help him. And yet, all I gained were the Sandman's tears, the promise of suffering, and that grave with flowers I dug myself, begging for a forgiveness I wasn't worthy of."

Esther shakes her head, pursing her lips to keep from sobbing, as if the admission pains her. It does, as she imagines a raven, black and devoted, doing all he could to free his master, only to die in whatever way this man killed her. She straightens in place, and looks at the Sandman with the rims of her eyes beginning to sting. The alabaster-carved face reveals nothing, but the eyes are all that is needed; they are about to overflow, and Esther's mind conjures up the image of a starry sky beginning to blur, like watercolors on a canvas that was splashed with water.

The girl puts a hand to her mouth and walks backwards, as if stepping away from the sphere will give her a bigger picture of the situation; one that is big enough not to overwhelm her.

"How long has he been there?"

"Esther..." Paul wants to speak, stepping forward.

The young woman whips her head around with a snap to look at him with her head cocked to one side, eyes narrowed, and nose wrinkled. Being honest with herself, she did it out of the blue, with no intention of sounding machiavellian, but it gave the situation a twist.

"How long, Paul?"

The man seemed to hesitate, but after looking at his lover, he sighed heavily, and replied:

"Roderick Burgess caught him here in 1916."

Esther gasps again, but this time, quietly, as she brings a hand to her forehead.

The Sandman, the creature of dreams, had been trapped in that place since 1916, which, in today's time, would be a century, and three years.

A century and three years of nothing but himself in a glass cage surrounded by strange symbols, knowing the worst of humanity when, thanks to him, they are able to dream.

A sob bubbles from her lips, and Esther wraps her forearm around her stomach as she looks up at Alex Burgess.

But then, something glowed in the side of her head.

"In 1916 the sleeping sickness mayhem was reported for the first time," she said, absently, as if they were not her words. But remember, remember when, after her father's death, she became practically obsessed with this disease, looking for ways to unravel its characteristics. "Does this have something to do with it?"

Esther has to check that suspicion.

At the same time, the elderly couple lowered their heads, and that was enough.

The girl lifted her chin as she breathed sharply, discovering for herself, in that moment, why what happened that day happened. 

In that moment, she was not the specter of a girl who loved her father, she was not the solivagant, nor was she her mother's child Estibaliz.

A single word reverberated in her mind; Defiant.

So she defies.

"How were you able to live such prosperous lives knowing it was at the expense of the one who allowed them to dream?" she questioned, voice pressed against the bell. The girl began to walk, resting the poker on the ground and dragging it behind her as she took each step closer to the elderly couple. "Did the consequences of this never cross their minds?"

"I wanted to let him go," Alex rushes on.

"And why didn't you?!?"

"Because I killed his raven! He'd kill me for that!"

"That's what you deserve, you coward!"

"Esther!" shouts Paul, placing himself between his mistress and the girl. "How dare you..."

The girl raises the poker and points it at the man's throat.

The silence that followed was the silence that had accompanied Esther's mind since she stopped hearing the beeping of the heart machine.

Alex looked horribly green, Paul raised his hands in peace, and the Sandman rearranged himself in his cell, watching the scene in front of him vigilantly.

"Roderick Burgess's ambition and his descendant's cowardice took my father from me," she whispered, sharply and damningly, "so now I'm going to take something from them as well."

And, in a blur, Esther ran up to the dome, poker raised, and-

BAM!

An inexplicable pain lashed her right shoulder, causing Esther to gasp, stumble, slam her head against a golden edge of the dome, and collapse just a few steps from the runic circle.

In a blur, the inevitable truth becomes clear in front of her wide eyes fixed on a grimy spot on the ceiling; he knows a guard shot her. She knows Alex and Paul are screaming. She knows she's not going to survive. 

So she turns her head with superhuman strength, and looks at the Sandman.

He is leaning over her dying body, with his own form bent over the base of the dome, and his hands stretched full length against the glass.

He is weeping. His eyes no longer carry galaxies, or nebulae, or constellations, or countless amounts of dreams. They are just two black wells with a bright spot, which are flooded with tears that escape by sheer luck, falling on the glass.

The Sandman, crying, for her. The situation only became much more complicated than it was in the beginning.

Esther reaches out, and brushes the glass with her bloody fingers, just the size of one of the being's hands.

"I'm sorry," she gasps, her whole arm shaking, and the blood, her blood, leaves traces of smears and her fingerprints on the glass. "I'm sorry, I failed."

The screams, curses and frantic movements of the surroundings fade away as the Sandman shakes his head, a simple movement that might have gone unnoticed if it had not been seen with attention. 

It doesn't matter, he seems to say.

Esther doesn't believe him, but she's dying, and if she still has a little time, she'll use it well.

She couldn't offer him freedom, but she can offer him something else.

As precisely as she can, fingers trembling, Esther scribbles two Bible verses, two passages she read one day that brought her more peace than any pill.

Heb. 11:1; Rom. 15:13.

Faith and hope, she thinks.

They are barely understood, since she scribbled them from her periphery, so, to be sure, she whispers them:

"Hebrews eleven, one, and Romans fifteen, thirteen." the blood erupts on her lips and spills down her chin, running along her jaw line like the caress of a knuckle. "Faith.... and... hope."

The Sandman blinks, the action causes a few more tears to overflow, and Esther smiles at him. 

Belatedly, in the midst of a delirium of blood loss, she thinks he looks like a child, like someone to hug, protect, and love.

The logic part of her mind, flickering hard, reminds her that one of his names is Dream of the Endless, which would mean that he is a being who lived many, many eons, so it is illogical that he would require the love of a mortal, despite being trapped inside a runic circle.

The circle.

Esther looks down, and sees that it is within reach, with her notebook and pen inside. She strains, tries to reach for her utensils, so she can at least make a breakthrough, and just as she is about to succeed, a pair of arms lift her up and she shrieks breathlessly:

"No, wai...!"

"Take her upstairs!" Alex shouts to whom, Esther sees, is a man dressed as a guard. "Make sure you keep her alive until help arrives!"

"Wait!" she wants to say, but can't, so she holds out the trembling, blood-dripping hand that gushes from her shoulder toward the dome, which recedes farther and farther as the guard carries her away, and begins to fade each time a black smudge spooks like ink in her eyes. "Let me go back! Let me help him!"

The last thing she sees before her brain shuts down completely is the Sandman's expression, once bright with hope, now shattered in despair.

She doesn't remember, but just a second before, she was able to see a silhouette that looked like a ball of threads, tangling and tangling until they formed a knot made of knots that begins to glow faintly, and behind it, three pairs of translucent eyes giving off green mist.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter three !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ She turns her mind to countless things, then back again, where it begins. This restless urge, and all it brings, to be someone, to do something.❞﹚.

⸻ Dreams, Michael Faudet.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

When Esther opens her eyes, the first thing she sees is a white light that goes out, and then comes back, and goes out, and comes back. Again and again. 

Then she blinks again, for what feels like a second and an eternity at the same time, and her eyes focus on a scarlet trail sprouting from somewhere behind her shoulder. 

"Scapula...! Scapula! " she manages to catch, hearing blurred. 

Somewhere in the back of her head, she giggles, because she remembers that famous "Mom, I hear fuzzy! Mom, put me in rice!" meme. Come to think of it, are they putting her in a bowl of rice? Because something scratchy, but plastic-textured, like rice, pokes her back. 

"Bullet...! A liter and a ..! Od!"

"Funny," she whispers to herself, her mouth moving slowly, or so it feels, at least. "But not funny ha-ha. Funny..."

She lets out a shriek as she feels her chest being poked with something that electrifies her.

"¡A... in!" 

Once again she squeals, because once again she's been poked with that thing. 

And again.

And one more time. 

Then nothing. 

Everything feels blurry, heavy, and gone. 

Nothing feels real.

And everything feels fake. 

Esther doesn't remember how she ended up like this, but when she opens her eyes again, it's because something warm covers her right hand. 

When she manages to focus her pupils, she sees a brunette woman, with curly hair, and eyes that look like chocolate dips. What catches her eye most is the Egyptian symbol hanging from her neck. 

She is smiling at her. 

"Hello," she greets her, and helps her to sit up. "Are you all right?"

Esther blinks, disoriented. She tilts her head, to the right, then to the left, and does a minimal eyebrow raise when she sees that she is in a hospital. 

She's dressed in a hospital patient gown that reaches her knees, and there's a trail of blood that appears from the door in front of her, and continues to the right side of her bed, all the way to her shoulder.

She gasps when she sees the exposed bone of her collarbone, snapped in half, protruding grotesquely from within her skin. It looks like a broken tree branch, with pieces of bark stubbornly clinging, surrounded by pulp and wires of shades of blue or red.

Esther begins to hyperventilate and it doesn't hurt.

"Calm down," says the woman next to her, raising her hand as if trying to calm a surly animal. "It doesn't hurt anymore. "

It's true, it doesn't hurt anymore, but that doesn't take away the fact that she is seeing the marrow of her broken bone and lined with her veins, enterily naked. 

"Why? " Esther asks in return. "It should hu-"

When she sees the brown woman's soft, resigned face, she understands. 

When she sees the doctors around her, murmuring about the time of death (04:27 a.m.), she confirms it. 

She has just died.

Esther's shoulders slump forward and she slumps back like the dead weight she is.

Then something clicks in the center of her head. 

"Wait a sec," she rises again and looks up at the brown woman who watches her with her face still soft. "I'm dead, aha, very sad. But that doesn't explain how I can talk to you."

The woman tilts her head and smiles at him as if that explains everything. 

"Many know me as Death," she begins to say, and that seems to step on a brake in Esther's brain, and she could swear she heard the screeching of the tires, which would be her neurons. "Others, like the Reaper, though that's really Atropos. Very few, like Teleute. But you can call me Amara. "

Oh, Jesus.

"Jódeme (1) " Esther whispers to herself. 

The woman, Death, the Reaper, Teleute or Amara or whatever names she has, raises her eyebrows at her. 

And Esther can't help it. 

She laughs. 

She lets out a shrill laugh that seems forced, but it's not. It's real, because she got hysterical. It's a low, windpipe-shaking laugh, but it feels so liberating that it doesn't stop her. Not until it already feels like it's being ripped from her throat.

"Okay... Okay," she whispers, in strings of voice, as she brings her hands to her face to wipe away the tears of hysteria that have escaped. "Okay, let's see. All this," she says slowly, settling in like a girl about to tell a gossip, "because I went to the basement of a cursed mansion?"

That's something Esther remembers, then, in little flashes that are more than enough to build a complete picture; that she was shot in the collarbone because she wanted to right Alex Burgess' wrong. She's dead now because she wanted to free the man behind the glass, the Sandman. And now she's idly chatting with Death, who turns out to be not a skeleton with a scythe and a hood, but a brown woman with a kind face.

Amara ("let's call her what she told me to call her," Esther thinks fleetingly) blinks three times in a row before giving her another smile, this time, somewhat forced, as if confused. Or nostalgic.

"You reminded me of someone," she says (nostalgically, then), her eyes taking on an affectionate, distant tinge. "But, yes, all this, because you went to the basement."

Esther nods, and purses her lips. But then she smacks them and squints her eyes at.... Reaper... Death... Done, Amara. 

"Do you know why I went? "

Her companion (let's leave it at that) shakes her head. 

"The reasons for your own death are not for me to know. I just came to do my job. "

Esther cocks her head to the side, owl-like. 

Amara (she's more comfortable with that one) snorts a laugh and bestows a pearl of wisdom;

"Although my job is to seek out souls of the recently departed and take them where they need to go, such a case is not yours. Your time is not yet up, Estíbaliz."

Esther's response is instantaneous;

"Don't call me 'Estíbaliz'".

For a moment she wonders how the woman knows her birth name, but then she remembers that it is death and well, she doesn't give the matter much rounds.

Amara shakes her head with a smile, as if Esther is hopeless. 

"I just told you that your case is different, that your time is not yet up, and all you tell me is not to call you by your birth name? "

"It's either that or delirium. I choose something I know because I'm terrified."

That... Came from her seemingly dead heart. 

Amara smiles at her once more and reaches out a hand to take hers, which is stained with blood at the fingertips. 

"You are dead," she begins to explain, her voice dropping to something slow and soft, like the dull fall of a cloth, "but not for long. Now, you will awaken two hours after it has been announced that you are dead, because you are not destined to go yet."

Esther opens her eyes wide, and blinks owlishly for several seconds. Amara's smile grows.

"Ní féidir é a bheith (2), " she mutters, in the Irish of her birth, "even dead I cannot save myself. "

Amara laughs once, this time louder.

"Don't worry, Esther," she says, and strokes her hand with her thumb. "We shall meet again, under better circumstances. Now, go and send the doctors to me."

Esther opens her mouth, wanting to retort, but fails to do so properly; instead, she jerks up and gasps loudly. 

She is alive.

Her lungs are breathing. 

Her heart beats. 

And the doctors around her freak out. 

One of them prayed to the Virgin Mary, shouting about the Ave Maria Purisima de la Concepcion or something like that. Another doctor, who was holding a pair of tweezers, shrieked in Arabic something that sounded like he was invoking some Asian deity, and a doctor, or nurse, Esther couldn't quite place her, tosses aside a notepad and leaves the room, shouting a chant of dubious origin.

Everything becomes chaos, but the only thing Esther manages to record is that she met two supernatural beings in less than two days. 

And, from what the Reaper, death, Teleute or, as she told her to call her, Amara, told her, it wouldn't be the last encounter.

When Esther decided that her greatest dream in life was to live, and really live, she didn't mean to discover a new plane of existence.

But hey, what can she do. Now all that remains is... Continue living, because death didn't take her away for nothing.

How nice.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Her mother becomes a whirlwind of paperwork, hysteria, nagging, vomiting, threats and cups of black coffee with two sugars.

Esther, while in intensive care after having her collarbone reconstructed, is trying to recover physically, sanitarily and psychologically from her literal encounter with death.

As still as she can while her bone heals, she reminds her mother, out of the sheer bitterness of her heart that she herself, Gabriela Juanita Suarez of Carrasco, was the one who sent her there to get rid of her specter for a while.

Her mother looks at her with bloodshot eyes and smeared makeup.

"I sent you there because I thought it would help you recover, considering your taste for the dark academy, or whatever the fuck you call it. " she muttered between teeth.

"It did help me, in a way," Esther replies, fiddling with the serum hoses sprouting from her elbows. "But you thought about it, I'm sure. "

"That doesn't matter; you're not going back there," Gabriela counters, ignoring her daughter's accusations, who feels like she's going to vomit. "Alex said you sneaked into the basement and one of the guards shot you by accident, and that accident almost killed you. You're not going back to that demonish mansion ever again."

Esther feels like the air is being squeezed out of her lungs with a squeezed bottle of Pepsi.

She has to go back. She has to help him.

But she's not going to tell her disbelieving, angry mother that the literal Sandman is in the basement of Alex Burgess's mansion, so instead, before Gabriela leaves with her fists clenched on the hospital bills Paul insisted on paying, Esther speaks up, loud and clear:

"Bring Alex Burgess to me. I have a couple of things to discuss with him."

Her mother sends her a withering glare and Esther responds with a clenched jaw. They both challenge each other with their eyes for a few seconds before a nurse arrives with a fresh dose of morphine to put the girl to sleep to supply her with another unit of blood.

Before falling asleep, Esther speaks: "Alex better be here when I wake up."

And she falls asleep in a dream full of darkness and memories of tears of an eternal being.

When she wakes up, a few hours have passed, Alex is walking in, with Paul pushing his chair. They both look even older, the true weight of their consciousness reflecting in the new wrinkles on their faces.

"This is between Alex and me," is the first thing she says, her voice hoarse, looking at Paul and the nurse bringing her a tray of food. "Please, allow us."

The nurse nods, but Paul hesitates. He looks at his lover, and Alex nods, so he and the nurse leave, closing the door behind them.

The young woman settles into position, takes the tray of food, which contains a green flan and some pasta with oregano, and signals the old man to come closer.

"Would you believe me if I told you that I met death?" is how she starts, nibbling indifferently on the unsalted pasta.

Alex looks at her with tired eyes.

Esther looks back at him, waiting for some kind of reaction.

"Just tell me what you want to tell me, Esther."

She whips her fork against the tray of food and stares at him, almost expecting her eyes to burn two holes in his forehead.

Clearly, it doesn't happen.

"I met death," she says, then. "She told me to call her Amara, and that I wasn't destined to leave yet. Do you know what that means?"

Alex doesn't react, but her sorrow-filled eyes narrow a little.

"It means I know." Esther continues, biting off each word with a poisonous venom. "I know, and I won't let your fear continue to kill any more people."

The old man leans back against the back of his wheelchair.

"Your mother threatened to burn down the mansion. She told me she won't let you set foot there again."

"You think she's gonna stop me?"

"She's your mother."

"And she doesn't know what I know. She doesn't know that the reason she's a bitter widow is because her husband died in her sleep, and that this is because the being in charge of dreams is trapped in a dome made of greed and fear. She doesn't know that I knew death. She doesn't know that I know. And for those very reasons, she won't stop me."

The old man snorts with derision.

"Esther, what you don't know is that I won't let you come back either."

That's as far as the talk goes, because just then another couple of nurses arrive to take the tray away and put Esther to sleep to give her yet another dose of blood.

She resists, freaks out, and tries to catch up to Alex as he goes away down the hallway. The nurses try to subdue her, but Esther bites them like a wild animal and rips out her IVs carelessly, all in pursuit of the old man.

"I know, Alex Burgess!" she shouts, supported by the nurse, when she sees a doctor approaching her with a syringe filled with a clear liquid: morphine. "I know, and unlike you, I'm going to act!"

She feels the needle of the syringe plunging hard into her healthy shoulder blade, and she has no choice but to fall into Morpheus' arms.

"Ha, the irony." is her last conscious thought as they lay her limp body on the gurney. 

"Really, there is no way."

The world blurs like Van Gogh's starry night painting.

"There is no way."

And the stars weep on her eyelids.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

This time, when she wakes up, there is a single yellowish light illuminating the corridor, the window shows the typical rain of ordinary London, and at the foot of her bed, next to her calves, there is a girl with a middle-shaved head who is dressed as if she would have sewn every outfit Cyndi Lauper has ever worn into one outfit. Her red hair bobs as if she's underwater, Little Mermaid style, and she swings her lace-up, belted booted feet.

"Hey." she says, her voice changing from low to high. Esther thinks she sees that she has one green eye and the other blue. "I'm Delirium, but you can call me Del. Or Deli. Or Lirium, I like that one. Or Lori. Or Liri, as you prefer. I love your spots!"

Esther wonders what spots she's talking about, but she's too high on morphine (haha, funny) to care properly. So she just chuckles and responds in the fog of her mind:

"I like your clothes."

And so, Liri, as Esther chooses to call her, accompanies her whenever the drugs make her dizzy, with psychedelic worlds and fish with butterfly wings.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

It takes Esther a month and two days to recover, and she spends another two months, including her fifteenth birthday (there was no party, for obvious reasons, and also because there were no friends around), before she fully understands, and for own account, what she experienced.

She discovered that the fairytale creature, the Sandman, is real, and his name is Morpheus, but he is also known as Dream of the Endless. He has been trapped in Alex Burgess's basement for a century and three years, and because of that, the sleeping sickness arose, taking his father Sheridan away from her.

She tried to help him, but failed, and died because of it. But she met death, who is also called Teleute, or the Reaper, but told her to call her Amara, and she turns out to be nice.

Between states of recovery and many doses of morphine administered, she also ended up meeting Delirium, who Esther is pretty sure influenced Lewis Carroll's mind to create Alice's story.

By the time Esther is able to lie down in her own bed, back at her home at 22 Orpheus Way, she's no longer sure what she can do with this new knowledge, and she's not sure whether to sleep and ignore it all would be the answer now.

So she spends the whole night spontaneously writing poems, capturing the stream of her tormented consciousness.

But this turns out not to be enough.

And she goes into despair.

She knows this because Delirium returns, one day, through the full-length mirror that is falling apart in her room (which bolsters her theory that this colorful little girl inspired both of Alice's stories), and tells her, in her own delirious way, as she swings near the ceiling, that she saw her reflection in her sister's house, and that it worried her, and that's why she's there.

"And who is your sister?" Esther asks, her head hanging off the edge of the bed, feeling the effects of gravity and not caring at all.

"Despair." Liri replies, mimicking her position, floating above the ground with a school of clownfish and surgeonfish dancing in her hair. "She asked me to tell you that you are not completely in her house, but you are leaning on the rocking chair on the porch. According to her, you don't have much to go to fully enter."

Esther blinks, and her eyelids are sticky with sand. She snorts like a horse.

"That explains a lot."

Liri squeals and laughs at the same time, and there the thing remains until Esther stands up painfully and invites her to drink honey and red fruit mate, to which the colorful entity vigorously nods.

"Stay here." the young woman instructs, before leaving the room.

She walks down to the kitchen with slow steps, taking her sweet time going down the stairs, ignoring her mother, who is sitting at the table solving something on her computer, as she goes to the kitchen to prepare the mate just as Daisy taught her.

She returns to her room without a word from either of them.

And so the days go by, with occasional visits from Delirium, nonsense words that Esther is more than happy to follow, recovery studies in which she does fairly well, and the odd therapy session.

Until, of course, the breaking point arrives.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter four !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ heavy on your heart, heavy on your mind, wandering the streets tonight. if you're looking for a home, you are not alone, I can be your guiding light. cause I promise you, I'm a dreamer too.❞﹚.

⸻Dreamer, Axwell & Ingrosso.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

After, basically, many supernatural experiences, Esther becomes, in the floating words of Delirium, a many-coloured oyster shell containing a black pearl.

Esther certainly felt like a many-coloured oyster shell containing a black pearl. 

Why would she be like that, someone might ask. It's because the girl still has a sense of humour, at least, somewhat dry, cynical and off-colour, but humour after all. However, as time goes on, her own mind begins to torture her. This time, adding more elements. 

And there, in the space between thoughts, it all starts with the Sandman.

From the first time she saw him, there, locked in that glass dome in the darkness of Fawney Rig's basement, Esther had had him hanging on the side of her head.

Always there, either out of the corner of her eye, or in her nightmares, which were brimming with memories of Sheridan Carrasco, her father, dead in his sleep in that hospital bed. In turn, these nightmares were also bathed in her blood, staining the glass that enclosed the dream being ("Morpheus," whispers a small part of her, one that softens at the memory. "His name is Morpheus"), and also included, when she least expected it, the sight of her shattered collarbone. 

Esther actually applauds her subconscious; it is so cruel that she does not dream of the memories of that woman, who had told her she was death, nor of Delirium nor of her aforementioned sister who, according to the colourful girl, is waiting for her to get up from the rocking chair on the porch of her house. It must be because Amara's unexpected warmth, plus Delirium's zany but tender personality, don't instil much terror, and as such, her subconscious doesn't take it as nightmare material.

At least, the back of her brain usually feels moderately generous, she knows this because she sometimes dreams that the darkness of her eyelids is full of stars, fading into blackness, as if they were crying.

But her dreams always return to the Sandman, which is rather ironic. 

Truth be told, he was always on the side of Esther's head, as the story of this being responsible for the dreams was always her favourite; though she no longer believes this to be the case, considering that it turns out the creature is more real than her will to live. The condemned one is real (by God, it feels terrifying to contemplate all that his, Amara's/Death, Delirium's and her sister's existence entails), and he is, at least outwardly, more Pitch Black than Sandy.  This situation leaves her with more mental breakdowns than a schizophrenic. 

With all due respect, she clarifies herself. 

The Origin of the Guardians did one of two things; it either fooled her, in the most blatant way, or they just split the Sandman in half and portrayed him in a pretty accurate way, considering he's visually like Pitch Black, and possibly, internally like Sandy.

Scratch that. She doesn't consider it possible. If he was ever a golden elf, mute and tender, if only on the inside, his unjust imprisonment (at the hands of a human, no less) will have torn that out of him. Or maybe not, who knows, it depends on the perso.... And there goes her over-thinking brain again.

Esther doesn't know which is worse; that the Sandman is a real being with heart and soul and all and is locked in the basement of a cursed mansion, or the fact that this 180-degree turn literally made her precariously balanced on the seemingly thin thread that separates the world she knows, from the world to which the Sandman, and possibly Amara, along with Delirium and her sister, belong.

Still, leaving aside all those intrusive analyses that are a minuscule part of the reasons for her sleepless state, she had not been able to help him, this supernatural being who had been imprisoned by the greed of a man who considered himself entitled to demand something that was not his.

She felt unworthy to think that she had tried to help the Sandman out of the goodness of her heart. She had not. It was out of the pain of losing her father, when he slept, and discovering the reason. It was out of anger, at Roderick Burgess and his caste, who condemned the world for their greed and fear. It was from exhaustion, from the weight of the conscience of being one of the few unfortunates to know the true reason for this disease that tormented the world for a century and little more. 

Esther could not help him as she had hoped to do, and she was sure it was due to his more than selfish reasons. And her punishment was to bear the failure, the heavy failure that gripped her throat with sharp claws.

She decided to do other things, things that were within her mortal grasp. Things that, she hoped, might ease her mind, and in some way, make up for that supernatural being that, surely, was still trapped. 

She was given a cat, black and starry-eyed, which, on the recommendation of Amara (who brought her the cat), she named Oneiros. She wrote poems, short and long, mostly dedicated to these new beings she had met, especially the Sandman. She made off-color jokes to some people, like that she had seen death in the eyes, or that she had discovered the reason for the psychedelic drawings. She spent time with Liri at home, and studied her lost year's materials as much as her tormented mind would allow.

Still, she could not escape the guilt. Guilt caused by the poisonous failure that gnawed at her bones, accompanied by a poisonous helplessness that tore at her soul like paper. 

Yet Death comforted her in such a strange way, calling her defiant and devoted. 

It had been an experience Esther labelled "fucking fucked".

After her fifteenth birthday, on September the 5th, she managed to recover from the gunshot. She had to lie still for a long time, for her collarbone to regenerate properly, and for her body to restore itself. Before Amara brought her beloved cat, Esther was going through a choking depression. The days had become glassy, and she was alone. No one beyond Alex, Paul, the guard who shot her and her (not including the Sandman) knew exactly what had happened in that basement, in that mansion to which her mother had forbidden her to return, despite the piles of money Paul would send to apologise for something he could have prevented, for more than seventy years, but didn't. 

Her mother's constant absence and mental detachment from her (discounting the fact that she was dating, and already practically living with the man, named Edward, she had met at the new tavern where she worked), combined with the year she had lost at school, along with the mourning she still held for her father and the bullet scar accompanied by the jagged carving that had left her collarbone and the constantly reminding of her failure, was too much. 

She had been visiting, regularly, a school psychiatrist with whom she had some familiarity, in the dying hope that she might find a more effective way to escape the black sea that was drowning her. The woman, named Jessica Seaborn, reminded her, despite their physical differences, of the creature that had told her, was death, perhaps because of her gentle mannerisms. Perhaps that was why she was a little more open because of some of the reasons they were there, sitting in an office.

"I feel like I'm trapped," Esther tells the psychiatrist, brushing a strand of hair away from her eyes. "It's like I'm in a glass dome and all I can do is stand there, not even breathing, imprisoned by my own mind. "

Ironic. It's the only thing she can think of to describe what's happening to her, and it makes perfect sense, at least to her, even though she's not the one literally behind sealed glass. 

Miss Seaborn smiles softly at her as she balances the pen in her hand. 

"Is there something bothering you?"

Esther makes an indifferent grimace, framing her eyebrows, her lips curling into an inverted 'U', as she stares at the stapler in front of her.

The bloody Sandman is locked in the basement of a mansion a little over an hour from here, alone, naked and humiliated, in this glass dome I describe as my mind. Ironic, since glass is born of sand, and he is the Sandman, the one responsible for our wakes when we wake up after dreaming. I failed to help him and so I carry the scar of a broken collarbone and dark circles under my eyes blacker than that unkempt hair I remember him having, as if he'd just woken up, which makes sense, considering who... what he is. It's funny because, Alex said, the Sandman is basically the anthropomorphic personification of the concept of the word "Dream", made into a person. And if that's one hundred percent true, then it would turn out that this being is, in turn, the flesh and blood of everything I loved, love and will love. It's murky and strange and it was entirely expected that I would feel a responsibility to do something to get him out of that place. On the other hand, there are the many reasons why I'm sitting here too. Oh, and I met Death, when I was shot. She's brunette and nice, she told me to address her as Amara. We arranged to meet under better circumstances. I also met Delirium, a girl of many colours, and I'm sure she influenced Lewis Carroll and Van Gogh, if my calculations don't fail me. She told me she saw me sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of her sister's house, which would be Despair. Anyway, do you have any recommendations for trying to deal with two such opposing worlds without necessarily entering Delirium's domain?

She can't say that. Esther is already caught between these two worlds, because she went to the basement when she was told not to, and, even though it was what she planned all along, the consequences are on her and she has no right to drag anyone down with her.

Ha, she scoffs on the inside. If the Sandman is the anthropomorphic personification of dreams, and nightmares, and everything Alex said, she is the anthropomorphic personification of the phrase 'curiosity killed the cat, and it died knowing'.

What a convenient paradox. 

"What happened on Fawney Rig," she says instead, still staring at the stapler on the desk, as she feels a sudden urge to staple her eyebrow. "I'm tormented by not remembering why I ended up with a bullet in my collarbone. I'm tormented by having no idea what happened because, I'm told, I hit my head and the concussion gave me brief amnesia. I want to know what happened, and what to do about it, but I feel like it's not going to help me at all except to stay trapped in the dome. "

It feels really disrespectful, to use the current situation of this supernatural being, along with a blatant lie, but isn't that something she shouldn't know? No human should know, let alone have an entity subject to their will, but Roderick Burgess' greed affected everyone, and she is one of the most direct victims, along with Paul, Alex, and that raven buried in the garden. 

She vaguely remembers what Alex told her, about this raven called Jessamy. She also remembers the tears of the Sandman, of Dream of the Endless, and at that moment, that's what she sees out of the corner of her eye as she finishes speaking and ducks her head, hiding behind the auburn curtain of her hair cut by her own hands a few weeks ago. 

The psychiatrist half-blinks, leans back in her seat and pushes her blonde ponytail aside. 

"You need to give it closure," she says, her voice soft, calm, understanding. "You may never know what happened, and like you said, it will haunt you. You can write it down and burn it, or you can do something like that. But it's up to you to find closure. "

"But I feel responsible," Esther senses her eyes begin to fill with tears, and her vision turns to glass. She lets out a sardonic laugh to herself; this is all the Sandman saw for over 100 years. "It's something that happened to me, and I don't know why. What could I have done that would justify the bullet? What can I do about it?"

She is surprised at herself; where does she find the strength and skill to disguise such a situation? 

She hopes Miss Seaborn can read between the lines of the real issue.

What can I do to remedy having failed, not only this fairy tale I loved as a child, but also that same child who was moved to tears every time she woke up with grit in her eyes, because, in her innocence, she believed the Sandman had visited her, when all the fucking time, he had been locked in a fucking basement by the greed and cruelty of a single man?

Yeah, yeah, she loved the story of this being, but to find out that it was real, it was another level of.... Of something. That something was reflected in his eyes, which looked up at her with tears as she fell next to the golden circle, bleeding out from her own stupidity. 

She feels hypocritical, for she had written in her own blood two long-unread Bible verses to give him something, anything, to make up for her failed attempt. 

Now she was the one with a dying hope and a faith that was already more than buried. What a shame. 

The psychiatrist takes a moment to respond. 

She takes Esther's hand, trembling and sallow from her poor diet and almost non-existent sleep, as she finally speaks;

"I'd tell you to go ask Mr. Burgess, but you don't have a chance. So I'll tell you this; don't let the glass dome get any bigger. Get out of there, any way you can. If something is holding you back, find it, remove it, and get out. Ask for help if necessary, or don't do it at all. Even then, all you have to do is get a momentum powerful enough to... just move forward."

A momentum powerful enough to just move forward. 

That set of words felt like light in a dark tunnel, because the idea that had occurred to her was more drastic than anything that had happened to her. But what did she have to lose? 

So Esther decides, on that winter day, as she says goodbye to Miss Seaborn with a smile that is reciprocated, to lure Amara, Death, to her, in the only way she could come. 

She arrives home, as grey and empty as the last few months, and lays her things on the sofa in her room. She sits at her desk, puts on her playlist of songs, mostly influenced by Taylor Swift, and writes. 

She writes, and writes, and writes. Whatever comes to mind, coherent or not. She writes about the man behind the glass, the brown woman with the kind smile, the greedy old man, his terrified son, the crow buried in the garden. About the little girl with the colours. About her sister's house. She writes about the snatched dreams, the memories that haunt her in her sleep and in her waking hours, and about her father, Sheridan Carrasco, who always believed in her. 

She wonders, fleetingly, if Amara was there to see her cry and vomit when she took her father away. 

When her wrist goes numb from writing, she keeps all the worn papers in a shoebox under her bed, and wonders how much time she has.

5 hours before her mother arrives, if she does, if Edward is factored into the equation. More than enough time to do what she wants to do. A bitter part of her thinks Gabriela didn't take long at all to get over Sheridan's death, considering she told her about this boyfriend shortly before she started Miss Seaborn's therapy.

But she won't let that sidetrack her. Now...

Was there a chance Amara would show up? Plenty. So there's a good chance she won't show up? As well. She doesn't know exactly how it works, but she's determined nonetheless. If she dies, well, it wouldn't make much difference. If she doesn't, it means she's not destinated to go yet, just as she was told in that hospital. 

But she has to give closure to this situation, before it eats life away her body. 

As it turns out, it is she who does it. 

She dresses in old clothes; a grey jumper that covers her entire torso. She pulls on baggy black cloth shorts, and heads to the bathroom with the shreds of a pillowcase and a razor blade.

And, just because her own body does it because of muscle memory, she brushes her teeth, and looks in the mirror.

She looks like a spectre; her eyes sunken, the skin underneath greyish, the skin on her neck as taut as a well-worn sheet. Her hair, tickling her tonsils, is dull, straw-like, and somewhat greasy-looking. She is practically grey. She is surprised at the kindness, or pity, of the people who saw her during the time she was like this, not to mention anything to her.

Or maybe they did and she told them to piss off, she just doesn't remember.

It's like when her father died, but now that she knows the real reason, she's more emaciated by the power of that reason.

But when she looks into her own eyes, into her pupils, Esther feels a small glimpse of something, something that burns and warms her inside.

For there, in the blackness of her pupil, is a glow.

Esther smiles slightly to herself when she recognises that glow; it indicates that she has hope. And who knows? Maybe she has faith too. In what? She doesn't know.

But that's the point of faith, isn't it? 

At that moment, as Esther stares at her worn reflection, one of the verses she had written in her blood on the glass enclosing the Sandman blooms in her mind.

Hebrews 11:1: 'Now faith is confidence in what we hope for an assurance about what we do not see'.

One part of Esther, who is represented by a dreamy child clinging to her innocence tooth and nail, is smiling.

She sighs, places two fingers on the reflective glass, and sighs as she smiles wearily but determinedly to herself.

"Well," she says as she sighs, tapping her nails twice against the glass, "here we go."

For a millisecond, she thinks she sees another face replacing her, that of a blonde woman with greasy hair and a metal thing stuck in her jaw, but she shakes his head, crediting it to the deterioration of her mind.

She fills the bathtub with water, takes the two Amitriptyline pills Miss Seaborn prescribed with the orange juice she had prepared before the session, sits down on the ceramic, leans back on the tiles, and takes a deep breath. 

She picks up her phone, enters Spotify, and puts it on shuffle mode. The song that comes on makes her smile with all her teeth: Dreamer, by Axwell & Ingrosso. She dares to think, for a few seconds, that it's destiny.

On the one hand, acting like she's about to sit down to fold clothes instead of about to slit her wrists is something that gives her a sick sense of comfort. On the other hand, it seems appropriate; she dreams, she's always dreamed, and now she's about to do something really risky just so she can continue to do it, without the guilt that comes with being aware of the truth. 

The melody of the piano, plus the words; "I can promise you, yes, I'm a dreamer too" make her not feel the razor edge as it slides across the surface of her veins. It hurts. But at the same time it doesn't. 

It cuts a deep, horizontal line at the wrists, right at the first wrinkle of skin, and the blood gushes out like a waterfall. The bath water turns scarlet, turbulent, but Esther mumbles the words of the song, and it feels metaphorical.

For she is bleeding, purging, the sorrows, pain and sadness, along with despair and guilt, out of her body.  She is freeing herself. And, delirious though she is (ha, Liri would be laughing if she saw her), she smiles, softly, sideways, because it hurts. But it hurts in a way similar to the pain a woman feels when she gives birth; to start a new life. Or so she thinks mothers feel when they give birth.

Quickly, she bandages her wrists with the shreds of her pillowcase, gasping and sobbing at the sensation of her skin splitting open, and takes a shaky breath before resting her head on the tiles and closing her eyes, concentrating on the lyrics of the song as she says, 'We're dreamers together, always and forever...'

Smiling sideways, she bites her lip and rests her hands on the edges of the bathtub as she watches the blood swirl on the ceramic. Then she shakes her head, surprised by the cynicism, boldness, and defiance of what she has just done, and she devotes herself to imagining a place, a beautiful place, which could be a meadow, or a beach, or a field of sunflowers, which she may never be able to see, but which gives her a welcome numbness.

This is how Death finds her; hands bloodied, tears darkening the skin around her eyes, and smiling, with defiance shining in her eyes. 

"What have you done?" she says, her voice cracking, her dark eyes glistening with tears, kneeling by the bathtub overflowing with turbulent water and blood. "Why?"

"I couldn't take it anymore," Esther replies, the blood still flowing, but not freely. She puts her hands in her lap and feels nothing but the coolness of the water, lapping at the edges of her open skin beneath the cloth. "But I have to give it closure. And though you told me we'd meet again under better circumstances, you didn't tell me how I could call you, so I took a chance."

Amara shakes her head, dips her hands in the water and takes Esther's wrists in an iron grip. 

"You won't die yet," she says, and smiles at her, fond resignation shining in her brown eyes, "you crazy bitch." 

In response, Esther's throat opens, and out comes a laugh, a laugh that scrapes at her tonsils for how low and shrill it is. She wants to laugh more, but her larynx is a little thick, as if she were chewing sand.

She laughs internally. The things one does when determined. 

"I wanted to ask you something." she adds belatedly, after swallowing countless knots of saliva, and what she feels overflowing from her lips; blood.

"After what you did," Amara says, giving her slashed wrists a persistent squeeze, "it must be important." 

"It is." 

Amara lifts her chin, indicating she's listening. 

"At Wych Cross, in Fawney Rig's mansion, there's a man. He's in the basement, trapped in a glass dome. I don't know if you know him, I don't even know if it's your business, but please release him. That man is the Sandman, the being responsible for the dreams, the being that allowed me to dream, the being that I could not help. This is my closure, Amara. Please help him, for I am only mortal, and this is beyond me, but I could, with the authority of... someone who dreams, summon you and intercede for him. The world has suffered enough for the greed of Roderick Burgess." 

Amara's kind eyes release a cascade of tears by the time her sudden poetic fit ends, and she brings Esther's wrists to her forehead. 

"By every plane in existence," she murmurs, pressing the bloody cloth against her curly hairline. When she looks up, the smile she wears is as old as time. "Of what is your soul forged, for how defiant and devoted is it?"

Esther's lips half-open, and it takes a few seconds, but at last, between bubbles of blood, she answers:

"I wouldn't call it that. My father died in his sleep due to the Sandman's imprisonment, and I don't want to go on living as long as I'm aware of the why behind the sleeping sickness. I don't want to go on living knowing that he is trapped in a cage made of greed. It has tormented me enough. If it's none of your business, then take me away, I have no thing to do here. But if you find it in your heart, help him, and when all it's said and done, let me know, in a way that soothes me inside. Then I can live, as you told me that night, when I was already dead, and you told me I wasn't destinated to go yet."

Amara is slow to react. Her eyes stare at Esther, and her Egyptian necklace sways across her chest as she shakes her head, a toothy grin resting on her briefly quivering lips. She seems to have come to a conclusion in her mind. Esther only hopes it is to do what she asked.

"You are a treasure, Estibaliz Carrasco," she says. She rises, bends down, and kisses her forehead before placing her own on her crown. "It will be done as you have asked, in due time. Even so, you will be able to live knowing that, thanks to you, and your brave heart, the world will no longer suffer the absence of the Sandman. You will be able to own every second this world can give, you will be able to see many places and you will be able to do many things, and in the end, when I come for you, you will be able, with every broken bone, to swear that you lived."

Just as she finishes saying that, the song I Lived by One Republic begins to play intermittently with Dreamer's, from her phone perched on the toilet seat a couple of steps away.

Esther can't help it; she cries. She cries and laughs and shrieks and lets Death hug her, whom hugs her back. 

"It seems destiny favours me," she babbles in the fog of her mind, the sobs and laughter she shares with the dark woman feeling like puffs of clean air that refresh her lungs, despite the blood that stains her chin. "Thank you. Thank you very much." 

Death laughs with her, hugs her tight, doesn't mind getting blood and water on her clothes. When they part, she smiles at her, big and watery. Her dark eyes still release tears and look as old as they are wise. 

"Rest now, Defiant," she says, his soft voice full of amusement, and something Esther refuses to recognise as admiration. Instead, she lets out a laugh, breathy and low, but more than anything else, real. 

She nods at her, smiling and squeezing her forearms, and Amara repeats the gesture, rocking back and forth on her feet like a grandmother in a rocking chair. 

They both smile at each other once more, with a new complicity between them. 

Because it is so ironically wonderful, as this day turned out. As the hope for which Esther bled and the faith for which Amara appeared led her to exactly that moment, there, at the beginning of the rest of her life. 

"Sleep and dream, long and hard," Amara tells her, stroking her cheek with a loving hand, "because you're in the hospital." 

Esther blinks, and with her voice pressed against the roof of her mouth, stammers; 

"What?"

Amara gives her one last smile, and a soft 'I'll visit you soon', before disappearing, taking all the light with her. 

When Esther opens her eyes, the first thing she sees is her mother's haggard face. 

She curses her. She scolds her. She hugs her. She pleads with her. All in less than three minutes. Her boyfriend, Edward, sits in the waiting room, staring at them through the window, his face tight, as if he's holding back from saying something. Esther raises an eyebrow at him, and he looks down at the floor. 

In the end, the girl apologises to Gabriela, but in her heart of hearts, when she looks at the scars hidden among her many beaded bracelets, she does not regret. 

A raven visits her, a couple of weeks later, when she is resting in her room instead of in the hospital. It stares at her before flying up to her window, cawing, and flying away, leaving a single feather on the wood of her desk. 

Esther smiles as she watches the sunlit feather's iridescent effect. When she manages to get up, she takes the feather, and hangs it on her bed frame, as if it were a trophy, something to be proud of.

She is.

Then Esther rests her head on the pillows of her bed, looks at the feather, which sways gently on her forehead, and closes her eyes, letting herself drift off to sleep.

No nightmare haunts her now.

But there are worse things than nightmares, and Esther Carrasco would gradually discover this from that moment on.

Because a few days later, she meets Johanna Constantine.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter five !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ A storm was coming, but that's not what she felt. It was adventure on the wind, and it shivered down her spine.❞﹚.

⸻Aticcus.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Esther meets Johanna Constantine one cool autumn night. 

Her wrists were still bandaged, as it had only been a couple of weeks since her encounter with Amara. They had been stitched and she was instructed to keep them clean and safe so that they would heal properly. She had already met Amara once more, when the entity came to visit her at her house as how God commands and brought her a cat. A cat that, as soon as Esther saw him, her heart almost spilled out of her mouth, because for a moment, what she saw was the Sandman's head, severed and with his eyes embedded inside.

In her defence, she was slowly weaning herself off the drugs she had been given for the pain, along with the anti-depressants Miss Seaborn had prescribed. And Delirium had gone for orange and lemon tea the day before. That colourful little girl always leaves a certain aura that incites crazy things like painting the ceiling with pomegranate juice or spraying neighbour Esteban's jasmines with lemon.

"Look at him with his little paws." Amara had said, looking at the cat, oblivious to Esther's reverie. The cat was lying with his stomach in the air, curled up on himself like a centipede, and he was moving his paws as if he were trying to catch something with his claws. "He's dreaming. You should call him Oneiros. "

Esther, trying to put the pieces of her own brain back together, bandages her sewn wrists the way they taught her in the hospital as she frowns.

"Oneiros? " she asks, the letters feeling bittersweet and thick on her tongue.

Amara turns to look at her, sipping the honeyed mate with a smile that hides something. 

"It's Greek." she says, pouring herself another mate as she stares into her eyes. "It means 'dream'."

And that's how Esther adopts the cat, presenting her mother later with the excuse that she needs a friend, and calls him what Amara told her to. If Death said it, for some supernatural reason it was. Her mother rolls her eyes in a way that seems patented, and tells her that the cat is her responsibility. Esther nods profusely as she hugs the cat like a stuffed animal. 

As the two say goodbye, Amara gently squeezes her forearms with a warning look, to which Esther purses her lips and shakes her head. The entity seems to be able to breathe again (though it has already been mentioned that it is not something they need), and nods to her with a smile. 

"I'll come back to visit as soon as I can." she says, squeezing her forearms once more, to which Esther reciprocates. "I really enjoy our meetings."

"So do I." she replies, sincerely. "Who knew I'd make friends with the death?"

Amara laughs, and shakes her head, then looks up at the sky with a wry face.

"Your God works in mysterious ways."

Esther frowns.

"Is this your way of telling me to start believing in some entity greater than you?"

Amara lifts a shoulder and tilts her lips down.

"You choose what to believe in. But know that there is always somewhere to go, so to you, dear dreamer, I say: " then her dark eyes fix on Esther's, and in a solemn voice, she recites, in an accent that seems all too ancient. "Memento Mori, Memento vivere."

Remember that you will die, so remember to live.

At that very moment, Esther decides that, as much as everything she knows defies absolutely everything generally believed, she too can defy, again, everything, so she nods to Amara one last time and the two embrace before the death leaves to continue her work. 

Esther watches her go, her silhouette fading into the blackness of the dusk, when she hears a low "meow" to her left. She looks down, and there is the cat, Oneiros, staring up at her with starry eyes as he leans lightly on her calf.

Something in her stomach twists like a noose, at that moment, and every time after that when the cat approaches her and lies on her stomach like a rug.

It must be that Amara knew the Sandman, and this was her way of telling her, without telling exactly, that her defiance had worked.

She only hoped that the being would see the anger of her failure appeased, and not come for her head. She hoped that, if Amara had released him by now, she would have explained. Or, better, that he had forgotten her, unlikely as that seemed.

So she is resting, sitting in her rocking chair with her furry cat on her lap, sipping a mate, enjoying her solitude, after her session with Miss Seaborn (where there were several tears, apologies, tea and explanations), when she hears strange words on the side of her head. 

She blinks in confusion, pretty sure she's consumed too much honey, when she hears the words again, which she vaguely recognises as Latin, and this time, they are accompanied by a flash and a guttural growl that reverberates right next door, which happens to belong to that neighbour with questionable spiritual tendencies. That neighbour, Esteban.

Esther turns and sees through the window of the musty wood-framed living room a scene out of a movie; she sees a brown-haired woman holding a wooden crucifix along with a thick, cathedral Bible. She sees her lips move fluidly, and she sees flashes of orange light and elongated yellowish things that seem to take the shape of chains, surrounded by a thick fog.

And when a giant hand with claws for fingers appears from the front, and the crucifix is snatched from the woman, and more happens, well, Esther ignores the warning alarms blaring to the right of her head and does the same thing she did when Paul told her not to go to the freaking basement; she defies.

She shrugs as she pulls her lips into an indifferent grimace, sips her mate one last time (grimacing because it's cold), and, taking advantage of her mother conveniently being out on a date with her boyfriend, leaves the mate in the planter on the porch, picks up her cat and leaves him in the same rocking chair, motioning for him to stay (to which the cat just wiggles his ear, as if to say "Yes, Mom" in an irritated child's tone), and, following an instinct that is not human, runs into the living room of her house, finding the silver crucifix that was Aunt Clarity's, and then runs back into the neighbour's house this time.

She's about to participate in another supernatural freaking event, and instead of running the other way, the stupid fucker takes advantage of the fact that she's friends with death and dives into the sea of danger. 

Memento mori, memento viviere. Periodt.

When she reaches the porch, she sees that, amidst the mess of broken vases, picture frames and books and pages, there is a massive being with vaccine-like features (horns, goat's chin, a ring between the nose flaps) that grabs the woman by the throat as it pins her to the ground. 

Esther raises her eyebrows. She had already made up her mind about this situation she'd gotten herself into, as soon as she set foot in Fawney Rig's basement. 

Well, she's already heard about the Sandman, about Death, about Delirium, and about her sister Despair. What does learning about the existence of a seemingly demonic being do to her?

The woman tries to speak, even in Latin, but the claws and language of the being that subdues her do not allow her to say much. So Esther does the first thing that comes to her mind:

"Hey!" she shouts, and raises the silver crucifix high towards the being. 

This is the girl's thought process:

Apparently demonic being + woman speaking a dead language + neighbour's house of questionable spiritual tendencies = demon and woman who seems to be chasing him away. 

Equivalent to, silver crucifix + demon = Vale. Which means, goodbye, but in Latin, because poet who does not learn Latin is not poet.

Which brings her to the situation now:

The being (demon) and the woman stop cursing each other in Latin to look up simultaneously. Esther can see that the woman turns paler than snow when she sees her, and the being (demon) roars, releasing a putrid smell along with particles of saliva.

But its skin, which Esther now sees is reddish, begins to flake a shade of grey, and the being releases the woman to fall back into what appears to be a strange charcoal-painted circle. As it tries to climb out, the edges of the circle light up and a halo of light glows from them, enclosing it and preventing it from leaving. 

Esther takes several steps forward, crucifix held high, until she reaches the woman who is writhing around trying to catch her breath. 

She offers her hand, and tenses slightly as the woman clutches her forearm and accepts her help.

"What the fuck? " is the first thing she says, with a London accent and a crazed look on her face. 

Esther doesn't turn away, doesn't look away from the being, as she says. "Finish singing."

The woman breathes heavily, seeming offended by the words, but does as she is told: she speaks again in Latin, and the demonic being writhes as golden chains spring from the ground inside the circle and pull it down.

"You!" it shouts then, in a deep voice that conjures up images of lakes of fire and eternal suffering, and turns to look at Esther with goat-like eyes. She tries not to shudder as she rearranges herself into a tighter position to hold the crucifix up to the being's eyebrows. "I know you! Defiant of Destinies!"

Esther raises her eyebrows and her grip on the crucifix falters. But she recovers in less than three seconds, more out of instinct than intention. 

"Stop screwing around and go back through the hole you came out of!" exclaims the woman next to her, as she finishes chanting in Latin. 

"Defiant of Destinies!" The being shrieks, as the golden chains pull it under the floor, "Look over your shoulder! You can't escape from-"

It doesn't manage to finish; it disappears behind a vortex of wind that blows everything made out of light material into the living room. 

Both women breathe heavily for what seems like an eternity before the older woman grabs Esther by the deltoid with iron fingers and glares at her with crazed brown eyes. 

"Yer comin' with me. "

Esther doesn't have time to reply; the woman disappears down a corridor and shouts about triple pay and a warning about a black hen, then hastily grabs a set of things she puts in a bag and grabs Esther by the wrist as soon as she passes her. 

Esther squeals as the contact scrapes her open skin. 

The woman stops on the porch of the house, and without looking her in the eye, takes her by the palm and stares at her bandage with narrowed eyes, staring at the reddish horizontal line protruding poorly from the gauze. When she raises them to Esther's own eyes, a pouch of skin that lines her eyelid softens. 

"You must have had your reasons." she says, and this time she grabs Esther's hand. "Which house is yours?"

"Just a moment." Esther exclaims, and pulls the woman hard as they reach the pavement outside her hous. "Answer me; who are you, what are you doing here, and why that thing," she points with her left hand (which has the crucifix entangled in it) towards the neighbour's house. " called me what it called me, and by the way, mention that thing about not being able to escape."

The woman shakes her head and pulls Esther while muttering under her breath.

The younger woman tries to stop it, but then a black shadow springs from the bushes on her porch and leaps at the woman, clawing at her belly. 

The woman curses passionately as she tries to free herself from the shadow, which turns out to be the cat Amara had brought her. 

Esther shrieks and reaches over, grabbing it by the armpits: "Oneiros, let her! Oneiros! "

The cat meows in displeasure and lets go of the woman, opting to climb up Esther's leg and stay there, sinking his claws into the girl's knee. She doesn't even twitch at the sensation, simply stares at the woman, who raises her head with her eyes closed and breathes noisily, as if trying to calm herself.

Esther takes a moment to look at her; she is a grown up, with a very pretty nose that makes Esther want to put on a chinstrap. Her hair is held in a short braid and she wears clothes that make her look like a frustrated lawyer; a cardboard-toned envelope, a white shirt with a discarded bow tie, clearly warm trousers and belted boots. The bag slung over her shoulder is an old-looking briefcase, with the odd patch and rusty clasp.

Esther purses her lips at her knitted honey jumper, her equally knitted leggings, but in black, and her hair, now a little longer, brushing her shoulders.

When the woman opens her eyes, she sighs regretfully and extends a hand towards Esther: "My name is Johanna Constantine, and it's not nice to meet you. But that damn thing called you by a title I don't know, and if the demons know you, then you're of high birth in the supernatural world. So, whether you want to or not, kiddo, you're coming with me, and your cat..." she gives a disgusted look to the little animal, who seems to do the same with his blue eyes and sharp pupil... "Onei-as-fuck-you-called-it, he's gotta stay."

Esther sighs, massages her temples and replies;

"The whole supernatural experience I e'er had was meeting an entity in a basement, befriending the death, floating above the ground with a girl I'm sure had something to do with Alice in Wonderland, and listening to her babble about a grey sister named Despair. It doesn't make sense that I-"

The woman, Johanna, ignores her and signals a taxi to stop. When it does, she opens the door and looks at Esther with a look that, were it not for the fact that she has already died once, would have frightened her.

She doesn't, clearly, so Esther snorts and signals for her to wait while she runs to grab her thermos, put the electric kettle on to heat water, put her cat on her bed and change clothes. She grabs a purse with her phone and a couple of other things. When she returns, with her mate-holder kit, rain boots and slightly more decent leggings, she keys up her house, and gets into the taxi with a bored expression.

The woman, Johanna, gets in next to her, closes the door, and asks the taxi driver to go to an address that Esther doesn't bother to memorise.

The journey is short, but tense. Esther doesn't recognise Johanna and Johanna drums her fingers on her briefcase, not recognising her either.

When they stop in an alley leading to an apartment building, Johanna pays both her fare and Esther's and gets out of the taxi, instructing the younger woman to do the same. She obeys, but the way she gets out makes it clear even to the crows cawing overhead that she is not happy with what is happening. 

The taxi leaves, and Johanna approaches the entrance to the building while Esther waits in the gallery's remarco, absentmindedly sipping a mate. The woman types something on the door, and it opens. She turns to Esther, and nods for her to follow. Once again, the younger woman obeys, but, in turn, once again she paces in a pronounced manner, making it clear that she does not like the situation one bit.

They climb a flight of stairs and enter a flat that gives a new definition to the word "messy": piles and piles of boxes of knick-knacks of dubious provenance fill even the farthest corner of the room. There are many things Esther recognises such as chalk, crucifixes of all materials, a crossbow (a crossbow! Esther has to flex her fingers not to take it away) of hand, and other piles of things that don't have names, and if they do, the teenager doesn't want to know.

Johanna enters, tosses her briefcase aside, and starts rummaging through a box overflowing with papers. 

Esther wanders around the place as she pours herself a mate, observing and cataloguing how many knick-knacks she can recognise. The only sound that fills the place is the sound of Johanna discarding papers left and right, and the sounds of the mate being emptied over and over again.

Until, when Esther frowns at something that looks like leather, the woman grabs the box of papers and drops it on the floor with a clatter, turning to the teenager with the same crazed look on her face of earlier.

"Defiant of Destinies..." she mutters, and makes a wry, mocking grimace. "How come I haven't heard that before?"

"I dunno, ye tell me." Esther replies, peering up to see what appears to be a crystal ball held in place by a bracket of claws. "Yer the demon-scarer here."

Johanna snorts.

"And how come you're so... unflappable?" she asks, turning to another box overflowing with papers. "Other people would be shaking with terror."

"Told ye I've met death. "

"I've met her too, and many times I've looked her in the eye and said; 'Not today, bitch'."

Esther's neck snaps with a loud crack as she turns back to Johanna. The woman doesn't even flinch, but she looks a little disgusted, if her wrinkled nose is any indication.

"Don't insult Amara in my presence." she says, slow and remarked, and for a moment, Esther doesn't recognise herself.

The older woman frowns.

"Amara? Is that her name?"

"She has many names," the teenager counters, setting her mate down on a free surface she miraculously finds. "and that's the one she allowed me to use. Now," Esther stands up straight and rests her arms at her sides. "tell me, if the term I was called by is unfamiliar to you, why do you care? It's not like you can change it."

"And how come you're so damn calm?" Johanna attacks, clenching the papers in her hand. "How old are you? Twelve?"

"Fifteen."

"And you know about this world? I pity you."

"Don't need it, but thanks anyway."

"Kiddo, this is serious."

"I'm being serious, too, Constantine."

"You listen to me, you reckless little thing, I'm not gonna let you o-"

And she starts babbling in a way Esther doesn't recognise, but she knows it's something bad, because the woman's eyes begin to fill with tears and glaze over, as if she's remembering something.

Then Esther stops pulling on the rope, metaphorically speaking; she signals to her opposite to take a breath, and Johanna gets stuck in her hysterical tirade. She obeys the younger one, gasping for breath for a few seconds until she steadies herself, and then leans against a shelf, from which she takes a small bottle filled with a yellowish liquid, and puts the nozzle to her lips and chokes on the liquid, which overflows from her mouth. 

Esther says nothing, simply pours herself another mate and sips from it, waiting.

Johanna wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and sighs, not looking the younger woman in the eye. She laughs viciously, and nods her head with a sneer.

"That was fucked up, my apologies."

Esther shakes her head and gives him a sympathetic little smile.

"You must have had your reasons."

Johanna looks up and the two share a meaningful silence before the woman lets out a nasal laugh.

"Fuck yes, I've had."

The younger woman nods, puts down her mate next to the thermos, and turns to the box containing something that caught her eye enough to stop and look at it; a leather pouch.

Frowning, Esther takes the small pouch, and holds it in a basket-like position with her fingers. 

"Do you like it?" asks Johanna, her voice trailing off. Esther sees, out of the corner of her eye, that she is taking another drink of what she now knows is alcohol. "I got it in San Francisco at a garage sale. It's magic, but I've never been able to untie the cords."

He shuts up suddenly as Esther pulls at a knot and it unravels, letting the pouch loosen and open.

"Fuck, you're good."

"You said it's magic." Esther replies, turning to the woman with a questioning look. "Couldn't you sing to it in Latin or something?"

Again, Johanna snorts.

"It's not so easy to learn and pronounce a dead language well, young lady." she says, and Esther thinks spending too much time with Delirium is affecting her, what she thinks is a flash of warmth in the woman's brown eyes. "But don't do any more. Let me see what's there-"

At this rate, every time the sentence begins with the word 'don't', Esther's instinct tells her 'do', so it is, in a way, to be expected, that the girl won't obey.

So she doesn't; she looks at Johanna with a raised eyebrow and reaches into the bag, and grabs a handful of what looks like... sand?

"Don't fuck with me. That's all?" Johanna snarls, as if Esther isn't on the verge of a breakdown when she remembers.

"Did you want more?" asks the girl, staring at the small pile of golden sand resting in her hand, and Johanna frowns as her voice takes on a deep tone. "What more could you have expected?"

"I don't know," the older woman counters irritably, "something more... mystical."

"Mystical." Esther snarls, returning the sand to the inside of the bag as she reties the laces. "I'll take this with me."

Johanna's face transforms.

"What the fuck? No, you're not."

Esther turns to her, smiles with what can only be described as defiance, and as has become normal, she defies.

"Watch me." she replies, waving her hand.

And it all goes to literal hell.

Because when Esther finishes making the gesture, she feels tiny pimples sink through her bandage, feels them burrow into her bruised skin and submerge into her flesh. For a moment, she thinks nothing of it, but soon, the reddish horizontal line that showed that the wound had reopened, turns golden, and glows, and burns.

"What did you do?" cries Johanna, reaching over to hold her wrist, which is whistling due the effect of the grains, shaking like a grade five earthquake, and glowing like piles of candles.

"I don't... I don't know." Esther says, a thread of voice uncoiling from her throat. "But... but it burns."

Johanna says nothing, and wastes no time either; grabbing Esther's stricken wrist, she pulls her towards a desk and rummages hysterically through the drawers.

"Where the fuck is that thing!?"

Esther doesn't know what she means, but it doesn't matter, because she turns pale when she sees what the grains of sand that managed to enter her body do to her; she sees how small particles run through her cut vein, glowing golden like fireflies. She sees them get lost in the sleeve of her jumper, and feels them burn like the thousand hells inside her blood. She feels them crawl up her neck, spread up her other arm, and even feels them reach her head and her heart at the same time.

That makes her scream as she clutches her chest and head with one hand each, as if holding them will help at all. It feels as if piles of needles are plunging into the flesh of her brain and heart. The sandbag falls to the ground at the same time as Esther, who collapses against the wood like a statue.

"No!" shouts Johanna, managing to catch the girl's head to prevent her from hurting herself further. "No!"

The teenager's eyes light up in multi-coloured hues, the honey-coloured one standing out, flickering like a hospital light bulb, and that's all.

She closes her eyes, leaving Johanna Constantine with bitter memories, and a supernatural being feeling a tug on his very system, which makes him place his hand on the glass of his prison to look up, waiting.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

"We have to stop meeting like this, Estibaliz."

"Don't call me 'Estibaliz'."

Esther recognises her before she sees her; her eyes are as heavy as two anvils, and opening them is difficult, for that very reason, but she knows who's with her.

"I've never had so many grey hairs removed in such a short time." she hears Amara, and when she can finally open her eyes, Esther sees her squatting next to her, where she is lying on the floor in the star position.

"Did I really die already?" asks the teenager instead, her eyes still half-closed.

"No," Amara replies, and gives her an irritated little smile. "but you're close. Esther, it hasn't even been a month."

"Where is Joha...?"

No need to answer; the girl sits up in her position and sees the woman she had just met pacing hysterically around her unconscious figure, her wrists glowing with a soft golden glow.

In fact, her very being seems to glow with a soft golden glow, and for a moment, Esther is disoriented, but then, she finds what she is looking for.

"The pouch." she whispers, and tries to approach the contraption, but she can't move because Amara puts a hand on her shoulder.

"What pouch do you me...?" she starts to ask, but when she turns to look at where Esther is pointing, his dark complexion turns almost sallow. "Oh, fuck!"

"Do you recognise it?" Esther asks.

"Please tell me you didn't open it."

Esther is so stunned to see herself glowing with a halo that she answers the first thing that pops into her head:

"I opened it."

Amara turns to look at her with bulging eyes.

"Please tell me you didn't touch the sand."

"I touched the sand."

Amara turns to look at her, and looks furious.

"What the fuck were you thinking?!"

That's the problem; Esther thought of nothing but the urgency of taking this to the Sandman, because maybe it could help him.

And now she was half dead again, with Johanna Constantine trying to revive her as she cries and splutters, which only makes her feel worse. It gets a lot worse when she sees the older woman drop to her knees and take her right hand to her chest, the wound on her wrist glowing a little brighter.

Amara massages the bridge of her nose and sighs. Then she turns to the dying girl and gestures with her hand as she says:

"You, me and Constantine have a pending talk."

Then it happens again; the girl wakes with a rib-breaking gasp, rising up on herself as the scent of sand still runs through her, the tiny particles centred on her chest, temples and wrists. At least it doesn't burn anymore.

"You!" Johanna shrieks next to her, and Esther turns to look at her; she represents the mess of the flat perfectly, but the tears falling from her cheeks make Esther's stricken heart clench. "How come you're so.... Ahg!"

She hugs her.

The woman hugs Esther and hides her head in her hair, releasing sickening sobs that make her fold in her position like an accordion. All Esther can do is wrap her back and try to comfort her, because, though it no longer burns, she can still feel the sand inside her, pulsing hard like a headache.

And so they remain; Johanna, apparently affected by the same memory that made her drink alcohol as if it were water, Esther trying to comfort her, and Amara, hidden between a couple of boxes with a sympathetic look on her face.

When what seems like hours pass, the rhythm of Jónsi's Where No One Goes bursts from Esther's phone, interrupting the atmosphere, and it restarts everything; Johanna jerks away from her and wipes her tears furiously, as if it bothers her to be so sensitive, and Amara sinks a little deeper into the shadows. Esther thinks nothing of either and picks up her phone, seeing that it is her mother, calling her.

She looks at Johanna as she holds up a finger and answers the call.

"Máthair? (1)"

"Where the fuck are you, Estibaliz?"

The girl takes the phone away from her ear for a few seconds, takes a deep breath, thinking about why people curse so much, and answers:

"With a friend, why?"

Next to her, Johanna snorts quietly, and a few steps ahead, Amara shakes her head.

"Since when do you leave without warning?"

"Mum, you never answer when you're with your boyfriend."

The line remains static for a few seconds until a sigh is heard.

"Who are you with? Are you planning to sleep over?"

Esther looks at Johanna, to which the woman shrugs.

"The girl's name is Johanna, and possibly not. I'll just stay a little longer. If anything, I'll let you know."

"All right. What happened to your voice?"

"What with it?"

"It sounds... different."

"Different... how?"

"Like you've smoked five cigarettes. You're not smoking, are you?"

Esther purses her lips and stares into nothingness with bulging eyes.

No, Mum. I just just got magic sand through the scar on my wrist. All normal, probably just a secondary effect.

"Mum, I've almost died twice already."

The line is silent again. Esther knows it's a very sensitive subject for her mother, but she also knows that these actions have made her mother more... condescending, and at least they don't ignore each other like they used to after her father's death.

"Okay. Let me know, anything, like you said."

Esther purses her lips, debating with herself whether to tell her mum what happened in the past two hours, but she backs off. 

"Yes, Mom, don't worry. Just feed Oneiros if you can. He likes crackers."

Out of the corner of her eye, the girl sees Amara giggle imperceptibly. She doesn't give her an article, just waits for Gabriela's response.

"I'll get right on it. Take care of yourself."

And the call cuts off.

Esther sighs as she turns off her phone and puts it in her purse, which, surprisingly, is still slung over her shoulder.

Johanna sighs and looks at Esther with her head cocked to one side and her lips pursed.

"What am I going to do with you, huh?"

The teenager shrugs with a mischievous little smile.

"For the moment, just explain to me how to handle myself in this supernatural world, so that situations like this don't happen again."

"I could, yes, but..."

"Esther."

Johanna moves like lightning, rising to her feet as she picks up the earlier crossbow and points it towards the corner.

"Who the fuck is there?"

"Johanna," Esther calls, standing up while holding onto the desk next to her. "put the crossbow down. It's Amara."

"What?"

Death emerges from her place, dressed all in black, curls tied in a low ponytail, and the necklace with the Egyptian symbol swinging across her chest.

"Peace, Johanna Constantine." she says, her voice soft, one hand raised. "I've just come to talk."

The other woman seems to hesitate, but in the end, she slowly lowers her weapon, seemingly without strength. 

The atmosphere becomes impossibly tense, but then Amara turns to Esther and shakes her head, as if it is hopeless.

The déjà vu is too insistent not to smile.

"Come on, both of you." she says, heading for the flat exit. "We need to sort this out."

Johanna and Esther look at each other, one hesitant, the other encouraging, and then they each take their respective drinks, with Esther surprisingly lucid for having absorbed some of the essence of a supernatural being, and both follow Amara, leaving behind the sand pouch, which glows faintly in its position.

Meanwhile, two other things happen on other planes of the universe:

In a labyrinth made of gardens, a monk raises his eyebrows in the direction to which this fork was diverted.

And in a dark recess, an old woman growls like a wolf as she shows her sisters how the knot made of knots is now joined to a new thread; the thread of the Dream of the Endless.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter six !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ You are damaged and broken and unhinged. But so are shooting stars and comets.❞﹚.

⸻Nikita Gill.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Amara takes them to what is a nearby cemetery.

For her part, Johanna snorts quietly, something that sounds suspiciously like a "typical", and puts her hands in her pockets. Esther, on the other hand, scratches her wrists gently, but insistently, and stares as her reopened wound glows faintly with a golden glow that traces through her veins, still.

The scene is typical of the place they are in; somewhat dense fog, crows cawing in the trees, and a stone angel staring down at them from the top of the entrance monument.

Amara forces her hands together and sits right at the angel's feet, and looks at them both in the same way. 

In the darkness of the night, pierced by only a few streaks of distant lights, it almost seems as if the statue's face is a vague copy of her features.

Esther blinks and Johanna raises her eyebrows.

"What do you plan to do now, Esther?" Amara then asks, her voice seeming to have acquired eons of antiquity.

The girl scratches her right temple, and feels, and also sees, partially if she forces her eyes, how the sand particles scatter around her cheekbone like a constellation. Finally, when they seem to have settled, they stop shining, leaving the imprint of their existence on Esther's skin like freshly painted freckles, barely noticiable.

She shakes her head as she stops feeling the burning on her face. She reflexively looks down at her wrists, and the same thing happens there; the particles arrange themselves in a row around her wrist, like a bracelet, only to fade away and leave a bracelet-shaped mark just above each scar, which are now completely healed.

Esther sighed, and looked at Amara with eyes that were about to fall out.

"I guess I'll find out how much... reach, these sand particles got, and find out what I can do, and not do."

Amara nodded, but then gave her a questioning, condemning little look, to which the girl frowned.

"What?"

"Do you have any idea how to start?"

Esther purses her lips and cups her forehead with the hollow of her hand.

"I guess that's why you asked Johanna to come."

The entity and the teenage girl turn to the woman, who looks at them with pursed lips and an irritated but curious expression on her features.

"And what could I do?" she asks, roughly "I didn't even know what was in that stuff, or its possible effects."

"That pouch contains what would be a part of the essence of Dream of the Endless." Amara says, and Esther purses her lips and lowers her eyelids, as if remembering the name weighs heavily on her. It does, actually. "You know him as the Sandman."

"The Sandman?" asks Johanna, her voice and face taking on a smug, incredulous edge. "He's just a fairy tale."

Esther stifles a laugh against her hand, and Amara raises an eyebrow. They share a knowing look, and the younger one allows herself a small laugh as she holds her waist from behind with her hands.

"Would you believe me if I told you that this fairy tale was locked in the basement of Alex Burgess's mansion?" Suddenly, the girl frowns, and looks at Amara with a question on the tip of her tongue, ignoring Johanna's knowing expression. "Unless..."

Amara cocks her head at her, like a puppy, and shakes her head.

Esther feels as if she's been stabbed in the muscles with an iceberg.

"What?"

"I went to consult with Destiny..."

"Who?"

"... And he told me it's not yet time for him to be released."

Esther blinks, clutches her head with both hands. She's about to launch into the most passionate tirade she's ever uttered when Johanna steps forward and asks in a firm voice:

"Does this... Destiny, have anything to do with the title by which that demon referred to Esther?"

Amara frowns, jumps up from her position, approaches Johanna with her eyes glowing black, and then things officially get complicated.

"What title?" she mutters, as if the very idea of such a thing causes her an ancient unease.

Before Esther can even interject, Johanna responds:

"I was hired by an idiot to banish the demon he accidentally summoned. The situation arises where this lovely lady" she points Esther with one thumb "slipped onto the scene with a silver crucifix, apparently knowing the effects it would have."

"Silver works on werewolves," Esther interrupted, "and that thing was choking you. I just put two and two together and hoped for it to work."

Johanna wrinkled her nose, looking more amused than reluctant, and turned to Amara to continue her story:

"When I was banishing the demon, he said he knew her, and called her 'Defiant of Destinies'."

Amara slams her eyes shut, as if she is expecting this, but at the same time, not expecting it. She takes the next longest seconds in history to respond.

"I was hoping you hadn't heard yet."

Esther's next words didn't seal anything in infinity, but they did make Death lower his head;

"You knew... and you didn't tell me?"

Johanna looked between the two women as if she couldn't believe it. And well, who would believe that Death would lower her head in shame at the accusing gaze of a teenage girl? She's used to seeing strange things, but this is another level of strangeness.

Esther waited for Amara to come back together, her gaze softening a little, realising that, perhaps, her friend wanted to protect her. But it wasn't enough. Learning of such a thing, from a demon, no less, was not something that screamed 'protection'.

And apparently, Amara was about to admit it.

When she looked up, both mortal females could see what would be the real appearance of death; something ancient, and sad.

"Destiny is my brother," she began to say, "the eldest. He is a man who holds a book chained to his wrist, wherein is written the fate of all beings capable of having it. He lives in a garden of forking ways, representing the many turns one can take. In turn, he also represents the Will, so his... symbolism is understandable."

Amara took a breath and looked at Esther with crystallised eyes. The girl swallowed at the involuntary memory of a glass dome.

"After your... summons," she glanced at Esther, who remembered what she was referring to and, in response, raised an eyebrow at her, "I went to consult her on whether it was the Sandman's destiny to be released, whatever the details. He told me that the bifurcation of the Defiant of Destinies leaves it uncertain when, exactly, the moment of his release would be. For the time being, the fork would have to be left to flow in the uncertain way it did from the moment it was created. 

Johanna frowned, and Esther looked like she'd been hit by a car with the way this new information felt.

"Does that mean that I...?"

Amara pursed her lips, then smiled at her with something akin to pity, and gestured for both women to sit down, pointing to a pair of rocks that looked, conveniently, like chairs.

Johanna obeyed, keeping quiet for a moment, apparently interested. Esther sat down because she was stunned, not fully understanding what Amara was talking about, but was willing to try.

"As is known, the past, present, and future of every being capable of having each of these things is written in the book of Destiny, which is commonly known as the Book of Souls, or Cosmic Log." the entity said, sitting in the damp grass of the early morning. "You were there too, Esther, but, at some point in your life, you made a decision that changed the course of your destiny, and thus, that of all beings you would ever encounter. The curious thing is that this bifurcation was created spontaneously, was not even written or considered by the book of Destiny, or by your garden. Which makes you the Defiant of Destinies."

Esther blinks, trying to comprehend so much information together. The one that gives a goal step to the front, is Johanna, who overtakes his seat and asks:

"Maybe this... Defiant, is an old entity or something that demons are able to know?"

Amara shakes her head: "No. This has never happened before. This has never happened before, in any way, under any context. Destiny called Esther that way because, when taking this decision, she defied him, and created this new bifurcation. I still don't know how this... event, it spread throughout the universe, to the point where that demon found out, and that's what worries me. It's relatively new, it's only been months."

"Months?" Esther asks, finally coming out the numbness fog. "What did I do that changed the course of my own destiny and painted a target on my back?"

For a moment, there is silence. Only the autumn wind and the chirping of crickets can be heard.

But then Death smiles, and it is the same smile she had when Esther asked her to help the Sandman, a smile that reflects too much knowledge to be considered gentle.

"According to the Book of Souls, you were meant to obey Paul, and not go to the basement. That was the first clue, a small deviation that joined the main path when you arrived. Your destiny was briefly rewritten, because the Fates wanted your head, but Destiny presented very good arguments for no such thing. Still, the real bifurcation sprang from the exact moment you picked up the poker for the second time. Originally, you would not run. You wouldn't have picked it up, you would have gone with Alex and Paul upstairs, and vowed never to return, secretly waiting for the moment to return and free the Sandman, but there would be an intervention, an event caused by a greek entity, Mnemosine, that would make you forget the encounter."

"Greek entity?" asks the girl, her voice weak.

"And you would forget. And you would live your life, unaware that the Sandman would remember you, and seek you out once he was released. But before he came looking for you, you would have died, of hypothermia, at the age of 21. The Sandman would investigate why you didn't come back, and discover that Mnemosine was involved. He would not delve into the matter, but he would try to communicate with you, and he would, and they would have a nice discussion about how it is possible to weave stars into a blanket." The little smirk she shows afterwards hides something deeply... approving . "You were, in a way, destined to meet. But not the way it happened."

Esther does the most mature thing she can do; she slowly leans back against the flat base of the rock she is sitting on and stares up at the starry, star-studded sky.

Next to her, Johanna lets out a mocking laugh: "What a story.

Esther groans as if she's had a paper cut and puts her hands to her eyes, massaging her dark circles under her eyes and her temples.

The Sandman. Destiny. Mnem.... Whatever. A demon calling her "Defiant". Her, being responsible for an unintended alternate branch. 

And all this because she went to the damn basement when her father told her to.

Wait a sec.

Esther rises in her stance like the T-3000 who pretended to be John Connor in Terminator; Genesis rose after Grandfather shot him, and fixes her eyes on Amara with narrowed eyelids.

"You were there the day the heart monitor started beeping, weren't you?"

Amara's smirk slowly fades, which is answer enough.

Esther laughs ungracefully through her nose, pursing her lips tightly, holding back the sobs that were creeping up her throat.

When she focuses on Amara again, she asks a question that is difficult to answer:

"Why did he send me to that basement?"

At her side, Johanna purses her lips and lowers her head, hiding in the loose strands of her bun. This is something that doesn't concern her, not entirely, at least.

Amara swallows a pronounced knot of saliva, and takes a breath, before answering something that the girl, in a way, expected, but at the same time, did not.

"Let me tell you a story."

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter seven !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ It started out as a feeling, which then grew into a hope.❞﹚.

⸻The Call, Regina Spektor.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

"When you are a child, indifferent to harsh reality, dreams are a big part of your life. They provide you with entertainment, ambition and - the most precious of all - hope.

You dream of touching the stars. You dream of walking on clouds. You dream of exploring the world. You dream of everything and nothing at the same time. The very perception of what you see in the world is conditioned by these dreams, and when you're a child, the last thing you imagine is that the stars are actually far beyond your reach, that the clouds are inconsistent, and that the world is too big to explore by walking.

Or so your father thought.

Sheridan Carrasco was a dreamer.

And as a child, he dreamed of finding the mythical land of Tir Na nÓg.

Being part of the Irish culture, he was passionate about the stories of his homeland, which he was convinced were real. His innocence as a child allowed him to see what adults could not.  

He believed, and that was enough.

The real problem came when he discovered that, apparently, Fawney Rig had turned out to be a part of Princess Niamh's castle that had been tear away, and that, according to the book he had found, it contained passages in the basement. These passages could lead to this island, and for Sheridan, a dream came true.

He took advantage when his parents went on a business trip and left him in the care of Paul McGuire, his great-uncle. The man welcomed him warmly, allowing him free access to the library and to wander the manor, all on one condition; that he didn't go to the basement."

"Oh."

"Yes, oh. Yet, in your father's defence, when he discovered the little door in Ethel Cripps' room, he didn't expect it to lead to the cellar. He expected it to lead directly to Tir Na nÓg."

"And it didn't."

"No. What your father discovered was the Sandman trapped in a glass dome inside a runic circle. That really disoriented him, but he was not discouraged. Like any other child would, he asked questions. Plenty of questions. None were answered before Alex and Paul appeared. They just told him that the trapped being was the Sandman and that he shouldn't have come, and then they took him upstairs. Your father fought back, scratching and biting the guards, but he was unable to free himself. He only managed to promise the Sandman that he would be free some way. He didn't know when or how, but he would.

Sheridan wasn't going to sit still. He was a child, not stupid. When his parents came to take him away, he asked Alex and Paul what really happened, and they embarrassedly related the story and its consequences. Your father got angry and swore he would never go back to Fawney Rig Manor. He never did.

Nevertheless, he spent much of his childhood and teenagehood seeking ways to free the Sandman without stepping foot on Fawney Rig, which seemed impossible. There was no way to do so, at least not from his studies. By the time he reached 19, he was losing his nerve, until one day, as he was walking through a garden, he ended up in a labyrinth".

"A what?"

"And he encountered my brother, Destiny."

"Who?!"

"

'Just let me finish, Esther. Destiny told him to drop this investigation because everything is as it should be. They had a brief discussion, but in the end Sheridan reckoned this was consuming his life, so he agreed, but only on the condition that Destiny assure him that if not he, then someone else would be the one to release the Sandman and end the sleeping sickness. Destiny agreed to assure him that someone else, someone who dreams, would be the one to right Roderick Burgess' mistake. Only then does Sheridan agree, and with regret in his heart, he accepts that this was not his to right, and burns all his research. And he goes on with his life, not at peace, but knowing that the responsibility was not his."

"What does any of this have to do with... me?"

"Sheridan raised you in an exceptional way, Esther. He didn't want to burden you with what he knew, but he did want you to be aware of this world. So he made you aware, in a way that allowed you to be halfway prepared, like the moment Johanna told about, when you used the silver crucifix. At the end, when he fell ill, he left you his dream as an inheritance. That you would find Tir Na nÓg. But that, in turn, you would be the one to free the Sandman, that you would achieve what he could not, that you would outwit him".

" I didn't succeed, Amara."

"Of course you did, Esther. Thanks to you, the world will no longer suffer the absence of the Sandman, I told you. All that remains is to wait and see when the conditions are favourable."

"That doesn't comfort me."

"It is not meant to comfort you. It is meant to be an explanation. As I told you, you did what you did, and that created a spontaneous fork, so you are part of this world now, Esther. Maybe you were long before then, when you used to dream of a blanket made of stars".

"How the heck do you know that?"

"I know everything, dear. And maybe I have not told you, but I live in the Sunless Lands. It is my realm, the portal between worlds where the dead go. Some may choose to stay or go where they must, but only if I grant them such a thing. Your father's chaos was a different story; time passes differently in my realm, and when he awoke from his slumber, you were on the edge of following him when you were shot. When Destiny sent me to prevent your death, Sheridan asked me to watch over you, near or far, and I agreed. I did, until you, miss, defied me. I really didn't know if you were worse or better than your father. You are both the most defying beings I have ever met."

"So this is in my blood, then".

"Yes. But you, and you alone, are the Defiant. Your father did what was written for him, and you made your own way. Now all you have to do is learn how to live in these two worlds."

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

"Now all you have to do is learn how to live in these two worlds".

Well, that's easier said than done.

After such a pleasant chat, the three women go to Johanna's place so that she can take care of the sand pouch. Before they separate, the demon hunter promises to put the pouch in a separate box and forget about its existence until the Sandman is released and comes for it. The three say their farewells and Amara walks Esther home.

According to Esther's phone, it is 1.35 in the morning; there is the cawing of crows, the hooting of owls and the whistling of the wind. It's drizzling and Esther takes a few minutes to enjoy the weather she loves.

"Do you like walking at night?" asks Amara as they walk along the pavement on the right-hand side of Esther's neighbourhood.

"Yes." answers Esther, lowering her head to balance her feet. I have a fondness for solitary walks in cool surroundings. That's where my poet's pseudonym comes from; the Solivagant."

Amara frowns and smiles with tight lips.

"It means 'a lonely wanderer'."

The creature's expression clears and she nods with a softer smile.

"You really are your father's daughter." she says, and Esther looks up to see it through the strands of her hair. "You dream at every step."

The teenager snorts gracefully and heads around the corner to the street where her house is a few yards ahead.

"You'll understand then why I defied you."

She goes a few steps further before realising that Amara is not following her.

As Esther turns, she sees the creature staring at the metal street sign, her dark eyes fixed on the name of Esther house's street.

She approaches and reads the name Orpheus on the metal.

"Did you know him?" she whispers, remembering the myths.

Amara nods with a glazed look.

"He was a great boy." she says, her voice a little strained. "He didn't accept his wife's death, and he had a dreadful one in return. It was painful to take them both."

Esther nods, granting Amara the privacy to wipe the tears from her eyes. When she has done so, the creature smiles sadly at her and gestures for her to continue.

"I'm surprised at your determination," she remarks abruptly, matching Esther's pace. "Your bravery too."

"It was nothing like that." the girl replies, unwilling to accept the creature's compliments. "They were just my way of relieving myself of the guilt of not being able to free the Sandman. I was selfish."

"And that selfishness ended up saving a lot of people in the future." Amara counters. She pauses and reaches out to Esther to put a hand on her arm. "Don't belittle yourself for trying to find peace, no matter how hard you tried. It worked, and for now we'll just have to wait."

Esther remains silent for the rest of the way, and in a few minutes they both reach the porch of her house, which still has the lights on (indicating that Gabriela is still awake, judging by the figure hunched over the kitchen counter). Amara knocks on the door and they wait.

Esther inhales the early morning air, as if to take courage (irony), and when she hears her mother's footsteps approaching, she says to Amara: "I take no pride in what I have done, but I am glad of the results."

In response, Death smiles at her and nods. 

"So am I."

Just then, the door opens and there stands Gabriela Carrasco in all her housewife glory, hair pulled back at the top of her head, glasses misplaced, and a worn grey dressing gown that once belonged to Sheridan. Esther purses her lips and smiles at him.

"Hi, Mama."

Gabriela blinks and leans against the lintel.

"Hi, Estibaliz." she replies, and for a moment Esther remembers the times she used her birth name; when she had done something naughty and got caught. Now she's too tired to think of an excuse. "Who's your new friend?"

"I'm Amara Ravens, Mrs Carrasco." the brunette replies, extending a hand that was gloveless a second ago. "Nice to meet you."

Esther makes no comment, but a little, knowing smile breaks out on her lips as she recognises Amara's references. Also because, it seems, the entity's aura of charisma and gentleness is convincing enough; Gabriela smiles politely and returns the greeting, then asks if she would like to come in for a cup of tea.

Amara politely declines, noting that her break from her night's work is nearly over, but promises that she will be by to share a snack. Gabriela nods, announces that she will make tea for herself and her daughter anyway, and disappears into the kitchen. 

Esther hugs Amara once more, and as they part, the creature grabs the teenager's wrists with a firm grip, glaring at them with narrow eyes.

"The effects of the sand will show in the long run." she whispers, but to Esther's ears it sounds as clear as a scream. She pulls the girl's wrists closer to her eyes, apparently counting the new freckles. "How much of it got through your wound?"

"Just a few grains, I think." Esther replies, looking down at her wrists from her position. "I don't understand how it could be so... so..."

"So overwhelming?" Amara completes with a sympathetic look. "You now possess a part of the essence of Dream of the Endless, Esther. He is the anthropomorphic embodiment of dreams, nightmares and all that is rooted in those terms. It's normal to feel this way, now that you hold a small part of it, of him."

Esther blinks and asks, her voice caught in her throat:

"What?"

Amara gives her a mischievous smile and doesn't answer. She just gives him another hug and a quick 'see you soon' before turning and walking down the street to the right, fading into the gloom.

Esther seriously considers following her, trying to extract more information from her taste buds, but doesn't manage to take a step until she feels a couple of small, pointy things sink into her thigh.

When she looks down, there's Oneiros, staring at her as if judging her. His paws glisten against the fabric of her trousers, and he meows long and loud, as if he's crying.

Esther's lips curl into a pout of tenderness as she bends down and lifts the cat into her arms. As if it were nothing, the cat sinks its nose into her scarred collarbone and wraps its paw around her shoulder to hug her.

"Awww, you little meow meow." Esther laughs, stroking the cat's back with one hand and holding him with the other. "I didn't think you could be so affectionate."

The cat meows, as if complaining. He rubbed his face against the girl's neck and purred loudly, so loud that it made the teenager's bones vibrate.

"All right, little one." Esther murmurs, planting a soft kiss behind his ear. "Let's go inside. We gotta rest."

Behind her, the cat opens his eyes and imperceptibly moves his teeth, showing them to the pair of golden eyes hiding behind a tree.

As the door closes, the golden-eyed creatures take a step and show themselves in the moonlight, revealing a man with feminine features, or a woman with masculine features, or both, or neither. They are wearing a champagne-coloured suit and a heart charm pendant that seems to be beating.

Their gaze is fixed on the window of the house, where they can see the girl, the Defiant, brewing herself a red berry tea, oblivious to the fact that the grains of sand are dissolving, mingling with her own mortal essence, taking root in her being like a vine.

"I'm watching you," the being murmurs, in a silky voice that would cause an instant meltdown in anyone listening. "Defiant."

And the being, Desire of the Endless, smiles, lips as red as blood and teeth as white as snow, forming a sharp grin that promises plenty, plenty of trouble.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter eight !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Fata viam invenient. Fate will find a way. ❞﹚.

⸻Latin phrase.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

For a blur of time, Esther finds herself back in the normal rhythm of her life.

She gets up, goes to school, tries her best at every activity, attends committee meetings. Then she returns home, puts on her precious playlist and cleans with enthusiasm, ignoring the judging gaze of the cat she already loves like red berry tea. Then she receives her mother, prepares dinner for the two of them, tidies her room, writes the occasional poem when inspired (though they are more like delirious reveries induced by the irregularity of her rest), and goes to bed to try to sleep.

And so it goes, with the odd variation such as telephoning Johanna and chatting about anything and everything, accompanying her mother as she works in the cafeteria, doing history homework with Professor Gadling, and visiting Daisy and her family at weekends.

She manages to balance her life in a way that feels a little forced, but it's better than nothing. She doesn't get involved in any supernatural stuff other than regular visits from Amara, spontaneous meetings with Delirium (who always appears through her mirror), coming to Johanna's apartment to help her remove demon guts or have the woman teach him self-defence for both humans and supernatural beings, and, well, she started going to a Christian church.

As Amara told her that there was always a place to go, she considered her options. And she decided that when her friend took her away (for real this time), she wanted to rest in the green pastures spoken of in the Psalms of King David, the ones she used to read with dear old Judith when they lived in Ireland.

She didn't know if she had a chance, given her... experiences, and those she might yet have to experience, but if what the Bible said was true, then... she could at least try.

As she had tacitly learned, being friends with death didn't assure anything. 

Perhaps being who you are, however you are, doesn't assures anything. Memento Mori.

And in the meantime, memento vivere.

She got into the habit of sitting in the pews, staring at the altars decorated with fake flowers, and staying there for hours, not daring to do anything but follow the services with a certain rigidity but subtlety. She is sure, however, that she has attracted attention, if the curious glances she usually receives whenever she enters the wooden doors are any indication.

On a cloudy Sunday, after everyone has left, Esther lingers and repeats this habit. She looks carefully at the details of the sunflowers, her favourite flower. It is very realistic, although the yellow of the petals is the only thing that indicates that they are artificial.

She tensed when she felt someone sitting next to her.

Silence.

"Do you like sunflowers?"

Esther takes a deep breath and turns her head, clinging to the feel of her short ponytail caressing the nape of her bare neck. She is a mature-looking woman, with grey in her curly black hair, which somehow enhances her simple beauty. She has kind eyes, lined with wrinkles caused by laughter, and brown skin that reflects health.

She looks like Amara.

"Yes." Esther nods, her voice lower than she intended. "They're my favourite."

"Interesting." the woman replies, "In the language of flowers, they symbolise admiration and devotion, because when they are in the field, they follow the rays of sunlight from sunrise to sunset. That is why they are called sunflowers.

The teenager raises her eyebrows and grins softly.

"A nice touch."

They are silent for a few torturous seconds before the woman speaks again.

"You've been sitting on this bench or that one for almost three months now, without fail," she nods at the bench in the row to the right, the same height as the one they're sitting on. "staring at the flowers, for twenty-three minutes after the service."

Esther purses her lips, tight as a noose. This is not normal.

"So?"

The woman takes a few seconds to watch her, and smiles at her with a smile that reminds her of Johanna when she's terribly tired after a usually successful demon hunt; calm and satisfied, a simple curl of the lips.

"You're here because you've been told you can find something that will give you what you're looking for." she tells her, or rather murmurs, as if it were a secret, as if they weren't in an empty church. "Tell me, what brought you here?"

Esther immediately dismisses the idea of telling her about her supernatural experiences (such as they are), so she just says what seems to be the right thing to say:

"I'm just... so disoriented," she mumbles, bringing her hands to her head to bury her fingers in the roots. "I came close to dying, three times, and I didn't die any of them. I came back at the last second, and well, experiencing that kind of situation puts things in a slightly different perspective".

The woman hums, obviously thinking about what Esther has just said. She puts her elbows on her knees and clasps her hands together in a sign of concentration.

The teenager waits.

"I'm not going to lie to you and say that death can't put things in perspective," she begins, a little hesitantly, "but I can tell you this: no matter what has happened, or what you have done, or what you have been exposed to. You can always seek the Lord and receive His comfort".

Esther shakes her head and smiles mockingly.

"Would ye believe me if I said that my experiences are darker than that river in Mexico where both rubbish and women's bodies have been dumped? And that it's to the point where I'm not sure I can... access it?" The girl gestures to the whole church, hoping to get the point across. "There's no way I deserve this."

The contrarian purses her lips in a sympathetic grimace.

"No one deserves the Lord's love," she says, as if it were common knowledge, which it is, "but that's the wonderful thing about it. Believe it or not, each of us has our own experiences, darker than that river in Mexico, the Xochiaca," she adds. Esther tilts her head to indicate that she is listening. "And each of us, when we chose to come, the Lord accepted us," the woman places a hand on Esther's knee and smiles knowingly. "He sacrificed himself out of love, and because of that love, you have as much right as anyone to access his peace, as long as you choose it, because the Lord is not human to imposes."

The woman rises, gives a last smile and turns to leave when Esther asks, belatedly;

"How is this possible?"

The older woman stops and looks at her with a shrug.

"I never understood how such a powerful and eternal being, who needs us for nothing, could love us like that. It's something our human minds will never understand. All you can do is take what He has given you and live as He asks you to live."

"And why does it have to be the way He asks me to live?" Esther asks suddenly, sounding as if she's had lemon juice without water or sugar.

The older woman tilts her head and wrinkles her nose like Oneiros when he sees her singing The Very First Night, tears and all. The teenage girl raises her eyebrows.

"Because He knows better."

That's no answer, at least not to Esther's still tormented mind. Apparently it shows on her face, for the woman holds out her hand and the girl hesitates for a moment before taking it.

"Come as often as you think you need to." She says, her voice soft. "If you have any questions, ask them. Don't be in doubt. I am Ophelia, the counsellor, should you choose." Esther laughs mentally, because the name means 'help', which seems appropriate. "And remember, you don't have to be an immaculate swan to seek the Lord."

Esther purses her lips and nods.

The woman, Ophelia, nods in return and leaves, walking out of the church into the courtyard to do who knows what.

Esther leans against the back of the pew with a sigh that weighs like an anvil, and returns her gaze to the sunflowers that decorate the altar.

She blinks and offers a polite smile as he rests his head on the top of his seat.

"Well," she mumbles, sighing again, "it never hurts to try, does it?"

Outside, the sky is clearing and the sun is filtering through the colourfully decorated windows, and that seems to be enough of an answer, so Esther smiles, murmurs a soft "ok" to no one in particular, and stands up, picking up her bag, slinging it over her shoulders, and placing her hands flat on her hips, turns towards the exit, determined to have a good day.

Her enthusiasm lasts until she gets home.

When she arrives at 22 Orpheus Way, her mother is serving tea to three new visitors: a young, dark-skinned woman, very beautiful, with black curls falling around her face. The next is a middle-aged woman who looks responsible, with an occasional grey hair that only enhances her beauty. And the third is a coarse-faced, lizard-eyed old woman, sipping her tea with what appears to be a bitter grimace.

From the moment she closes the door with a frown, Esther knows in her bones that these three women are not just three ordinary women.

"Esther!" her mother calls, with a soft smile and glassy eyes, as if she'd been... drugged. She walks over to the nearest cupboard, takes Esther's large mug, the yellow one with the Hufflepuff (her house) crest on it, and puts a tea bag of red berry tea in it, then pours in the boiled water. "Come in, these nice ladies say they've come to visit you."

Ay, carajo.

The younger, dark-haired woman sips her tea and gives Esther a smile that pretends to be friendly but seems to take the form of a snake about to sink its fangs into her throat.

"How are you, dear Esther?" she asks, her voice very soft, bordering on cloying. "It's been a while since we've seen you."

Rubbish. Esther has never seen these women in her short, overburdened life.

"You look a little thin, beautiful Estibaliz." says the second woman, the one who looks like a responsible woman, "Have you been eating? It might help."

Esther narrows her eyes.

"You lack rest, child," the old woman interrupts, and the tinkling of the spoon with which she stirs her tea (apparently boldo, judging by the smell, which makes Esther raise an eyebrow) echoes through her living room like a chapel steeple. "You've got nasty circles under your eyes."

Esther reflexively brings her hand up to her face and brushes away the dark circles that still reflect on her face. But she knows that at least they are not as black as they used to be.

"'Gently, sister-self," the middle-aged woman chides her, as she pops one of the cornstarch alfajores Daisy gave them the day before into her mouth. "Poor thing looks like she's about to pass out."

"Ha!" the old woman sneers, her voice like an arrow piercing Esther's chest with a sense of unease and discomfort. "The impertinent girl just needs to be persuaded. This is her life now, and if she passes out at every creature that comes her way, then nothing but misfortune awaits her."

"All right, enough." Esther interrupts, holding her hands up. "What have the three of ye done to my mother?"

"We just gave her tea, dear Esther." the younger one replies.

The teenager cocks her head suspiciously, watching her mother out of the corner of her eye; Gabriela is leaning against the counter, the teapot and the tea she made for Esther resting on the headboard. It's a little disconcerting to see Esther's mother swaying gently, humming a song from the fifties, staring at the ceiling with blank eyes.

"Mr Sandman, bring me a dream..." she mumbles through her teeth.

That's how Esther's brain slams on the brakes, squeaks and reaches the red sign, which in big white letters forms the sentence;

'This is for the sand. '

This assumption leads her to the next set of ideas; these women are beings of some kind, possibly related. They know the Sandman and therefore they know her. They are aware of her experiences and how they affect her directly and indirectly.

In conclusion, they are intrusive beings who have come to make her life even more screwed up.

Holding back her anger, the teenager turns back to the women, her head cocked to one side as she demands: "What do ye want?"

"What we want..." the old woman mutters, looking at the girl with judgmental eyes. "What we want is something that we can no longer get. It's too late to get it."

"But we can still do something about it," the younger one chimes in, setting the cup she is holding down on the table as she licks her lips as delicately as a Victorian maiden, "and that would be to help you."

"Why don't I believe ye?"

The middle-aged woman smiles with a maternal air.

"That is to be expected, dear Estibaliz." she says, her voice modulating to a slightly cloying but firm tone. "But you have no choice. You must listen to us."

Esther inhales slowly as she lifts her head and looks down her nose at the women, irritated. 

"Fine," she replies, setting her bag down on the chair she will be sitting in. "First let me take my mother to her room to rest. Then I'll come and have a talk with ye."

"Just put her to sleep, child," the old woman wails, waving her hand dismissively, as if her mother were a fly she was trying to swat away. "A simple breath will do."

"What ye mean?"

"That you can use the power that runs through your veins."

The girl narrows her eyes, raises her hand to indicate waiting, and approaches her mother, still balancing on the counter with a silly grin.

"Please turn on your magic beam..."

"All right, Mum, ye need to lie down." Esther takes her mother's arm and leads her to the stairs.

"Mr Sandman, please..."

"Ye hate that song," the teenager laughs, because it's better to laugh than to pull your hair out in clumps.

"I hate the Chordettes." Gabriela replies, trudging down the corridor to her room, leaning heavily on her daughter. "And your Sandman."

Esther stops and purses her lips, cocking her head towards the room to see how tidy it is. Her mother sways on her feet, humming the song. 

"And why are ye humming it?" the girl asks, ignoring the last words as she opens the door and leads her mother to the rumpled bed. "I mean, if ye hate the singers and the character they're talking about."

"It reminds me of your father," Gabriela murmurs, so quietly that Esther can barely hear her. "And the nights he would sit and tell you the story of your Sandman in that book saga. You both looked beautiful."

The girl refrains from saying that the Sandman is not something to possess, and holds back the tears brought on by the memory as her mother settles into bed, hugging a pillow tightly.

"Wake me only if the world is ending."

This makes Esther react. She purses her lips and, with some reluctance, pulls the covers over her mother.

"Sleep well, Mum."

That seems to be enough; within two seconds, Gabriela begins to snore.

Esther attributes it to the suspicious tea she has been given, rather than anything the mysterious women have said, and leaves, closing the door gently.

Looking up, she sees her cat watching her from his perch on the fifth step of the stairs. He was wagging his tail rhythmically, and for a moment it seemed as if every movement released glittering dust. 

Esther shakes her head, chalking it up to the four hours of sleep she got that night, and beckons the cat to come closer. Oneiros does so, and when he arrives, the girl opens the door for him as gently as she had closed it.

"Take care of her, please."

The cat looks at her, swings its tail and enters the room. Through the crack Esther had left, she saw it jump up on the bed and lie down next to its mother's face, its little head between its paws. It was a beautiful image: his mother hugging a pillow as if it were a teddy bear, and Oneiros curled up close to Gabriela's head, his tail curled around one of her wrists.

The teenager nods to herself and closes the door.

She walks barefoot down the corridor, and when she reaches the kitchen, she notices through the curls of her ponytail that the women are still there, talking in whispers. She goes to the counter on the other side, and as she reaches for some sugar, she discreetly touches the star carving on the inside wall of the counter. A compartment opens at the edge, revealing a small dagger with a wooden handle, but with a long, double-edged blade that is sheathed. 

"I'll be with ye in a moment." she says to the women, whose only response is the clatter of spoons and cups on the table.

Silently thanking Johanna for her well-founded conspiratorial ways, she pretends to look for another tea bag while she bends down and tucks the dagger into her jeans belt, just as the demon hunter ("necromancer, child") had taught her. Finding another bag of red berry tea and, incidentally, the container of honey, she places it in the prepared cup and, after taking it and the honey in her hands, makes her way over to the trio of women.

She sits down in the chair in front of them, facing them. There is a moment of silence as Esther adds two spoonfuls of honey to her tea before the old woman speaks.

"All right, child," she grunts, placing the cup she is using carelessly on the table. "Have you anything to say for yourself?"

Esther looks at her from under her lashes without lifting her head.

"I dunno what ye mean."

"Wrong answer, dear Esther," the younger woman croaks, tilting her head to one side. "You know perfectly well what we mean."

"Let her think, sister-self," the middle-aged woman interjects, looking at the younger woman with a motherly glow in her eyes. "She has not finished processing her position in our world."

"Her position is that of being the filthiest aberration in the universe, the plague that subdues the realms, the mistake of Potmos. What else is there to process?"

Esther blinks, indignant and disoriented. But she doesn't show it; she takes a sip of her tea and raises her eyebrows sarcastically.

"Well," she mumbles, fiddling with the handle of the cup, "if I'm such... things, why did ye bother to come?"

"Because Potmos sent Teleute to save you from dying," the old woman replies, her voice becoming much more bitter, if that's possible, "and as a result you now have the destiny of all beings capable of such a thing at your mercy, including us."

"And if you don't know how to handle such a responsibility, the consequences could be catastrophic," the middle-aged woman interjects.

"We will show you how to control it effectively," the younger woman continues, "the power you have as the Defiant and the part of Lord Morpheus that resides within you."

Esther chokes on her tea, coughing violently.

When she thinks about it, such a statement sounds a little... dirty. And if the complicit looks and smirks between the younger woman and the responsible-looking one indicate anything, it's that those words were chosen with every intention in the world.

Fleetingly, she thinks of this creature. He probably hates her, firmly believing her to be a useless, selfish human being. And a thief to boot, if he's aware of that.

A few agonisingly awkward seconds pass while she recovers, and when she does, she shakes her head.

"No, no, no, no." Esther laughs sarcastically and shakes both her head and her hand. "No, no, no. The last thing I need right now is three women who are clearly not women wanting to play nanny. That would be last straw."

"Impertinent child," the old woman snarls, slamming the cup down on the table; it's surprising the cup hasn't shattered already. "Thou are a danger of the highest order. Every decision you make changes the perspective of the Book of Souls. Every breath you take is an affront to the universe itself. If you do not learn to control this spontaneous ability, everything you know, everything you love, everything you have ever cared about will disappear, or worse. The possibilities are endless.

Esther purses her lips and half blinks, trying to contain her surprise and tears of frustration.

"Dear Esther," the younger one interjects, and the teenager turns to look at her, "please, at least listen to us. We will explain it to you so that you can go on with your life as safely as possible, for yourself and for every being capable of having a destiny."

A heavy silence falls, and then Esther does what her body is practically pleading her to do; she lets out a heavy sigh and lowers her head until it hits the table with a resounding thud that echoes through the living room.

The first to react is the middle-aged woman.

"Oh, dear Estibaliz," she says in a deceptively affectionate tone. Esther feels his hand on her head, stroking the taut curls of her ponytail, "We understand that all this can be overwhelming, but it's necessary. Tell us, what exactly is it that prevents you from accepting our help?"

The answer immediately leaps to the girl's mind:

'Because it's up to me.'

Esther lifts her head and rests her chin on the table. The middle-aged woman's hand withdraws, but not before tucking an unruly lock of hair behind her ear, just as Gabriela used to do.

The action calms the teenager and she answers the question.

"I... I just... I think it's my fault." she says, her voice low and weary as she straightens up. "I went to the basement. I wanted to free him. I was the one who failed. I'm the one who got myself into this situation. I don't want to drag anyone else down with me, entity or not."

The old woman is about to speak, but the table moves abruptly with a jolt that makes her hold her breath.

Esther frowns.

"While it is true that you have put yourself in this situation, Esther," the middle-aged woman begins, looking suspiciously calm as the old woman to her right tries to catch her breath, "you don't have to do it alone. As has been said, you now hold the destiny of all beings capable of such a thing in your hands. Whatever you do or don't do will affect every one of them, directly or indirectly. That is why we want to help you."

"And who are ye?" Esther asks, tired of all the mystery. "What are ye?"

The younger woman smiles at her with indulgence.

"We are universally known as the Kindly Ones." she begins to explain, and Esther's head begins to spin as she frowns at the title, which sounds kind of familiar. "To the Vikings as the Norns, but you would know us as the Fates."

Esther's response takes a few seconds to take shape, and when it arrives, it is very accurate for such a revelation:

"Yer fucking with me."

The younger woman, whom Esther may now know as Cloto the Maiden, smiles at her complicitly, as if such a statement were not one of the most vulgar in existence.

"No, dear Esther. We're not fucking with you."

The teenager raises her eyebrows. Wow, when they said what they said, they seemed to mean it.

This Sunday was definitely not going according to plan.

"But," she begins to question, "so ye can't reverse it? I mean, take this ability to defy and the sand with it. I mean, yer the Fates."

"Dear Esther," murmurs the middle-aged woman, Laquesis, the Mother, taking the girl's hand, "if we could do it without killing you, we would. But it's too dangerous. Both powers are already imprinted in your own DNA. The consequences are already severe, and your ultimate death would bring unimaginable consequences."

She reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a spool of thread from which hangs a knotted bundle that vaguely resembles a cloud; a knot of threads.

"This is the spool of your life." she says, showing her the artefact; a cylinder of strange wood and a coiled thread that glistens golden. "Originally, Atropos was to cut the thread on your twenty-first summer, but your first deviation, when you ignored Paul and went to the basement, caused the time of your death to be unknown, leaving your destiny uncertain, but nothing more. Then, when you were shot, Atropos was about to cut it, but found this." the Mother held the knot of threads in her well-groomed hand. "This cannot be cut. It is a knot of knots, proving that Potmos, better known as Destiny, the brother of Teleute, whom you know as Amara, intervened to save you from dying. He chose to keep you alive, for reasons unknown."

This made Esther despondent to an unimaginable degree. The Fates themselves don't know how to stop this?

"This symbolises your position as the Defiant of Destinies in our world." Laquesis continues, oblivious to the girl's despair. "It is yours now. Port it and it will help you discover exactly how your abilities work and how to keep them under control."

Then something too mystical for Esther's taste happens; the Mother leaves the spool and the knot of thread on the table, and the three beings come forward to place all their hands on it. They closed their eyes and began to murmur in a strange language.

Esther waited as still as a statue, not wanting to take any chances. She watches as the clasped hands of the Fates begin to glow, and as the Maiden takes what appears to be a needle from her hair and extends her hand to the teenager.

She hesitates, but offers her own hand. Cloto gives her a reassuring smile, takes her ring finger, gently inserts the needle into the pad, and Esther is surprised to feel no pain. Blood clearly gushes from the small wound and the Maiden takes a drop of the vital fluid with the same needle. The teenager watches in fascination as Cloto, in one fluid movement, transfers the drop of blood to the hands of her sisters, who make a slit between their fingers. 

The drop falls, Cloto puts the needle back in her hair and joins her hands with those of her sisters. The three of them began their chant again, this time a little louder, as if each word were gaining in power. Esther covers her ears, for what she hears is babble, babble that feels like millions of voices in tune.

She closes her eyes tightly, too, because the light emanating from the Fates' hands is growing in intensity, because she doesn't know what's happening, and she's not sure she wants to know.

Minutes pass, or eons, a small period of time that seems endless, when the light begins to fade, when she feels her name being called.

Esther opens her eyes and the Fates hand her what appears to be a gold bracelet, of a gold that is not of this world. The chain is a braided rope with a charm on it; the coil is crossed by two X-shaped needles. 

"This is yours." says the Maiden, Cloto, and as if in a trance, Esther stretches out her left wrist. The entity places the jewel on her and hooks the chain around the scar. "Let no one take it from you. It is your seal upon our world. Your symbol of Defiant. No one knows about it except us, Potmos and Teleute."

"Word of the Defiant has spread," says the Crone, Atropos. "The beings know that you hold their destinies, they know about you, but they don't know exactly who you are, whether fairy, goddess or human. They don't know that this is your symbol, and it must stay that way."

"If you need help, just touch the charm and call out to whomever you need," the Mother, Laquesis, instructs. "As a Defiant of Destinies, any being capable of having such a thing is at your reach, no matter what kind of creature it is. Be careful and consider every step you take. The needles you see there," Esther looks without seeing the X across the spool, "are your tools. Accessible only to you, to pick them up you only need to push them out, and then you can use your needle-tipped abilities, threaded with your thread."

"This is your role in our world, Esther Carrasco." the three begin, rising from the table at the same time. From their hands comes the thickest mist Esther has ever seen in her life. Their eyes whiten and they begin to chant;

"Thou, Defiant, are as dangerous as you are necessary," the maiden says, her voice echoing. "Your power is beyond what is written in the Log."

"Thou can carry your power, and the one you mistakenly took," the Mother continues. "But one day the owner may come seeking it, or not."

"In the meantime, thou must prepare yourself," the Crone concluded. "for any obstacle that may come."

"Prepare yourself, Defiant," the three speak in unison, and Esther's vision begins to blur. "for you will be the one who decides or the one who dooms."

And everything goes dark.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Esther wakes to find herself on the floor of her living room, lying on the cool wood.

She rises in place, propping herself up on her elbows as she blinks, lost. She looks around and shakes her head at the forgotten tea cups on the table.

What Fates or Fates, manners make... the entity?

She leans back against the floor, taking comfort in the feeling of her back pressed against something solid. She rubs her eyes and then notices the bracelet on her wrist.

There is her spool, and there is the knot of knots.

Esther looks at the jewellery from every angle, concentrating on the design. She purses her lips and does as Laquesis tells her, using her fingernail to press the tips of the needles.

A soft halo surrounds the charm, and then, like Ladybug's yo-yo, Esther is able to grasp the needles, which separate from the charm, emitting glittering particles, until they are fully extended, leaving a small piece of thread on the spool.

She looked at them; they were long, a little shorter than her forearm, of an unknown material, plated in shades of gold, with a pendant on each, in the form of little chains with a small gem, an amethyst, at the end.

Esther sighed and concentrated on the loose end of the thread; it sprouted from the bobbin like a worm from an apple, and when she stretched it out a little she could see that it was made of wool, or something similar, in shades of gold with lilac.

Sighing again, she touches the thread with the needle; both sink into the charm like a finger into a sponge, until they come together again after a few soft flashes. Esther repeats the process with the remaining needle, and when the charm is once again a spool with the needles forming an X, she rests her head on the floor.

"Bad time to have turned down Granny Judith's knitting lessons." she says aloud.

She closes her eyes, allowing herself a moment of stillness, until something presses hard against her chest, knocking the breath out of her.

She straightens up quickly, leans back on her elbows, and there she sees her cat, Oneiros, stretched out like a stuffed animal from her chest to her belly. He is purring.

Esther shakes her head and returns to her horizontal position, stroking the cat between the ears.

"Well," she says to nothing, looking up at the roof of her house, "nothing a few nice chips won't fix."

But she lies there for a few more minutes.

The peace that comes from lying down with her cat purring on her chest is something she will never understand, but that doesn't mean she doesn't enjoy it.

Once again Esther closes her eyes as she buries her nose in Oneiros' furry head.

And that's it, for a Sunday.

Then the week begins again, and it begins as normally in Esther's life as it can begin; with a visit from another pair of supernatural beings.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter nine !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Abandon all hope, ye who piss me off. ❞﹚.

⸻Kill the Dead, Richard Kadrey.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

It was a Tuesday that had started so well only to end so badly.

The dry winter wind was blowing through the windows of Esther's house, but she didn't care because she had a biology project due in a week and it had to be perfect. There is no time for distractions or mistakes.

Amara's brother obviously doesn't care. Esther is certain he is taking revenge.

The whole fucked-up thing happens when she is running around in her room like a maniac, while she is looking for the notebook in which she has the notes on the aquatic fauna and while she is on the phone with Johanna.

She finds what she is looking for on her dresser, and when she has it in her hands, she presses it to her chest and smiles with relief. Oneiros squints from his position on the bed and swings his tail sharply.

"What?" Esther says in a hostile but amused tone as she collects another pile of papers on her notebook. "Ye don't have to study, so ye don't understand what it's like to think that ye've lost a very important notebook."

Johanna laughs from the speaker of her mobile phone pressed to her ear.

"Is your cat teasing you again?"

"Aye." Esther replies as she looks at the cat. "I'm pretty sure, if he could laugh, he would."

The cat wiggles its ear and turns to Esther's jewellery box, an old but beautifully carved thing with Celtic knotwork and laurel leaves, a wedding gift from her grandfather to her grandmother, now in her possession.

Confused, the girl ignores the demonic laugh of her friend and goes to see what it was that caught Oneiros' blue eyes. She is not pleasantly surprised to behold a soft scarlet glow from the cracks in the lid.

This doesn't bode well.

"Esther?" asks Johanna.

The sounds of heartbeats coming from the jewellery box don't bode well either.

"There's somethin' in my jewellery box," the girl replies, walking slowly to the corner of her dressing table. "Something that's glowin'. And beatin'."

"Fuck," she hears the exorcist say, "run over there," and without waiting for a reply, the call is cut off.

Haciendo tripa corazón (1), as Daisy says, Esther puts her phone in her back pocket, puts her notebook and the piles of papers on the stool to one side, closes her eyes, picks up the small wooden box, takes a deep breath and opens it quickly.

There, above her flower bracelets and star earrings, are two things that are definitely not hers; a heart-shaped pendant that glowed scarlet and seemed to be beating, and a silver fishhook with something red on the tip.

"What the...?"

At first glance, they look like simple jewellery to wear if you're a heartbreaker who hooks up victims, or something alike. That is, until you take a closer look at both objects, until you come into contact with the heart that is, actually, beating, and until you see that the red something that stains the hook smells like iron.

Esther reaches for her mobile phone when she hears a series of suspicious noises that seem to get closer as they get clearer.

Tick, tick, tick.

Tock, tock, tock.

Like clockwork, only they both sound at the same time, as if caused by different things.

Esther takes a deep breath as she sees a pair of amorphous shadows emerge from the hallway and into her room.

"Look, my sister," exclaims a voice, sweetly soft, as if honey dripping from a piece of bamboo cloth, "she found our sigils!"

"Yes, she found them." replies another voice, whispered, but with an effect that makes it very clear, as if echoing off the walls.

The girl closes her eyes in sorrow.

Hello God, it's me again.

She takes about two seconds to say a silent prayer, then collects her breath and turns to look at her visitors, blinking in surprise at their appearance.

The first and tallest looks as if, at the moment of gestation, the womb hadn't decided which sex would be, so they've been mixed up in a concoction of Marilyn Monroe and a theater actor. They're an androgynous being, if Esther's getting technical. You can tell right away that they're not just a "non-binary" human, because they have an aura that, were it not for Esther's asexuality (or self preservation, sh'es not sure), would make her jump at them with less than saintly intentions. They have short blonde hair, earrings that appear to be Inca or African, if their heavy, oval shape is any indication, and are wearing a champagne-coloured, bare-chested suit, paired with black heels that were surely responsible for that ominous tick, tick, tick a few seconds ago. They smiles at Esther with golden tabby eyes and lips as red as the beating heart in her hand. 

The woman to one side is an eerie contrast; she is plump, with skin that is pale under her dirty clothes, shining with sweat, and blonde hair that's straight and greasy, spilling around her head like jungle vines. She picks at her nails with her teeth and peers at Esther through the tufts of hair. A rat emerges from her shoulder and heads for her cheek, clawing at the skin until it bleeds. She doesn't have the sensual aura of the androgynous creature, but it's almost as if the colour has disappeared around her.

Esther wrinkles her nose.

"He... llo?" She tries to greet and grins like a fool, faking dementia at the presence of two supernatural beings in her house, again. "Who are you?"

The androgynous being grins like a Cheshire cat.

"Look, sister dear." they say, slowly and sweetly, as they enters the room. Tick, tick, tick. "She doesn't know us."

"She knows me." the plump woman replies, still staring at Esther as she too moves closer, until she is leaning against the lintel of the door. Tock, tock, tock. "Delirium told her of her position in my house. I saw her trying to kill herself. The little girl knows me."

The sudden combination of words takes Esther back to those dark, gripping moments of ....

"Despair." she finishes aloud, looking at the woman who nods in agreement.

"That's right, child." the woman, Despair, nods, lifting her chin petulantly. "You were in my realm, on my own porch. But no longer. Tell me, what brought you out of there?"

Esther swallows a noisy knot of saliva and tries to pull away, but her knees collide with the bed and she falls back with a gasp.

"Now, sister dear," the androgynous being interrupts, raising a hand towards Despair. "Do not frighten her. She still has our sigils."

"Who are you?" the girl asks, trying to contain her fear as she leans on her elbows. "Are you siblings too?"

"What, our older sister didn't tell you?" The androgynous being interjects, their smile turning predatory, like a shark smelling blood. "That's why you tried to end your precious life, to defy her to come, isn't it, my precious? She told you to call her Amara."

Esther's answer is incredibly apt for the situation she finds herself in;

"Jodeme."

The androgynous creature laughs, as if they had understood the Spanish marked by Esther's native Irish accent, and their laughter echoes around the room like a damning verdict from a king pointing an accusing finger at the condemned.

"The little starling is frightened," the androgynous being sneers, approaching the girl with pronounced, provocative strides. "Don't worry, precious. I, Desire, and my dear twin, Despair, promise we won't hurt you."

They seem to be leaning over her, like a cat playing with a mouse, but not before a black shadow leaps onto their face and begins to claw.

Esther's too stunned to realise exactly what is happening in front of her; Despair stands still but stares on as her relative is attacked by the shadow, meowing and clawing left and right. It's her cat. The cat Amara brought her.

"Oneiros!" Esther screams before she is fully conscious. Indeed, she is acting on instinct; she reaches over and grabs her cat by the ribs, trying to separate him from the creature, now called Desire (which explains a few things), who screams and yelps in equal measure as they try to shake the cat off. It's only then that Despair approaches and tries to separate the androgynous from the cat. "Oneiros, let 'em go!"

They struggle, scream, shout, yell, meow, but in the end Esther manages to separate her cat from Desire's face, at the cost of being pulled by gravity against the stool beside her dressing table. Papers fly, creating a scene with the air of a dark academy, until Esther manages to see her cat in front of her, still a little dazed, in a threatening position between her and the two entities.

Desire, supported by Despair, tries to get to their feet, their heels clicking and their face scratched and dripping with blood. Raising a golden gaze, they look first at Esther with immaculate hatred, and then Oneiros swings his tail, and their eyes focus on the snarling cat.

What Esther sees in their eyes is not hate. It's something that has no name to describe it.

"Oneiros!" Desire growls, grinning with poison. "Of all the names, you have chosen that one!"

The cat hisses, fangs bared, and pounces again.

Esther screams as she sees the androgynous creature raise their right heel in an attack position.

All is silent as she sees her cat stabbed in the side.

And then everything is red.

Red as her cat's blood. Red like the beating heart in her hand. Red as wrath in its purest form.

By the time Desire looks up from the dying cat, bleeding against the carpet, his little chest heaving rapidly, it's too late; now it's Esther who attacks them like a wild animal driven by instinct.

She lives up to her title in the world of entities; she defies gravity, defies the entities themselves, and when Esther blinks she finds the image of Desire, on their knees, clutching their neck, her knee pressed against their back, the chain of their sigil around their throat, and there, a little further on, is Despair, with the hook, her sigil, stuck in her plump cheek, bleeding and gushing like Oneiros behind her.

But Esther is not finished.

She is the very concept of Defiance as she grabs Desire by the hair and pulls them hard, making them look at her.

"None of ye will ever harm us again, not me, not my family." she says, and the words echo, causing the seal to dry and Esther's eyes to glow with unfamiliar colours. "I, the Defiant of Destinies, declare that you, Desire, and you, Despair, will never again be able to enter my dwelling." the atmosphere seems to settle, like a low note, as the androgynous being seems to realise exactly where she has gone. "I, the Defiant, declare that you will return to your domain with my symbol carved into yer necks, signalling that I have defied you and you have lost. Now go!"

Particles of earth, reflected by the dying sun streaming through the window, begin to glow and approach the necks of the two beings. They approach and sink into their skins, making them scream.

Esther felt a sick satisfaction as she watched her symbol, the reel with the crossed needles, being carved like a tattoo into the corresponding greyish-pale skins. They are barely visible, but they are there, and that is more than enough.

Only then does she release Desire, forcefully, sending their head crashing against the lintel, and watches them try to catch their breath as she does the most recklessly impulsive thing she could have done at this stage of the game; she pushes the needles from her bracelet and sheaths them as if they were the daggers Johanna had taught her to wield.

"Goodbye."

And gesturing with the needles, they glow with energy at the tip, and as that same energy begins to take on a golden and amethyst glow, Esther imagines a vortex, made of reality itself, absorbing these entities and sending them away.

And so it was; soon each of her visitors was surrounded by halos and threads of energy, forming corresponding vortices around Desire and Despair, who stare at her with wide eyes as she throws the beating heart against the face of the androgynous being, chin held high.

Papers fly, pencils clash and the beings disappear, too stunned to do more than watch the Defiant change their destinies.

Only when the vortexes dissipate does Esther come to, gasping for air.

Wasting no time, Esther throws the needles at her chest of drawers, which embed themselves in the wood with a clacking sound, picks up her cat, who meows in pain as she picks him up, and lays him on the bed, not caring that her sheets are stained, and as she cries, she tourniquets the wound in her cat's lung, as Johanna taught her.

"Holy shit."

"Estibaliz..."

The girl turns on her ankles to see Johanna standing in the hallway, her eyes wild, between the papers and falling utensils, and her mother, Gabriela, looking at her with fear, anger and a few other emotions Esther doesn't bother to acknowledge; she raises her hand to her mother and moves imperceptibly, instinctively summoning the sand, causing the particles embedded in her skin to glow along with her eyes.

"Sleep."

Her mother collapses onto the carpet and begins to snore.

Johanna gasps in shock before looking at Esther, her eyes glowing and her teeth bared like a wolf, and her cat, Oneiros, half dying.

"Remind me never to piss you off." she says, laughing to keep from screaming, "Now come on, let's go save your beloved One-however, before you lose your shit again."

Esther laughs as Delirio laughed.

"That wasn't losing my shit, Johanna." she says, and though her voice is hoarse now, her words are still sealed in infinity as she looks out the window, at the sky, and understands what has just happened, "That was my power as Defiant manifesting."

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter ten !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Kataphyge: ancient greek word that means "a place to refuge, retreat". ❞﹚.

⸻Unknown.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

When she was a child and her only companion were the stars, Esther dreamed of what her life would be like.

She liked to imagine and visualise in as much detail as possible; her in a bookshop in Greece, her exploring forests full of fireflies, her and perhaps a taller shadow sharing tea on a balcony.

She never imagined she would be involved in the supernatural world of entities, with a pet she loved injured (possibly with only one functioning lung, thanks to Desire, son of a bitch) and a demon-scaring woman placing a hand on her shoulder as they both look out the window at the little animal with a serum in his neck and his entire torso bandaged.

To say that those childhood dreams were corrupted and gone would have been an understatement.

"He's stable," says the woman who operated on her cat with a gentle smile that doesn't reassure Esther. "He'll live, but for the time being he'll need to be monitored constantly, and once he regains consciousness he'll need to stay here so he can be trained to breathe with one lung."

Esther nods absently, her fingers pinching his arm repeatedly, leaving bruises.

"Anything we should be aware of?" asks Johanna, as the girl is sufficiently out of it to ask the question herself.

"'Well, actually..." the vet checks something in her papers and frowns, "something strange happened while we were bandaging him."

This caught Esther's attention; she and the exorcist exchanged a glance before turning their full attention to the vet.

"Maybe it was an effect of the light or something like that, but I think there was something shiny in his lung tissue." the woman began to explain, and the suspense of what it might mean was almost overwhelming for both women with experience of the supernatural. "I think it began to regenerate, slowly but at an abnormal rate."

"What?" asked Esther, confused but with her mind racing at a mile an hour. "How so?"

"I don't know," replies the vet, but she raises her hand and there, in the yellow latex gloves, is a strange, viscous-looking liquid that reflects an iridescent effect in the white lights of the corridor, "but this was at the edges of the wound."

Johanna walks over to inspect what it is, and the look in her eyes is downright creepy as she turns to Esther.

"We'll keep that in mind," she tells the vet, giving her a forced smile as she takes the teenager's hand. "See you tomorrow."

She doesn't wait for an answer, but drags Esther along as she heads for the exit.

"Johanna, what...?"

The exorcist stops in the park in front of the vet's office and sits down on the dew-covered bench, motioning for the younger woman to sit down.

"Tell me, where did you find that cat?"

Esther frowns as she replies, "Amara brought 'im to me at one of our meetings, why?"

The frantic expression on Johanna's face fades as she breathes a sigh of relief.

"Well, then there's nothing to worry about."

"What ye mean?"

The woman gives her a mischievous little smile.

"Don't tell me you don't know the myth of the black cats."

"Of course I know, they're supposed to bring bad luck."

"Not that one, Esther. That one do is a lie."

The teenager frowns as she tries to unravel Johanna's insinuations.

"You say Amara brought 'im to you, didn't you? And she's literally death, so that means..." The elder cocks her head to the side.

And she lets it hang in the air, waiting for Esther to finish.

Despite the shock she's still in, the girl is able to give a knowing smile and shake her head.

"There are plenty of myths that link black cats with death, but I assume you mean the one that says these cats are able to cross borders between worlds, especially between the living and the dead. "

Johanna smiles.

"Exactly. Actually, I think Amara brought it to you because it's her way of keeping you in her custody, considering your... background."

Esther snorts.

"Look who's talking."

The exorcist rolls her eyes.

"The point is, you must remain calm. The liquid on the vet's glove is traces of some kind of plasma. Ectoplasm, if we get technical. Your cat will regenerate in no time. Of course, we'll have to see if his lungs recover, and make sure they don't ask any further questions.

The teenager blinked and asked with a blank expression;

"Ectoplasm like... like in the Lockwood and Co. books?"

"What the heck is that?"

Esther grips Johanna's hands tightly until her own turn white.

"Johanna, ectoplasm, according to the books, is the stuff ghosts are made of. If you come into contact with it, you will die instantly. Will the woman who operated on Oneiros die? Please tell me she won't.

The exorcist's face takes on a thoughtful hue, but in the end she shakes her head.

"I think not, considering you touched him, your mother touched him, I touched him. Besides, Amara could have altered it, considering it's from her domain. And she might have told you if such a thing was to be considered. You have nothing to worry about.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

"You have nothing to worry about." Johanna said.

So, as always, Esther had actually heard: "Yes, you have everything to worry about."

She did not sleep that night. After discussing some details of Oneiros' treatment (correction; after Johanna had threatened to paint a pentagram of lamb's blood on the windows of her room if she didn't allow her to pay for the treatment, and after she had summoned her to a strict schedule to explain how she literally drove away such beings as the ones who came to her door), and telling her mother (who had woken up believing that stress had made her dream what she had seen) that her cat had stumbled over something and found it bleeding in the garden, Esther spent the evening sitting in the rocking chair on the porch of her house, covered with her blue blanket with irregular star embroidery, pretending that she actually had a blanket of stars, as had been her childhood dream. A cup of red berry tea mixed with honey rested in her right hand, and soon the sun was peeking through the London buildings.

Esther sipped the lukewarm tea and rested her forehead on the rim of the cup.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

She hands in her biology assignment a little before the deadline. Professor Miller looks at her over her black plastic-rimmed glasses and gives her a gentle smile.

"I see effort in this folder," she says, looking straight at her. Esther stops herself from snorting; all she's done is copy and paste, rewriting several paragraphs because, God forbid, she'd rather Amara took her seriously than hand over anything less than her own work, "so you shouldn't worry".

Yes, you should worry.

The teenager nods, says goodbye and walks down the almost empty corridors of the school. Her footsteps echo a little, not as a pronounced echo, but as a simple hollow sound, heard all too often. Or so her sleep-deprived mind perceives it.

Esther makes her way to the school library, greets the librarian, a man named Henry, and makes her way through the shelves of European history.

She reaches the section of myths and legends, picks up a book at random, and sits down in the rocking chair, an object of exclusive use to her, as she often spends nights in the library. She thanks Miss Seaborn.

The girl soon sinks into the pages of the worn but well-kept copy of what turns out not to be a book of mythology but of Emily Dickinson's poems, forgetting for a few seconds that there are beings who hate her and are therefore trying to ruin her life.

The gentle rocking motion of the rocking chair, along with the rough but meaningful words, lulls her to sleep so that she begins to sink into the deep until she can dream again.

When she opens her eyes, she finds herself in a library whose shelves are broken. There are books scattered everywhere, pages torn out, pieces of stairs leading to several floors, tables smashed to pieces, and large windows destroyed.

Esther begins to wander around, feeling heavy at the sight of so much destruction. She steps over bound and embroidered books, crumpled papers and rolls of parchment, until she comes to a wide hallway with piles of tables and broken lamps.

She walks a little further, raises her head and looks around.

"Whatever happened," she says aloud, her voice seeming to materialise in halos of light filtering through the broken windows. "I'm sorry. You look like a place built with love and devotion. "

Esther wanders a little further, picking up a bound book made of some kind of furry material, similar to the monster book from Prisoner of Azkaban.

"Still, I wonder," she then says, looking up as if to answer, "are you part of my mind, or just a broken dream?"

No one answers, obviou-

"I'm afraid it's both."

Esther squeaks like a little rat and lifts the furry book in the direction of the voice.

There, emerging from a pair of wobbly shelves, is a shaven-headed woman in a purple suit with a long tail that splits into two spikes. She approaches the teenager with quiet steps, her hands behind her back and her jaw set. As she comes closer, Esther notices that he wears glasses, has elf ears and a stern but kind face.

She reminds her of Mr Henry, although he doesn't wear glasses as such.

"And I wonder," the woman says, stopping in front of Esther, "how you got to the heart of the Dreaming?"

"The heart of what?"

The woman smiles condescendingly.

"You, like every living thing that dreams, are connected to this realm," she begins to explain as she circles the table next to Esther, "in which your subconscious takes part. That's not what's strange. What is strange is how you got here. No dreamer can, unless they wander too much."

Esther blinks in confusion as she puts the book down on the table where she found it.

"I... well... I did wander a bit," she says shyly, fiddling with her rings. "But, well, I think it has something to do with the fact that I fell asleep in a library."

"Really?" the woman asks, tilting her head. "In the waking world, you mean?"

"You mean the real world?" The woman takes a few seconds, but then nods. "Um... I think so. Yes, I was in my school library."

The elf-eared woman hums noncommittally, walking between the tables as she continues her interrogation.

"What is your name, dreamer?"

"Esther," the girl answers, following the woman with hurried steps. "And yours?"

"My name is Lucienne," she answers, giving her a soft, crooked smile, "and I am the librarian of the Dreaming."

"The Dreaming?" Esther inquires. "You mean this place, is that what it's called?"

The woman nods, then opens the large, high wooden doors that weren't there before.

"This library contains... contained," she seems to struggle to say, "everything that has been written, is being written and will be written, along with what might have been written and what was written but never saw the light of day. It is a record of every dream of every living thing in every world that is found here, in the realm of dreams." she says, walking through a large room littered with rubble. "This is where sleeping minds find release, where they dream what needs to be dreamed, and where they can do anything."

Esther purses her lips until she can't feel any blood circulating.

"It looks... forsaken."

"It was not forsaken." Lucienne replies, very quickly, as if the very idea were blasphemy. "Something has happened to our sovereign, but he shall return. I am sure of it."

The teenager, seeing the tension in the woman's shoulders, doesn't push any further, just nods.

They walked in silence for a moment, through room after room, corridor after corridor, until Lucienne opened a few more huge doors, and something Esther hadn't expected was revealed.

A throne room, it seems, with piles of broken columns and what could be the appropriate throne in pieces at the top of a curved staircase that seems to have seen better days. Beyond it is an infinite void of stars and nebulae.

"You're the first creature I've seen in a long time, minus the siblings." Esther doesn't know which siblings she means and doesn't ask any more. "Count yourself lucky, for no dreamer has been able to access to Lord Morpheus' palace for millennia."

Esther's head thunders like lightning as she turns to look at Lucienne, eyes bulging.

"Lord Morpheus?" she asks breathlessly.

"Our ruler," Lucienne replies, her impossibly straight back straightening, "the king of dreams. He has many names, but the best known is Dream..."

"...of the Endless," Esther interrupts, and the librarian's eyes take on a gleam that might as well be the reflection of her glasses.

"Have you heard of him?" she asks, and that's just the beginning. "Have you seen him? Do you know where...?"

Esther becomes dizzy, shakes her head, and when she blinks, she is startled.

She's no longer in the destroyed throne room with the woman called Lucienne.

She's back in her school library, and one of her classmates, a dark-haired boy her sleepy mind remembers as Marco, is shaking her shoulder.

"Hey," he calls, his voice soft and crooked in a somewhat stilted Latin accent. "Are you all right? You looked like you'd fainted."

"Touch me again," Esther babbles, her voice distorted with sleep, "and you won't have hands to touch anything else."

Eyes wide open, the boy slowly pulls his hand away, raising it high in the air.

"Perdón, I only wanted to help."

"I know," she says, because it seemed that way, "but don't touch me again." 

The boy nods: "Fine."

Esther nods too, and rubs her eyes with one hand as she rises from the rocking chair with the other. When she pulls her knuckles away from her eyelids, she looks at them, out of pure habit. There, there are particles of sand, glistening golden in the sunlight.

She allows himself a mischievous smile, and rubs her fingers together to get rid of the grime before putting the book back in its place on the shelf, then turns to the boy, Marco, who hasn't moved from his spot.

"Ye need anythin'?" she asks.

"I..." he begins, a little tense. "I... just... wondered if you were all right."

Esther blinks.

"Why?"

"You look... exhausted."

The girl purses her lips into a lopsided smile.

"Nothin' a good tea and toast won't fix."

She grabs her backpack from the curved feet of the rocking chair, and smiles softly at Marco, before starting to head towards the exit, until the boy calls out to her.

"Espera!" He approaches, striding over to her side. "Since you mention it, the coffee shop near here, The New Inn, should be open. Would you... want to... go?"

Esther narrows her eyes.

"Are you taking me somewhere not too obvious to kill me?"

The boy turns into a quivering mess of stuttering words, to which the teenager, feeling some compassion, puts him out of his misery by telling him she was joking, and that yes, she accepts, since her mother works there.

Marco smiles at her, a bright smile that lits up his face, and nods to her to pass in front of him. 

And that's how Esther makes a friend.

Suspicious, isn't it?

Anyway, there's something she needs to talk to Johanna about.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter eleven !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ And after every breaking, we realize that Destiny has a different opinion, which doesn't resemble our dreams. ❞﹚.

⸻Mahmoud Darwish.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

"So you're basically telling me that those three decrepit old women told you that you are an aberration to nature itself?"

"To put it crudely, yup. Although it was actually from the universe, not nature."

"And that you were also given your spool of life as a symbol, and a pair of needles as tools?"

"Also yes."

"Just like that?"

"I suppose they thought since I carry their destiny too, they should curry favour with me or something. Not that I like 'em anyway."

"And then these two creatures, Desire and Despair, came with their symbols, and..."

"Yeah."

"Fuck."

"'Effectively."

Johanna takes a long sip of the third cup of tea Esther brewed for her on that dewy dawn at 06:37 and stares at a dead spot on the wooden floor of her kitchen.

"So, if the Fates themselves have introduced themselves to you, and then these two entities that hurt your cat as well... my dear rebel, you're screwed."

"Thank ye very much."

"What will you do now?"

Esther sips her own tea, which tastes more like honey than berries, shrugs and presses her left knee to her chest.

"I may have to learn the logic of these... skills." she replies, looking at the spool charm with the crossed needles. "And learn to knit, too."

Johanna snorts and the tea she was drinking slips out of her nose and falls onto the fluffy carpet in the living room.

"Shit." she mumbles, clutching her nose in a death grip.

Esther shakes her head, thinking that this woman is the one who makes demons shake in their hooves (mostly she thinks they all have hooves. At least the ones she's seen) and sets her cup down on the coffee table.

"Let's get started then."

Just to test, the teenager pushes the needles off the charm and they materialise as they have so far, appearing behind faint flashes of light particles. They are still golden, with amethyst pendants.

" They're beautiful," says Johanna, her eyes fixed on the knitting. "But I still don't understand why the Fates gave 'em to you." Her gaze now focuses on Esther's. "It's not like them to do things like hand you something like this on a silver platter."

"They said they would help me balance my Defiant abilities." she says, putting the needles in her lap. "They also said, basically, that they couldn't get their hands on me because my existence already had consequences. My death could bring worse. Sounds like I'd better know how to use these abilities responsibly, and all that theatre."

"How comforting."

Esther hums in agreement.

"Let's try it."

The girl takes the needles in her hands, twirls them and stares at the tea stain, imagining it in her mind; slowly the colour fades, for it is not Johanna's destiny or hers to clean it, so the threads of Fate that led to the tea spill need only be altered so that the stain cleans itself.

In front of her, at the level of the stain, a halo appears that looks like a paint stain, and there she sees an interweaving of several threads that glow faintly. 

Esther looks at the needle in her left hand and, with a sigh, concentrates. Soon the tip glows with a small lilac ball, and in that state she is ready. She brings the tip close to a blue thread that flickers like a traffic light when the orb brushes against it. Nothing around her glows.

She tries the next one, a yellow thread that looks like wool. It doesn't work either.

Now a green one. No.

Just then Esther sees a reddish thread with a knot in it, simple and easy to untie. She runs her eyes over the ends and sees that it leads nowhere.

The teenager pierces the knot with the lilac orb and the stain on the carpet takes on a reddish halo. 

So its thread is the reddish one.

The teenager squeezes the needle in her right hand and places it in the middle of the knot. She fiddles a little, gently and softly, until the knot loosens and she lets go. The thread tightens again and the stain on the carpet disappears after a sequence of increasing light and fades.

"Daughter of a bitch." she hears Johanna say. "Now I understand why the Fates themselves are afraid of you."

Esther blinks and concentrates on what now seems natural to her; just because it makes sense, she places the needles in X's in front of her, so that when she pulls them apart in one fluid motion, the image of the interwoven threads fades, as if she were obliterating it with one blow.

"I don't think they're afraid of me." says Esther, leaning back on the sofa, holding the now normal needles in one hand across her lap. "We share this symbolic thing. The thread and the needles. It's like a business arrangement. I learn and they breathe easy."

"Maybe they do." Johanna says, and when Esther sees her, there's something behind her, a figure in the window overlooking the courtyard of her house, "but that doesn't mean the other entities do."

Esther ignores her, and stands up, squinting at the silhouette, blurred in the light drizzle, moving towards the bushes.

"Esther?" asks Johanna, her voice cracking as if her tongue had been burned.

The teenager holds up a hand, telling her to wait, and, as quietly as she can, goes to the screen door leading to her backyard, opens it slowly, and tries to walk stealthily behind the figure, which now seems no clearer than before.

It moves slowly, leaving behind the rustle of something made of cloth and a laden sound, like the rattling of something heavy.

Squinting, Esther gestures to Johanna; she raises her hand, shows her the back of it, and lowers the palm to her thigh.

'Hold still.'

She hears a slight snort, but ignores it. The silhouette has already disappeared behind the tall bushes of the neighbour's house of questionable spiritual leanings.

Esther begins to follow, concentrating as best she can to hear only the rustle of cloth and the clatter of something heavy. She crosses the bushes, pushing them aside, and what she sees is not Stephen's wall covered in peeling paint.

It's a ways with high walls of bushes, with the occasional flower, bee or butterfly, stretching out before her, seemingly without end.

The teenager blinks, turns around and the bushes she has just crossed are gone. So, as if on cue (and because she had eaten five spoonfuls of thick honey before drinking her tea, which makes her a girl who has eaten ten spoonfuls of sugar), she starts walking forward.

The way of bushes goes on forever, so Esther pushes her needles, holding them like daggers. She blinked again, for now there were three ways, not one. 

She analyses them. 

The way on the right is lined with beautiful bushes, but with the occasional bare branch, with withered blossoms, as if spring and autumn were mixing.

The middle way seems to be a mixture of winter and summer, judging by the steam coming from the frost-covered bushes and the light coming from nowhere.

The way on the left is exactly as it was before.

Esther takes the latter.

She walks for what seems like minutes, with slow, long, echoing steps, looking carefully ahead. Lest the ways separate again.

It's not enough, it seems, for as soon as she squeezes her eyes shut, trying to stay awake, the ways divide again, this time into five.

Esther wrinkles her nose, tilts her mouth down and frowns.

"Enough." she shouts, and plunges her needles viciously into the ground. The trail they make in the earth begins to glow, and as she pulls them forward, the girl whispers, "Show me the way."

She tugged at the needles, and the lines, one purple and one gold, intertwined like the orbits of an atom, then lengthened and lengthened and lengthened, leading down one of the ways; the second in the middle, with sunflowers scattered every few metres.

And so Esther runs.

The line is fast and leaves a very colourful trail for her to follow. It doesn't stop or get confused, as if someone on the other side is pulling it along.

The teenager crosses paths and corridors of plants, snow, fire, sunlight, moonlight, everything natural that forms the walls and the ground. It is not easy to cross, but the line, as much as it is a guide, also protects her feet, creating oval surfaces as long as Esther walks on the line.

It ends when she reaches a circular atrium with colourful tiles, from which several semicircular ways lead off, with a row of seven giant statues at the front, partly shrouded in mist.

Esther approached, squinting to catch a glimpse of the faces carved into the stone, but didn't take another step until she heard the clatter.

"You have tricked me."

The voice is ancient. Very ancient. Masculine, rough, but experienced.
The girl turns slowly, and there is the silhouette that was in her courtyard; it is a man, a monk, if the hooded cloak is any indication. She cannot see his face, for he is bent over a very large book, open in his hands, and on one of the covers there is a chain that extends down to the man's wrist, where there is a shackle.

Esther recognises him from Amara's descriptions.

Destiny.

The one who did not let her die.

"Define 'tricked'." she replies.

The ma... being, Destiny, takes a few steps towards her. He stops in the middle of the atrium, and the chain connecting him to the book rattles a little louder.

"My garden is designed to make you choose." he says, turning a page in the book and pointing to something at the top. "And you have tricked it, and me."

"You tricked me first," Esther replies immediately, clenching her jaw. "When you sent Teleute to keep me from dying."

There is a slight movement in Destiny's hood, so slight that it would have gone completely unnoticed had it not been seen. Esther thinks he has raised his eyebrows.

"I confess I made that decision out of curiosity, but it is too late to change it now."

The teenager suddenly hums, as if mocking with a sketchy laugh.

"The Fates said so. My life already has consequences. My death would have another level of consequences. "

"They are right." Destiny says, taking a few steps closer, the rattle of his chain making it a little more sinister. "But they were conditioned by my decision, so they decided to give you the tools you are entitled to."

Esther looks down at her needles.

"But you must know that everything you change, with good or bad intentions, has its echoes."

The girl looks at him.

"Echoes?"

At that moment, Destiny raises his head, high, and Esther catches a glimpse of an older face with unbearable wrinkles and a pair of clouded eyes, before she feels as if she is submerged in a black sea of what the entity calls "echoes".

Millions and millions of decisions, billions and trillions of echoes, of consequences. Of domino effects, of butterfly effects, of forkings and ink blots. Of scattered words, of explosions, of tears, of spilled blood. Countless destinies intertwined by each of these variables.

It is a swift astral journey, as if she sees many worlds, lives, destinies themselves, all at once. It is too much for her human mind to comprehend.

But surprisingly, something in her understands how serious this is. What each decision, each consequence, each inkblot means.

Esther comes to after a blow to the top of her skull, her knees buckling as she falls to the colourful tiles, her needles clanking on the floor in front of her.

Her throat, eyes, chest and head feel like containers filled with sand or cotton or something. She gasps for breath and sits with both hands between her collarbones, trying to recover.

She vaguely hears something snap shut and, seconds later, feels two long, pointed things nestle gently in his braided hair. Then she feels something else, heavy and divided into five elongated parts, resting softly on the crown of her head.

"You are special, Esther Carrasco." Destiny says, his voice as solemn as a monk's at a funeral. "Take care of yourself, look over your shoulder, and most importantly, never stop dreaming."

Destiny pulls his hand away and seems to place two fingers in her hairline, for Esther feels a slight pressure.

"We shall meet again, Proklisi."

And in one fell swoop, the Defiant gasps as she falls, falls, and continues to fall into nothingness.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Her back slams into the wooden floor of the dining room with a clatter that does little to cover the sound of her bones crunching.

"Holy shit!"

Esther groans in pain, but immediately rises to her feet, one hand on her lower back.

"What the heck?" asks Johanna, her eyes widening and her nose flaring. "Esther, would you be so kind...?"

"Johanna," the girl interrupts, her voice catching in her throat. "Bring me the computer. It's time to learn to knit. And start chanting, because..." Esther holds out her hand to show her friend the bracelet with the spool. "We're going to have visitors."

The older woman sighs, as if in hopeless exhaustion.

"When did I become your carer?"

"You're not my carer, you're the one with the most experience in these matters."

"Only with demons or lesser beings! Not with primordial entities!"

"Just... Where and how can we summon the Fates?"

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter twelve !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Whatever you an do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it! ❞﹚.

⸻Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Advantages of having Johanna Constantine as your friend, part 5; she knows lonely and mysterious places to do summoning, or to hide bodies of all sizes, in her words.

"This' not very Christian of you, Esther." says the woman as she drives out into the open field in a borrowed van.

"I don't think God had any of this in mind when he inspired the writers of the Bible," Esther replies, rolling her eyes across the empty field, "that a nosy young girl would end up becoming a aberration of the universe and having to resort to the occult to summon three decrepit old women for a couple of answers."

"So you admit you're nosy." Johanna laughs as she pulls her truck up to the gate of the open field.

"My father sent me to that damn cellar via a story." Esther says, more out of annoyance than because she really wants to. She breathes in the clean country air through the open window beside her and continues: "He told me that when he was a boy he discovered that the mansion was a detached part of Princess Niamh's castle, and that somewhere in the basement there were passageways and portals that would lead me to the island of Tir Na nOg. "

"And you believed him." Johanna says, pursing her lips as she stops the van's engine.

"Of course I did." Esther replies, mumbling, hoping and not hoping at the same time that the woman might understand. "He told me to bring something to break glass with, and I brought a poker. It was the last thing he said to me, the last story he told me, before he died of sleeping sickness. It was as if it was his last wish for me to go. "

Johanna nods once, dipping her head sharply.

"And you know the rest." the teenager adds, leaning back in her seat with a deep sigh. "Now it turns out that I'm going to interrogate the fucking Fates. Hell of a plot twist."

The exorcist gives her a knowing smile.

"You still haven't explained what made you materialise in mid-air and smash your back against the ground six hours ago."

Absentmindedly, the younger woman crosses her right forearm over her lower back. Johanna snorts.

"Come on," she says instead, "get the protection ready. I'll explain in the meantime."

And without waiting for an answer, Esther opens the van door (pulled from who knows where. Johanna didn't tell her), grabs her packet of Lays (as it's mid-afternoon and she needs something salty to raise her blood pressure, or lower it, who knows), her phone, and closes the door with a flourish that involves opening her eyes wide, biting her lower lip until it sinks behind her teeth, and leaving her arm in an L-shape after pushing the door open.

"Someone's hysterical." Johanna chirps, her mocking tone clearly audible through the open window.

"No shit, Sherlock." the teenager growls, opening the packet of potatoes and stuffing a handful into her mouth like a squirrel eating an acorn. "Get out of the stolen van and bring your demon scaring gear. I'll see where to set up."

She turns, puts her phone in her pocket and climbs over the gate at the entrance to the camp, ignoring the older woman's offended gasp.

"It's not stolen! It's Chas'!"

Esther blithely ignores her and lands on the grass on the other side of the fence, grimacing at the sting in her ankles. She ignores them, just as she ignored Johanna a few seconds ago, and starts looking for an inconspicuous spot behind the trees on the right.

It doesn't take her long to find a secluded spot behind a couple of oak trees, large enough to contain the Fates and discreet enough not to attract attention.

That is, unless something happens, like the trees collapsing or the Fates deciding to dust Johanna. 

Speaking of the Queen of Rome, Esther waves to her as she sees her crossing the space between the oaks, carrying a suitcase and a bag full of things, each on her shoulder.

"Thanks for the help." the woman grunts, leaving her gear leaning against one of the protruding roots of the oak on the right.

"I'm thinking about how to make sure the Fates don't decide to dust you for the impertinence I'm about to commit." Esther replies, staring at the charm on her bracelet. "How can I make sure of that?"

Johanna lifts herself, places both hands behind her back and stretches forward; the cracking of her back sends a shiver down Esther's own spine.

"Each entity has their symbol." the woman begins to explain, unzipping her bag to take out a small bottle of clear liquid and some sort of container. "Your friend, Death, has her necklace, which is an ankh cross, and for the Egyptians symbolised both life and death. The devil has his pentagram and you have your spool with the crossed needles. The most common way to... make sure," the woman opens the jar with some difficulty and begins to pour out the contents, a reddish liquid, in the shape of a circle with a radius of about four metres. "would be for you to carve your symbol somewhere on my body with a sharp object."

"I won't do that."

"I know." Johanna replies, walking past her; the smell of the contents is metallic, and Esther thinks it might be blood. "But there are other ways. Use your needles and turn them into steles, trace your symbol using your blood. Pick your favorite."

"The first option seems like something out of Shadowhunters." Esther says absently, watching the circle form. "And the second seems like a ritual from Game of Thrones."

"She's got the references, all right." Johanna snorts, covers the container and then sets it aside to uncork the bottle. "Think you can do it?"

"If it's something that defies the odds, I guess."

Both women remain silent until the exorcist finishes her... circle, made of...

"What are you using?"

"The blood of a three-month-old lamb and water from a cathedral pond."

Esther opens her eyes wide and whispers an " Ah ".

Johanna smiles sympathetically: "Don't worry. They'll keep the Fates in check. Or, well, they're not demons, so it'll hold them off for a few minutes if they try anything funny."

Esther nods and takes out her needles, which she had kept in the pocket of her jeans rather than in the charm. The two tips begin to glow with the lilac ball, and as she approaches Johanna to carve her symbol into her palm, she tells her;

"There was a silhouette, in the courtyard of my house, early this morning." The teenager failed art class, but at least she's good at outlines, so scribbling her spool and crossed needles isn't a difficult task. "After telling you to stay, I followed it into the tall bushes that separated my yard from Esteban's."

"The idiot who hired me the day we met?"

"Yes." Esther laughs, drawing lines that mimic the thread on the spool. The whole outline glows faintly in the lilac of the orb. "When I crossed the bushes, I wasn't in the neighbour's garden, but in a long corridor with walls of bushes." Johanna raises her eyebrows. "I walked for a while until the corridor split into two. I took the left path and it split into four. I lost patience and used the needles to show me which way to go." Esther starts drawing lines that look like needles. "I came to an atrium with seven huge statues, so huge that I could only see up to their knees. Behind me was a monk holding a book chained to his wrist." 

"Amara's brother." Johanna says, her eyes wide with surprise.

-Yes." the teenager nods solemnly. "Destiny. He told me I tricked him. I confronted him and said he tricked me first when he sent Amara to keep me from dying. He admitted it was out of curiosity, but now it was too late to undo what had happened."

"So, technically, he told you that you are his supernatural experiment."

Esther finishes carving her symbol, the glow of which fades and remains as a small scar on the heel of Johanna's hand.

"Apparently." the girl continues, inspecting the jagged lines. "Then he told me that anything I change, with good or bad intentions, will have an echo. He looked me in the eye and showed me. Millions of choices, billions of echoes, trillions of consequences. Every single one of them written in his book. It stunned me so much that I fell to my knees. Then Destiny put a hand in my hair and told me I was special. To look over my shoulder and never stop dreaming."

"How cute." Johanna mumbles with a sarcastic grimace.

"If that's what you want to call it." Esther replies, straightening her back and ignoring the fact that yet another entity is jumping to the wrong conclusions about her and the Sandman. "Then he tapped me on the forehead and the last thing I heard was that he said we'd meet again and that he called me by a nickname."

Johanna inhales, as if the air is being sucked out of her lungs.

"He called me Proklisi."

The older woman blinks, then frowns.

"All I can tell you is that it's a greek word," she says, pursing her lips in a grimace of nonconformity. "You can ask the Fates what it means."

"Okay," Esther rubs her hands together, rubbing them over her face. "Let's get this over with."

She steps into the circle, leaving Johanna and her luggage behind, and looks sceptically at her bracelet before taking it between two fingers, taking a deep breath and saying what she first thinks is a polite way of attracting entities:

"I, Esther Carrasco, the Defiant of Destinies, summon the Fates."

Her spool began to glow faintly through the carvings, like the lines she used to reach the Atrium of Destiny.

"Those who spun the beginning, the continuation and the end of each life."

In the centre of the circle, something black appeared; elongated and bundled, like a piece of cloth. The light breeze picked up and the branches of the trees swayed.

"The three who are one."

The piece of cloth wraps around itself and begins to take the shape of a silhouette.

"The one who is three."

The silhouette takes on white hair, middle-aged features and a youthful smile.

"The Kindly Ones."

And in the next blink of an eye, there are the three of them; Cloto, on the right. Laquesis, in the middle, and Atropos, on the left. Esther acknowledges them with a short nod, not too deep, so as not to ache her spine later, or pretend to have more respect for them than she actually does.

"How screwed.' she hears Johanna behind her. She ignores her.

"Esther!" the Maiden speaks first, with a small smile that enhances her beauty. "I see you missed us."

"Your youth brings naivety, sister-self." the Crone interrupts, looking at Esther with a raised jaw. "She hasn't missed us."

"Oh, my dear," interrupts the mother, "give her a respite. The poor thing is haunted by questions."

"You found me out." Esther replies with a defeated smile. "I have questions, plenty of 'em. Why don't we just...?"

"Ha!" Atropos sneers suddenly, interrupting Esther abruptly, so abruptly that even her sisters look at her sideways, as if being the eldest is starting to take its toll. "Possessing your Sandman's power has made you his very reflection."

Esther feels her left eyelid twitch slightly.

"First of all, please stop calling him mine, because he's no object, the creature. Secondly, why yer coming to me with this, Crone?"

"We know Morpheus, dear Esther." Laquesis begins to explain, looking at Esther condescendingly. "The gestures you make remind us of him when we once asked him for help."

"He refused us, spawn of the night." Atropos snarls bitterly. "We had to deal with Circe on our own."

"Circe..." Esther mumbles, fiddling with the rings on her fingers. "The one who turned Ulysses' companions into animals?"

"The same one, precious Estibaliz." Laquesis says, looking at the girl with an accomplice's smile, "She was a problem back then. And sweet Morpheus was infatuated with his lover at the time, so much so that he even looked like a child full of..." she tilts her lips downwards. "of dreams, so it was all our responsibility."

Esther raises her eyebrows. Such... information.

"You didn't call us here to talk about your Sandman anyway, did you?" Cloto continues, cocking her head. "Tell us, precious Estibaliz, what do you want from us?"

Esther refrains from answering that the Sandman is not hers, thank you very much, and takes a deep breath.

"According to the myths, you require an exchange," she begins. "Quid pro quo, as they say."

"That's right, dear Esther." the Mother confirms, stepping forward. "So tell us, what have you brought us?"

"No mortal stuff." the Crone chuckles. "Though you were wise to get yourself a Constantine, I'll give you that."

Johanna looks up at the sound of her name: "What the fuck?"

"Greetings, Johanna." says Atropos, cocking her head like a snake.

"You look so much like your ancestor." Laquesis comments, as if the information couldn't make heads spin. "And you're following in her footsteps, I see."

"Leave her out of this." Esther interjects, stepping forward to get the entities' attention again. "I was the one who called ye. Now let's move on, please."

"What have you got?" the Maiden interrupts, a anxious look on her face. "I'm interested to know."

Esther takes another deep breath, turns away and walks to Johanna's bag, where she rummages through her belongings. When she has them, she walks back to the Fates, leaving them at her feet.

In front of Cloto, she leaves a purple shawl with greek embroidery on the right side. At the feet of Laquesis she leaves a comb, gold with blue quartz. And next to the edge of Atropos' shawl she opens a box containing a complete set of tableware, with a porcelain teapot painted with the same greek symbols as on the shawl, as well as cups, a sugar bowl and spoons. On the side is a box of Boldo tea bags.

The Fates say nothing for a few agonising seconds, during which Esther seriously considers throwing herself off somewhere.

"Mortal stuff." the Crone mutters between her teeth, staring at the teapot.

"Very nice mortal stuff." Laquesis says, bending down to pick up the comb. "This one is old."

"This one is new." Cloto also bends down to lift the shawl, looking at the embroidery. "Oh, original Greek!" 

"Sometimes I wonder why I end up trapped between you two, sisters-self." Atropos says in a resigned tone as she spreads out her shawl and covers her gift with it. It disappears behind the black cloth. She looks at Esther. "You may ask us three questions, child."

"And get three answers from each of us." the Maiden says, putting the shawl on her arm.

With her heart a little easier to handle now, Esther nods. Getting these things was hard enough, but nothing a few words from Johanna won't fix.

"Thank you, Fates. My first question is this: after your visit, two beings named Desire and Despair came to my house, wanting their sigils back and claiming to be relatives of Teleute and Potmos. This was obviously a trick, but please tell me, what did they want from me?"

Suddenly, Esther found herself not in a clearing, but in a place that was completely red. Blood red, with walls that stretched along endless corridors that seemed to be beating, and there was a series of picture borders with objects: an open book, Amara's necklace, a mask that looked like a mosquito's face, an empty picture, a beating heart, a fishhook and a colourful whirlpool.

"The creature known as Desire or Ephitumia is, as they claimed, the younger sibling of Teleute and Potmos," Atropos' voice says as Esther turns to look around a little more, and what she sees stops her dead in her tracks; in a chair as red as the whole place is the creature, wearing a black suit with feathered shoulder pads, a neckline so low it reached their belly, revealing a patch of white skin, and a pair of cat ears protruding from their golden head. They were stretched out on the couch like a cat, obviously.

"Also, "with Cloto's interruption, the image changed; now Esther was in another endless place, shrouded in a light mist, and many rats were climbing over other piles of mirrors, of different frames and sizes. In the foreground, the being, Despair, could be seen standing next to a row of frames, just like the one in the red place, holding the beating heart in her hands. "the being called Despair, or Aponoia, is also the younger sister of Teleute and Potmos. These two are twins, for desire can often lead to despair, and despair to desire. All together, with Mania, whom you know as Delirium, and two others of unknown fate, form the Endless, children of Time and Night.

"These two creatures took an interest in you," Laquesis speaks, as a scene of these two beings is now shown together, with Desire stroking Despair's hair as she carves her cheek with her fishhook. "because you defied Despair when you would not yield to her, and because they have certain... opinions, against Morpheus, so, seeing that you carried some of his power, they considered... to pay you a visit. "

The images fade and Esther returns to the clearing.

"How nice," she exclaims, gritting her teeth as she nods mockingly, "two entities, apparently primordial, have me on file."

"Basically, my dear," Cloto adds, her face taking on a hint of bitterness, "but you've already revealed to them that you're the Defiant, and they'll be considering their next steps, considering they've got their necks cut out."

"Desire hurt my cat with their diabolical transvestite heel." Esther growls, gritting her teeth a little more, remembering Oneiros when she had visited him a little earlier and received the news that he had only one functioning lung. It seems that being made of ectoplasm does not guarantee immunity. "And if they dare to do anything else..."

"Steady, precious Estibaliz." the Mother whispers, stepping forward with an outstretched hand, "Desire may be impulsive, but they are no fool. They have had eons of practice in thinking through their manipulations. It didn't work on you, but they'll be back for more, rest assured."

Esther presses her lips together and closes her eyes in remorse.

"My next question, I have it."

"Go on, my dear." Cloto speaks, with that little damn grin on one side.

"A few hours ago I used my needles and my power as Defiant for the first time and had an encounter with Destiny, who took me to his garden, warned me about the echoes and called me by the nickname Proklisi. What do these events mean?"

Cloto's small grin disappeared.

Esther finds herself in the same atrium she was in, and sees Destiny there, in front of the giant statues, his head bent over his book.

"Potmos has been waiting to meet you," Cloto's voice begins, echoing into infinity with no direction of origin. "and it seems he thought the time was right."

"Proklisi is an old word," Laquesis cuts in. "and it means 'defiance'. It also seems to be what he chose to call you. That name will now resonate in the universe, as does his, Teleute's and all the brethren's."

"The echoes are traces of changes in the paths of the Garden." Atropos continues, and the image now shows an enlarged panorama of the place; endless mazes of shrubs, flowers and other natural components. "You, as Defiant, have the ability to manipulate them at will. For the first time, Potmos had to make sure that you were aware of your influence."

The image fades and Esther returns to the clearing.

"You have only one question left, child." the Crone says, her voice a little sing-songy.

The girl takes a deep breath, filling her lungs once more with the air of the field, and then asks her last question:

"My last question; these abilities have manifested spontaneously and I react by instinct. Tell me, how do I know I'm doing it right and not causing more serious things?"

This time Esther is taken to a place that she knows in her bones is not for anyone to see; she is standing on a tapestry of countless threads, from wool to batiste, and countless colours, from shades of green to shades of red. The threads are tangled, tied, cut, but they all make up the tapestry.

"This is the Tapestry of Creation." say the three Fates at the same time. "It is all the threads of all the lives of all the living beings. No one but us, and now you, have access to it. This is what you can change. "

Esther looks around.

"There is no action without reaction," the Fates continue. "so what you do well is just a label. There is no way to do it right or wrong. You just do it, and the consequences can range from the worst to the most dreamlike."

The image fades.

Esther returns to the clearing and gasps as she looks at the Fates.

"Are you satisfied with your answers?" asks Laquesis.

The teenager shakes her head in agreement.

"They were more than I expected." she admits. "Thank you, Fates. Now I have some understanding."

"We are glad, my dear." Cloto remarks, and the smile she gets now is soft. "We would love to stay for some tea, but we have threads to weave." the Maiden begins to turn away. "It was nice to see you again."

"Take care, Esther." the Crone says and begins to follow Cloto. "You know your purpose as Defiant even better. Use it wisely or you'll wish you'd never set foot in that basement."

"Have hope," Laquesis continued, following her sisters, "because it suits you. Oh, and..." she lowers her head and sees the circle of lamb's blood and cathedral water. "That was a good precaution. You really are a danger to the universe."

Esther gave her a weary smile, which the Mother returned.

The Fates vanish into thin air.

And that was all.

For a few minutes the silence was deafening.

Until Johanna hissed wolfishly.

"Well, well." she exclaims, striding to Esther's side. "I hope you're content."

The girl lifts her head to the sky, concentrating on the blue and white cloud-streaked colour as she breathes again.

"Yes," she says, now with a relieved smile as she closes her eyes. "I am content.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter thirteen !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Because wound begets silent, begets rage ❞﹚.

⸻Frank Bidart, from Half-light: Collected Poems; "End of a friendship"..

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Strangely enough, Esther manages to take a break from all things supernatural for quite some time. Say, a few weeks and three days.

Of course, now her dreams alternate between that endless library with the librarian and a place destroyed beyond repair. They never last long.

This semi-normality lasts until one winter's day, after her mother has left for work at The New Inn, Amara comes home with a bright smile, mentions something about having their nails done, which she has invited, and Esther, somewhat annoyed, crosses her arms and opens her defiant big mouth:

"Tell me, Amara, why is the cat you brought me made of ectoplasm, and why did your twin younger brothers come to claim their sigils as if I had stolen them?"

The smile on Amara's brown face disappears in an instant. 

She sighs, drops her arms and asks for a cup of tea while she promises to explain.

"But," she interrupts before Esther goes to prepare what she asked for. "really, Desire and Despair showed up?"

"'Yep.'" the teenager replies, continuing on her way to put the teapot on the stove. "I found a beating heart pendant and a blood-stained fishhook in my jewellery box, and then a transvestite who wanted to cosplay as Marilyn Monroe showed up, and next to him was the most chubby, greyish woman I've e'er seen in my life."

Amara covers her mouth and the younger girl doesn't know if it's to hide a giggle or to keep the focus.

Esther gives her a small smile, letting her know there's a truce, but that doesn't mean she's excused herself. She knows Amara can tell by the tightening of the wrinkles around her eyes.

"I'll make some mate and strawberry tea," she says, reaching for the tea bags. " so we can go for a walk."

Amara nods, head down, curls covering her eyes.

When it's all done, Esther leaves some warm milk by her cat, now resting on a cushion in the living room, covered in a knitted blanket that was well worth the price (dear Johanna, she's a bastard, but she has a good heart), and then the two friends walk out of the house in silence.

They do so for a few minutes through the thin layers of snow, around two corners, until Esther picks up a mate, pours a new one, holds it out to Amara and opens her defiant big mouth again:

" I met Destiny."

Amara stumbles over a snowbank and squeals through her nose as she spills some yerba on her right leg.

The teenager just raises her eyebrows as she watches Death herself shake her leg, cursing in a language that sounds like a cross between the meow of a cat being strangled underwater and a combination of old hinge squeaks.

"What language is this?" she asks, her voice taking on a resigned edge.

"It's from before the Creator brought this planet into being, Esther," Amara replies, sipping the mate completely and handing it to the younger one (much, much younger, Esther realises now, her eyes wider than cathedral doors) so she can concentrate on removing all the yerba that has fallen down her trousers. "I could show you, but I don't see the point. It's a dead language."

Esther responds with an indifferent gesture; she curls her lips down and raises her eyebrows.

"I didn't know you were so ancient."

Amara rises with an offended gasp, a brown hand on her black parka-covered chest.

"Show respect to your elders, young lady!"

Silence, so much silence that you can hear the sound of traffic a few blocks away and the footsteps of people walking on the street in front of them.

And then they both bend over on their stomachs and laugh a few times, scraping their throats in the cold air.

When they manage to regain their dignity, Esther shakes her head.

"Yeah, no big deal." she sighs, watching the small cloud form on her breath before becoming more serious. "Back to what I was saying, I met Destiny and let me tell you, he's a geebag."

Amara frowns.

"Son of a bitch."

The entity makes an 'O' face.

"Of course, first impressions. What did he do?"

"He appeared as a silhouette in the courtyard of my house, made me follow him... " both women resume their walk and Esther pours a mate. " ...made me walk his labyrinth until I got tired and used the needles the Fates had given me, and then ..."

Amara burns her tongue on the mate and begins to cough.

Esther rubs her back with her hand, and as soon as the creature recovers, she restarts the story, telling it in chronological order.

They are in Richmond Park, sitting on a bench under a tree with an empty mate thermos when the story ends. Two hours of walking, and a lot of detail.

Amara stares at a spot of frost on the grass for what seems like an eternity, and Esther allows her these moments.

In the end, Death says, passionately: "Fuck".

Esther nods solemnly. "Well said."

They both stand there for endless seconds, saying nothing. It seems that these events surpass death itself.

Esther is fiddling with the bombilla in her mate when Amara sighs, her breath catching in her face.

"So, what now?"

"Yer the old and wise one, Amara. Ye tell me."

The deity gives her a dirty look, her eyes narrowing in a deep pout.

"You're the one who went into the basement, dear one. You tell me."

Esther snorts ungracefully and leans back against the back of the bench.

"All of this 'cause I went to the basement, then."

Amara hums and nods, imitating her as she leans back against the bench.

"And because you picked up the poker twice, you see. But at least something good has to come out of it, right?"

Esther looks at her as if she's grown another head.

"Define 'good', Amara."

"Well, let's start with perhaps meeting certain deities..."

Esther understands immediately and smiles cruelly. "Yer right. At least I'm grateful to have met Delirium. She's a good friend, no matter how crazy she is."

Amara looks at her with pursed lips.

The teenager gives her an innocent little smile and says nothing more.

Both of them are immersed in the stillness of winter, watching people walk through the park, in groups, with pets or with children.

Amara sighs again.

"I worry about your acceptance of all this." she begins, without meeting Esther's eyes. "You are human, mortal, young. With, well, a life to live. Originally, you would have had more life as a ghost, after I took you to the Sunless Lands, but now you're pretty much on your own. No destiny, nothing written for you to live for. And it's worth mentioning that you're too involved in our world. To the point where even the twins know you."

"Well," says Esther, fiddling with the wire rings that Marisol had put on her fingers a few days ago when she visited the Duarte household, "it's not as if being the Defiant, who has access to the Tapestry of Creation, leaves room for anonymity.

"Still," Death continues, sighing once more. "at least only my family and the Fates know you. I mean, they know exactly who you are."

"And what about the demon that called me Defiant the night I met Johanna?"

Amara turns to look at her and her gaze makes Esther gasp; it's dark, empty. It reflects a hole, the bitter end of all things.

"I cared."

Ah.

Esther nods solemnly.

"He had been tracking the Defiant for some months," Amara says, "ever since, he told me, he had heard of a wandering spirit, long gone. This spirit had betrayed me; he had fled the Sunless Lands to spread the news. I took care of them both. I erased them from existence. Thanks to the Creator, they said nothing more than that there was a Defiant who could manipulate the writings in the Book of Destiny. But yes, by now many beings on all planes know of you. Only those who have met you know exactly who you are".

"We have that in our favour." Esther mumbles absently, trying to imagine exactly how many beings Amara could be referring to.

"As long as you don't reveal yourself if they find you, you'll be fine."

Esther hums and the silence returns.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

"Excellent choice of sport, Esther."

The Aludite smiles falsely at Amara's sarcastic tone.

"It's a sport I like, thank you very much," she mumbles, squeezing the crook of her knee to hold on to the purple cloth. "And one that helps me a lot to train with Johanna without having to learn spells."

Months after that conversation in Richmond Park, Esther decided to take on a few extra-curricular activities to keep herself busy. These included a job in a local bookshop and café (God bless Marco, who was already working there and helped her get a job as a barista), the hobby of weaving (why? Because she could, because she wanted to and because she felt like it, and also because it would help her to be more careful with the Tapestry of Creation), and the sport of aerial dancing.

She feels good about all three. And her mother is pleased to see that she's more willing to help her, with the work, with the enjoyment, with the weaving, and to live, with the sport. 

In spite of the rigorous requirements and a complicated routine with exotic diets, Esther loves her fabrics. She loves them as much as she loves writing poems (well, what she thinks are poems), because it's precious to feel what being about to rip your face off makes you feel.

"Your affinity with death frightens me, my daughter," said her mother when Esther presented her with an idea. "but I am glad that you have finally chosen a sport. Dangerous, on the edge of death, but sport, after all."

Esther smiles as she releases another point of her Defiant needle, for what her mother does not imagine is that she does has a certain affinity with death. She won't tell you anytime soon: their relationship hasn't improved much, but at least they don't attack cockroaches passively and aggressively.

It was spring today, a beautiful and colourful spring of rain with sunshine and the singing of thunderstorms. Esther went back to writing her poems and planned to publish them in a book when she had enough money.

At the moment, she was at home with Amara and Johanna, drinking lemonade and eating sandwiches as she practised for her lessons.

Another advantage of this sport is that it helps her a lot with Johanna's training, as she said before, where she has to practically disarm and rearm herself over and over again to be able to defend herself without having to start singing Latin.

"I don't understand." says Johanna, looking at her hanging peacefully from the fabric installed on the roof of her living room. "You're a poet and you like these Latin phrases. Why won't you learn the spells?"

"I'm not interested in magic." Esther replied, wrapping one end of the cloth around her left tight. "I don't really want to get into nigromancy. Besides, I have already sent two beings flying without having to sing in Latin."

"It's not singing." grumbled Johanna, her mouth full of bread and toasted cheese. "And you used the Sandman's power."

"She used the Sandman's power?' asked Amara, her eyes wide and her hand on her glass of lemonade.

'Yes,' said Johanna, her cheeks full, 'to put her mother to sleep and save herself from the massive explanations she'd have to give. Gabriela thought it was a hallucination."

"Firstly, what you do for a living has rhythm and sounds ancient, of course it is singing.' Esther interrupts, rising on herself. "And secondly, yes, I have used the Sandman's power once. And I won't do it aga-"

That's until she unknowingly loosens the crook of her knee and falls in front of the row of mattresses that are always set up when she starts practising.

"Ja." Johanna shouts, cruelly and mockingly. Amara smiles complicitly.

Esther shakes her head and sticks out her tongue.

So that's how the days go. 

Esther turns sixteen without any entity haunting her for the moment. She goes on with her life, learning to deal with herself as a challenger, with her work, with school, with Miss Seaborn's therapy (who tells her that she no longer needs to take medication, and the two of them spend a whole free session drinking tea and chatting loosely), with aerial dance and, surprisingly, with church. She manages to deal with her mother and her boyfriend, Daisy and her family, Amara, Delirio and Johanna. It's a balance she appreciates, thank you very much.

Especially when there are no Fates or Destiny to cross her path for the time being.

That is, until she meets Desire again.

This time it was what could be called an accident, because Esther then discovers another ability she has as Defiant: crossing borders between worlds.

She just wanted the damn girl who was bothering her to shut up.

"Don't you know there's something called make-up, Esther?" The girl said to her, a sort of blue-eyed Jasmine, with beautiful, scratched but clearly dyed blonde hair, judging by the dark roots that were beginning to show. "Why didn't your mother teach you how to use it?"

"Jasmine," someone shouts. Esther sees that it's Marco. He has a hard look in his eyes. "that's enough."

"Oh, dear Marco," Jasmine says, smiling in a way that makes Esther sick, "it was for her own good."

Esther closes her eyes and bangs her head against her pupitre, not caring for the pain and possible bruising that will appear in a few minutes with the birth of her hair.

"Could you just leave me alone?" she asks, gesturing with her hands without raising her head. "In any case, it is not as if yer the one who has survived a shooting, a suicide attempt and various other issues about which, " now she raises head and look at the girl with the most accusing eyes she can form. "are not of yer business!"

The biology room is silent, as if someone had screamed a murder. 

Yep, it always works.

It's an open secret , Esther's situation, especially these two moments of her life. How did everyone find out? She doesn't know, and although she was upset at first, she doesn't care now. She has better things to worry about.

Esther continues: "So, for nothing, dear lady with the artificial hair, let me politely send you to the reverend fuck. I have..." the girl stands up and starts to put her things in her backpack "better things.... than hearing you interfering in my life."

"Esther..." calls Professor Miller, stopping in her tracks as she tries to reach her.

"No, no, don't worry, Mrs Miller." Esther said, holding up her hand to stop the woman. "I'm sorry to remove myself from your class, but I would just like to... " the girl closes her mouth, her throat closing with the lack of air. "I'd just like a minute."

Without waiting for an answer, and avoiding Marco's wandering hand, Esther turns halfway and leaves, ignoring the teacher's angry words to a Jasmine who lifts her chin heavily, and loses herself among the benches and corridors until she reaches the amphitheatre.

The curtain is as red as the blood she spilled in the bathtub that day, but that doesn't frighten her. She has never been ashamed to talk about that low moment in her life that made her earn more than she thought she deserved. 

Still, for the first time since her death, she allows herself to be angry.

Angry at the Sandman.

Angry at Alex for not setting him free. At Roderick Burgess for capturing and holding him for no more unjust reason than his own benefit. At Paul for accepting such a thing. At Sheridan, for sending her to that basement. At herself, for lifting the poker a second time. 

So angry she is, that she climbs up the stage and walks all the way down to the red curtain, thinking in the cloud of her anger:

'I wish it had been different.'

When she crosses the curtain, it's not at the back of the amphitheatre, where socks hang and the props hide. It's in a place so incredibly red that Esther fears she'll never see another colour again in her life.

She turns around to try to escape, but it is like when she entered Destiny's garden; there is no exit, because the red place extends in rounded, hollow corridors that look like cavities. So Esther starts walking, slowly and deliberately, trying to make as little noise as possible with her Converse. She remembers that the Moiras had shown her this place, saying that it was the domain of the creature that...

Esther sees it, and as soon as she does, she curses herself, abundantly, and closes her eyes in sorrow.

"Look what the cat has brought."

The girl is not worthy to open her eyes. She frowns as hard as she can and remains quiet. 

'If I don't move, no one can see me.' she thought naively.

"But what is that, sweetheart? You needn't be afraid. Open your pretty eyes."

The voice came suddenly closer. Esther didn't open her eyes.

"Please, sweet Estibaliz. Where has it been seen that a guest is afraid in my realm?"

"Firstly, I don't think I'm invited, and secondly, I'm not afraid, Desire." the girl murmured, still without opening her eyes, but she was tense as she felt something sharp, and then, something soft traced her nose full of blackheads caused by pure stress. "If you remember, I was the one who carved your neck."

Her own neck is now being ruthlessly squeezed by this creature's hand. 

Her eyes shoot, her own hands turn to the wrist of the hand that is strangling her, and she tries to speak as she sees the ruthless golden eyes of this creature staring down at her as he raises her to the ground.

"You are under the protection of Destiny, under the esteem of Death, and you possess a small part of the power of Dream, not to mention that you are the Defiant and that the Fates favour you." their growled voice sounds like a snake dragging itself through thick sand. Esther frowns before the word 'Dream' being spat out. "But that doesn't mean I can't draw a little blood."

And they squeezed, sinking their nails into the tender skin of her neck.

Esther jerks, more from the impression of the freshness of the sunflower necklace in her throat than from the pain of the nails cutting through the flesh, and twists, sinking her own nails into the creature's wrist, but nothing seems to neutralise them. They're determined to make her bleed.

Esther can already feel warm threads running down her neck to her chest, and it only makes her more desperate. This time she closes her eyes and concentrates, uncovering her Defiant part, or so she feels, because when she opens her eyes again, it's now her instinct that takes over.

The expression of Desire is transformed. There must be something in her eyes, because suddenly their grip loosens a little, enough for her to lift her legs, to swing like a hammock, to give her attacker two kicks, one in the stomach and one in the face.

The being meows with anger and pain while letting her go. Esther crashed to the red floor and lay on her back with one hand on her throat and the other on her stomach, trying to catch her breath in desperate gasps.

"Damn you!" cried the creature, and the girl was dragged back with a hand at her throat, her mind focused on getting as far away as possible, until her back collided with a wall that was beating like a heart.

Desire looks at her with mad eyes, practically clinging with the black suit and the airborne tail, looking like a lion about to devour her. Ruge, too, to add more detail. Esther opens her mouth as if to laugh, out of pure hysteria, but before anything else happens, an old male voice resounds in the red chamber:

"Desire, I stand in my gallery and I hold your sigile. Will you answer me?"

Esther mouths in surprise and Desire grumbles like the animal they seem to be, as they get up, removes a few curls from their eyes and walks towards a row of frames containing objects, going straight to the first, which contains a book with a chain and a handcuff in the cover.

Esther's eyes open upwards as she recognises the symbol; the Book of Destiny.

"Well, well, well," says the androgyne, looking directly into the mirror. "How long, dear Destiny. What made you turn to me?"

"I just wish to make certain.' says the old man's voice, still echoing in the vast red chamber. "May I cross to your threshold, brother-sister?"

Desire says nothing, but nods, and with a strange speed, as the golden frame expands to take the shape of a door, the androgyne approaches Esther with a wild look, and from behind themselves pulls out a strange thing, something that bends in the air, with transparent folds. They threw it on Esther, who felt it as a lighter blanket than the raven feather that adorned the head of her bed. The being in front of her whispered sharply:

"Not a sound."

Without waiting for an answer, they walked away and stood directly in front of the capped figure holding the Book of Souls.

"Greetings, elder brother," they say in a glowing tone. "Can I offer you anything you desire?"

Esther raises her eyebrows.

But Destiny's head bends towards his book, then a little higher, pointing directly at...

"Proklisi."

The little sound that escapes Esther's nose is very unworthy.

Desire tense, like the rope of a hanged man. 

And Destiny doesn't move, damn him.

Time seems to stand still, and Esther, not knowing what to do, takes off the thing that covers her, just a little, enough to reveal her eyes and thus see the hooded figure directly.

She lifts his fingers and mouths a raspy: "Hello."

Destiny nods, once, then turns to the androgenic being.

"I shall take care of her from here, my sibling. Thanks for your help."

And without waiting for an answer, he passes by Desire's side and holds out a hand to Esther, the one that isn't chained to the book, now closed and pressed tightly to his chest.

"Come with me to the Garden of Forking Ways, Proklisi. There's a lot to talk about. We can do it over tea and biscuits, if you like."

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter fourteen !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ So heartless, yet so full of feelings.❞﹚.

⸻withoutfeels.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Esther silently crosses the golden frame, hiding behind her hair, while tightly clutching the handle of her rucksack.

The androgynous creature gives her a feline look, licking his lips the way a tiger licks its whiskers at the sight of a gazelle.

"I will see you, Esther Carrasco." he says, turning his body to look at her one last time over his feathered shoulder. "I will see you."

The girl doesn't answer, concentrating on the small scar carved into the middle of Desire's neck: her symbol as Defiant, the reel with crossed needles.

At the last second, she blinks and says: "I may be the aberration of the universe, but you're the meanest bitch ever.

Desire suddenly turns and opens his mouth as if to protest, but the golden frame darkens and then his charcoal drawing appears, posing like a diva with a raised hand and a seductive gaze, with a crystal heart at the top of the frame.

Silence.

Esther takes a deep breath, as quietly as she can, and looks at the picture of Desire. Then she turns her head to look at the rest of the frames; the first to her left contains a mirror reflecting Destiny. The second is covered by a sheet. The third has an image of Amara with her hands on her hips, and her necklace is both on her neck and at the top of the frame. The fourth and fifth, like the second, are covered by a sheet. The one next to Desire's has an image of Despair, with her hook at the top, and the last frame has Delirium, drawn as a floating girl held by balloons, with a swirl of colour crowning the frame.

"You'll get yours, in the future."

Esther blinks and turns to the monk holding the Book of Souls.

"What ye mean?"

Destiny doesn't answer with words, but closes his book and walks over to the second picture, the one between his and Amara's. He grabs a handful of the sheet and pushes it aside with a flourish. Then he turns his hooded head towards Esther, beckoning her closer.

The girl approaches with slow steps and stares at what is in the frame; a charcoal image of herself, wearing a tattered strapless dress, her feet bare, her hair cut short to her jaw, and the needles given to her by the Fates in each hand. At the top of the frame is her symbol, the spool of thread with the crossed needles.

"You are not one of us," says Destiny, his voice solemn, "but you are equal in power. It is required that you have your own painting and sigil in our galleries."

"Desire had none." Esther replies, her voice tightening in her throat.

"That's because no one but me has them yet." the monk replies, turning towards a stone corridor that seems to go on forever. "Come with me."

The girl takes a deep breath, holds out her hands Darcy-style, and tries not to make any noise with her Converse as she follows the being.

Still, there is plenty of sound, with a kind of incessant fluttering, the rattling of the Book of Souls' chains, and her own breathing.

The corridor ends abruptly, giving way to a cloudless sky, a very long flight of stairs that Destiny begins to descend, and the Garden of Forking Ways.

If she hadn't been so lost, Esther would have appreciated the beauty of the hedges, with their different types of flowers, shapes and sizes, the sound of birds chirping and the sunset behind a great stone arch in the distance.

"Proklisi," Destiny says, his voice booming, "tea is served."

Esther lowers her head and sees that at the foot of the stairs, where an atrium opens with the giant statues she saw on her last visit, there is a table for two with a tea service that appears to be carved porcelain, with figures like those on Greek vases, and stories. Scattered around are plates of glazed cakes, which appear to be chocolate biscuits, and sugar bowls, along with small vases and a set of teaspoons. At either end of the table are two chairs that look more like armchairs than chairs, like those used in Victorian times, with large leather backs.

Destiny is standing at the table with his book closed and his head up.

Esther, seeing that she still has some stairs to go (about 20, she counts quickly), snorts ungracefully and looks to the side of the stairs; there are polished stone railings, so polished that the sun reflects off them like a mirror. Perfect.

The girl goes to the right hand rail, sits down and pushes herself forward.

"Woohoo!" she exclaims as she manages to slide down the stone as if it were a slide, until she reaches the end, which she uses to propel herself and land on her feet a few steps away from the tea table.

Esther stretches out her arms and does the Katniss Everdeen curtsy, folding onto her stomach a little too emphatically.

She only hears the rattling of chains as Destiny sits down in one of the chairs.

"Please, have a seat."

The girl stops herself from rolling her eyes, whispers a "sour concept with legs" and obeys, sitting down in the chair on the other side of the table.

She looks at the carvings on the tea set, then at the being in front of her.

"What kind of tea is it?"

"Whatever you would prefer."

"That's not an answer."

Destiny opens his booklet and leans it against the table, tracing a page on the right-hand cover with his finger.

"It says here that you have a passion for red berry tea with honey," he says, lifting his hooded head slightly, as if moving away to focus on the words, and Esther refrains from telling him that it reminds her of old people unaccustomed to today's technology, "and that you drink a soothing herbal tea called 'Reverie'. Whatever you choose, it's in the teapot next to your hand. The honey is in the jar engraved with Atalanta."

The girl's eyes narrow and she smacks her lips sceptically as she takes the teapot (engraved with drawings that, if she is not deceived, tell the story of the Trojan War) and the jar (engraved with the myth of Atalanta) shown to her by Destiny. She fills her cup (engraved with a star, a poppy and what looks like a lyre) to the brim, smelling the combined scent of strawberries, raspberries, cherries and blueberries all at once. Then she takes the jar and a teaspoon (forged from something that iridesces in the sunlight) and adds three spoonfuls of honey. She stirs, puts the spoon on the plate under her cup (engraved with the story of the star of Bethlehem) and takes a sip, raising her little finger mockingly.

She sighed, because that's the way she likes it. Still, she sets the cup down with a clink and looks at the being in front of her, who takes a sip of his own tea.

"Surely ye know what questions I have." Esther says, tilting her head to the right.

Destiny puts down her cup (engraved with a bloody spearhead) and straightens up.

"Surprisingly, I do not." he begins solemnly. The girl raises an eyebrow. "Your bifurcation is being written as events unfold. So whatever questions you have, ask them now."

Esther squints again. When she opens her mouth, she realises that she has clenched her jaw so tightly that it clicks at the sudden movement. She ignores it and goes on with what she wanted to say:

"Why did you take me out of the Threshold of Desire?"

Destiny mysteriously stirs his tea, or so it seems, as she ignores Esther for seven and a half seconds before answering solemnly.

"Because they were going to hurt you," he says slowly, as if such an admission were a bomb in a box, "and because this conversation had to take place." the being reaches into a fold of his cloak and, pulling it out, holds a white handkerchief out to Esther. "Here, for your neck."

The girl took the handkerchief and wrapped it around her neck, covering the small dents that were sure to leave scars. She also accepts the half-answer, not because she knows there is more to it, but because there are other, more pressing questions.

"What ye wanna to tell me that ye haven't already?"

Destiny nods to himself, closes his book and rests it on his lap.

"It is necessary that you know what you can do as a Defiant, so that no entity, not even an Endless, can take you by surprise. I have watched your fork, Proklisi, and I have already deduced and confirmed your abilities. Would you like to know what they are?"

The next words roll off Esther's tongue:

"Do I have choice?"

Destiny shakes his head. Then he picks up his cup, takes another sip of his tea and sips it noisily.

The girl raises an eyebrow at him, not expecting that from the ancient being that is Destiny incarnate.

She should not be surprised. She is a friend of death who happens to be more alive than she is, so she calms her expression and waits impatiently for instructions.

"The Fates gave you tools to channel your Defiant abilities," are the first words Destiny says as he sets his cup on his plate, which does not clink, "and in return they also gave you access to the Tapestry of Creation. "

"I'm aware of that." Esther interrupts, taking another sip of her tea. "But I never got in. I don't know how, and I'd really rather not know."

"You did when you unravelled the thread of the tea stain that Johanna Constantine spilled." says the being, solemn as a monk. "You knew instinctively how to access the tapestry, you knew how to manipulate it, and you knew how to close the breach."

"I just visualised it in my mind, imagined what it would be like. That easy?"

"Yes. It's like daydreaming; it's all in your mind. You visualise it and you do it. I haven't worked out how your own instinct knew what to do, but I suspect it's the defiant part of you. The being that lives within you seeks to defy and defy and defy. It also seeks ways to escape, to free itself. Though, I must admit, very reluctantly, it does not do so in vain."

"What ye mean?"

Destiny leans back in his seat, his back against the backrest.

"I sent Teleute to prevent your death for a reason, Esther Carrasco." he says, his voice echoing through the hedges, through the stone, through the whole place. "And that reason is your relentless defiance."

Suddenly, the tea she was drinking sours on the girl's tongue.

"That doesn't make sense." Esther replies. "The Fates told that every breath I take is an affront to the universe. That my very existence had consequences. That they had to submit to your decision to keep me alive. Tell me, what good is that choice? What good is someone who defies?"

The silence echoes even deeper than the entity's voice.

It is then that the silence becomes unbearable, as the entity rises from his position, book clutched to his chest, and walks towards the mist-shrouded statues on the other side of the atrium.

Esther doesn't get up, just turns around to watch him do what he's about to do.

"The destiny of every being that ever was, is and will be is written in this book," the being says, tilting his head back to look at one of the statues, "and even I am part of its pages. Ironically, I cannot alter anything," he turns and lowers his head towards Esther, "but you can.

The girl remained still, and Destiny began to approach again, his robes dragging and his chains rattling.

"You were able to create a spontaneous fork, out of my book. And you were able to continue your existence without changing anything but your own life. The Fates are right, every breath you take is an affront to the universe itself, but that is what I count on."

He stopped in front of Esther, and it was she who bowed her head, trying to meet the clouded eyes of the entity.

"You owe me, Proklisi." Destiny says, his voice echoing through the garden again. "And as such, I will call in that favour when the time is right."

The girl purses her lips.

"I didn't ask for any of this." she rants, and she stands up in sheer annoyance, her now longer hair fluttering around her ribs. "I didn't ask to be on the Defiant, I didn't ask you to save me. And now you tell me I owe you? When they said destiny was cruel, they were right."

The entity remains still and silent, watching her from under its hood. It doesn't close its book, doesn't turn the page, doesn't do anything.

"Aren't  ye gonna say anything?" Esther counters, her jaw clenched.

Then Destiny reacts. He closes his book with a thud, clutches it to his chest with a chained hand, and starts walking towards one of the paths leading out of the semicircular atrium.

Esther sighs, picks up a biscuit from the tea table, takes a vicious bite out of it, and then follows him, pacing furiously.

She pauses as the entity does so, and they both stare at the half-dried hedges, which stretch forward with piles of irregularities that Esther can't describe in her mind's eye. It looks like the path has been built and rebuilt, there are flowers, bricks, something that smells like blood, sand, and many other things. It looks like Alice's rabbit hole, but in the shape of a road.

"This is your fork." Destiny says, straightening up.

The girl shakes her head as she takes out her biscuit - chocolate, thank God: "It's horrible."

She heard what she could swear was a nasal laugh.

"It was created spontaneously by you when you picked up the poker a second time." the being points to the corner of the right hedge, and there, Esther sees, is the poker she stole from Fawney Rig's fireplace on that June 22nd, cradled by a metal bra. ""Since then it has created itself, including replicas of the objects you used, recording your every step, representing every moment of your existence. And now it has created this."

Destiny steps back and Esther watches as he places the book on the floor, turning the right-hand page and ripping it out. The girl frowns, but then her eyes shoot up like the blinds in her house as she sees the yellowed page begin to grow, to grow, until the creature places it on the floor.

The page takes on the shape of an elongated rectangle, which then becomes a frame, and what was paper becomes reflective glass. At the end, in front of it, on the stone, is what appears to be a mirror with many bronze engravings in the frame. The sigils of the brothers, other symbols he doesn't recognise, and more.

"That's how I knew it was time to speak with you." Destiny speaks, approaching the mirror with long, slow steps, "I call it 'The Passage Between Realms', and now it is yours. All you have to do to use it is place your hands in the crystal, think of where you want to go, and when it glows, cross it. It will disguise itself to the naked eye; only those with your permission will be able to see it as it is. Now it is up to you to possess it in your realm."

Esther tilts her head to one side as she takes another bite of her cookie.

"Why are you and the Fates handing me these objects on a silver platter?"

The creature lifts its head, and there, in that position, the girl can see its clouded eyes again.

"Because to dream is to defy," he replies, "and to defy is to dream."

Esther doesn't answer, partly because she doesn't know what to say, and partly because of the meaning hidden in those words.

But she knows what they mean. She knows what is hidden in the words of Destiny. The entity that lives within her recognises the essence of that something.

Dreams and defiances.

How ironic that it all began with a child's dream and involved the being who represents that dream and many others.

"And because it's better to be informed and prepared than to figure it all out on your own." Destiny adds, ignoring the young woman's thoughts.

Once she has processed what these words mean, Esther gives the universal gesture of complicity; a raised corner of her mouth.

"Then V.E. Schwab was right." the girl says, as if to reassure herself. "There is a defiance in being a dreamer."

Destiny nods, solemn as the monk he is, and that's all it takes for the girl to nod back and take a deep breath, adjusting to the new weight on her.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Esther's life has become a balance that is out of balance every second.

But now, in these moments of warm solitude, thanks to the ever-present cup of tea, she thinks about how she would like to regret having gone to that basement. She would like to go back and tell her younger self: "Fuck, don't go there, it will haunt you until you can't open your eyes anymore."

But she also thinks she likes it. 

She likes being out of Destiny's reach. She likes meeting Amara, she likes sharing floating words with Delirium, she likes spending time with Johanna, she likes sitting in the early morning with her beloved Oneiros, she likes going to church with Ophelia and hearing stern but hopeful words. If she's being really honest, she also likes Destiny, as he usually invites her to tea in her garden.

She likes being the Defiant.

Or well, she likes it from time to time.

Like when she mastered the Defiant's abilities, when she knew when to interfere and when not to. Like when she kept running into Desire or Despair, and they were able to have a minimal conversation before a fight broke out, in which case Esther would just use her needles and open a portal to jump through, and return to her room through the mirror Destiny gave her, which now replaces the one that's falling apart (her mother sees it as usual, which makes her raise her eyes to the ceiling and raise an eyebrow, complicit). As when Delirium visits her, now appearing through the window overlooking the street. Like when Amara appears, babbling about the latest gossip in the universe, while Esther prepares whatever drink the weather permits. Like when she dreams, in the few moments when she can relax enough, and meets Lucienne in the ruined kingdom.

In moments like the present, now, in the middle of the June holidays of 2022, sitting on the veranda of Daisy's house, watching Marisol and Santiago playing and the little newborn Josephine, or Josefina, laughing out loud, she wonders if the Sandman thinks of her.

Of course, she doesn't know him, she doesn't know any more than she already knows, but the delusional part of her likes to imagine that if they met again, if it were on good terms, and if he remembered her, they could clear things up. They could have a heart-to-heart, clear things up and then go their separate ways.

Nothing like that has happened yet, so she'll be prepared.

But it turns out not to be the case.

She wasn't prepared for the news of Alex Burgess' death, nor for Paul's letter and gift.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter fifteen !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ I think I see you❞﹚.

⸻A Sky Full of Stars, Coldplay.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

She remembers those days really well.

It all kicked off on 5 August 2022, a holiday, but still before her third year of high school classes began the following month. The weather was perfect for an evening walk, those beautiful moments that made her the Solivagant. She'd texted Amara (having discovered that Death lives in a flat in New York and owns a phone with a screen saver from The Book Thief because she was friends with the author when he wrote it and based it on her) to say: Good morning. I just wanted to let you know that the Creator has given me another day to live. "Be prepared to suffer."

Amara replied: "I'll be over in the evening then. I'm bringing some toasted cheese sandwiches. "

Daisy gave her a call and asked: "Please, dear gurisa (1) of my dark heart full of bad words, I need you to come and entertain my children. Just bring your things, you're staying until told otherwise." So she went, humming the song Tir Na nÓg by Celtic Woman after telling Gabriela.

Her mum had told her to calm down and that they'd have to have a chat when she got back. Esther didn't think much of it at the time. She told herself that she'd survived worse than the astral travel caused by the fear those words were capable of evoking.

It would have been nice to have some idea of what to expect that night.

The day passed in a blur that seemed slow. She packed her things at home, took some of the money she had saved from her job at Foyles bookshop, arrived at Daisy's house, greeted her and her husband, was rammed by Santiago, crushed by Marisol, and teased by baby Josephine. After a few beautiful hours that seemed like something out of a dream (she laughs inwardly at this), she's singing to the children the story of her Jewish namesake, when suddenly, at exactly 9:34 a.m., she falls face first onto the fluffy living room carpet for no apparent reason.

Marisol's screams, Santiago's little hands tapping her face, and Josephine's cries help her to stay conscious.

Come on, plague of the universe, defy, defy, defy! she thinks to herself, trying to get up. She feels as if her brain's been teleported to an alternate plane, where she's conscious but her thoughts are scrambled. She hears a voice that sounds familiar, but it's hard to make out.

"Sir!" exclaims the voice. "Sir, you’re back! It's me, it's Lucienne."

Lucienne, it reverberates in her brain, a deep, velvety voice, charged with a sense of relief that only comes after a release from the burden of the world.

Then she gasps, her brain switches off for a couple seconds, and when she opens her eyes, Amara is there, trying to calm the children with kind words and promises that might just come true.

Esther's gut reaction is to let out a low growl, her voice surprisingly clear as she utters the words Destiny taught her at one of those tea parties: 

"It's in your destiny to fall asleep in the next three seconds and wake up tomorrow thinking what happened from Queen Esther's story was just a sugar-induced dream, for I am the Defiant, and so I rewrite what is written."

The three infants stop crying, only to collapse, the two older ones on the sofa, and the baby in her cot.

Amara turns to her with a wild look in her eyes, her hair in disarray, and a brown bag of snacks in her hand swings wildly as Esther rises shakily over half her body, and whispers what becomes a permanent entry in the book of Destiny:

"He is free."

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

As Esther packs her things into her backpack, an almost forgotten memory suddenly comes to the forefront of her mind:

The result of Desire's attack on her cat, Oneiros, was that the little animal was left with only one functioning lung. Despite his supernatural nature, that didn't apply when it came to healing. Of course, Esther got some answers by asking Amara.

"Yes, I left him to look after you." the entity admitted to her when they got back to Esther’s house from Richmond. Amara was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her room, hugging the thermos of tea she'd been given as if it were the cat, which was lying in the corner of Esther's room, recuperating. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to think I didn't trust you, because I do. I just don't trust... well... despair."

"Oh, yes, your sister." Esther said quietly, looking at her friend from under her eyelashes.

Amara choked on her tea and looked at the teenager with guilty eyes.

"Please, explain yourself, in more detail than the Fates." the girl said calmly. As the sea before the storm.

This is how Amara goes into a bit more detail about what the Fates said.

"We’re a family of entities, as the Kindly Ones said, known as the Eternals." she said, staring at a piece of lint caught in the bristles of the carpet she was sitting on. "There are two that are missing: the Lost One and the Prodigal. We don't know much about the first one, and even less about the second. We’ll just have to wait until they both come back."

The teenager doesn't push the issue. So, seven in total.

Amara carries on as if that little bit doesn't make her vulnerable. Each and every one of them represents the very first aspects of reality. They're more powerful than any other entity in the universe, except for the Creator, or as it's better known, the Presence. 

"You know Him as God, or Jehovah." the entity explains. "We all bow the head towards Him. "

"That's why you told me to start congregating?" Esther asks, rhetorically.

Amara smiles at her and says: "What I told you is true, but it was your choice. I'm really grateful that you chose to become a Christian. The Creator is reliable and the only supernatural being who loves you unconditionally. Anyway..."

Esther had bowed her head.

"But what about you? I don't think you're completely... eternal."

"No" Amara had replied, her eyes a little watery. "We'll exist for as long as our concepts do. When they're no longer around, I'll take all living beings to their final resting place. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn off the lights, and lock the universe behind me when I leave. Entities just... cease to exist. We complete our tasks and then we rest.

"Seems a bit unfair."

Amara laughed, and her laughter was tinged with sadness.

"It's not, my dear Esther. When you’ve lived as long as we have, seen, heard and experienced as much as we have, fading away in peace and ceasing to exist is the best way to rest. In that, the Creator was good."

Esther gives a nod.

"And what about me? I'm human, but I'm also an entity."

"Someday your time will be up." Her friend holds out her hand, and the younger one takes it. "We'll see what happens on that day. Just remember that, as it is written, the Creator knows best. That’s why I suggest you stick with Him, who will be there for you. Do you remember what you wrote on the glass? It was about having faith and hope."

That was a bit of a late delusion, wasn't it? She just wanted to give the Sandman something because she couldn't give him freedom. She gave him those verses because she had read them one day and understood them.

The Sunday after the talk, Esther remembered and understood. She started going to church every week. She started praying and believing, and it became a source of refuge and comfort in her life as a human and Defiant. 

She held on tight to those verses about faith and hope, and to what Romans 8:38 says: "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

She smiled and shed a few tears, holding the Bible close to her as she felt a sense of comfort wash over her.

That’s how she decided to forgive.

After her second encounter with Destiny, on her way back from her aerial dance class, she was caught up in a flurry of emotions, singing the song Sueños by Un Corazon. She had a new notebook in her hands and had written a letter to Paul.

'I forgive you.' she had written, sitting on the porch steps of her house. 'Not because you deserve it, or because Alex does, or because anyone does. I forgive you, Alex, his father and the Sandman, because I'm tired of carrying this burden. It's hurtful, and I want to live. I can't do that if I drag this behind me every step I take. Someday, Amara will come for me, and on that day I want to be able to say that I lived, because that's my dream, and I'm going to make it happen. Let Alex know that I forgive him. Tell him that I know, but that I've decided to let him go. Tell him to forgive me too for being cruel. If the Sandman is still around, I’d like to ask him to forgive me for not being able to set him free and for not trying one more time. Tell him to have hope, keep faith. Tell him that if he wants to be free, I forgive him. I can give him that freedom. I hope he does well and is able to prosper, even while he's locked up. I hope this long and painful experience teaches him a lot. Let him know that I'll keep him in my thoughts, regardless of who he is. Let him know he hasn't been forgotten.'

In May 2022, on the 15th, Esther sent this letter using her own money. When she got home that night, she prayed for the Sandman.

"I’d like You to keep an eye on him, Lord." she said quietly in her room, with the starlight and the song called The Blessing echoing softly from her phone. "I don't know him. And he doesn't know me, but that's not necessary for this. He's a pretty complex character, so I'm asking You to give him the freedom he craves, but also the understanding of such a thing. I don't quite remember what he looked like, but he looked sad and tired. I ask You to comfort him, to reveal the truth to him. And if it is in Your Will, bless him. Whether he deserved this confinement, only You know, but, regardless of such a thing, let him learn from it."

That night, as she slept, Esther had a dream about a beautiful field of flowers with waterfalls, poppies, sunflowers, and there was Lucienne, thanking her for conjuring this in her mind.

"When our lord disappeared, everything began to decay." she said, sitting beside her in the middle of the meadow. "Some smallfolk went looking for him, while others just left, and soon, there was nothing.‘So thank you for this." she said, turning to her and smiling through her tears.

Esther nodded, smiled at her and they stayed like that until she woke up.

Which brings us to the situation now:

Daisy and William return two hours and twenty-five minutes later and find their kids asleep in their beds, their baby being rocked by Esther, who is singing The Song of the Sea from the animated film. No trace of commotion around.

Amara said she had to get back to work. Of course, she didn't leave without first saying she'd come back when she knew more and disappeared in a flash.

After some gentle persuasion and a couple of discussions with Daisy about the potential dangers of London at night, Esther was able to convince her to let her return home, using an excuse that seemed convincing. She said something about being just shy of 17 and having survived worse.

Gabriela arrived in her car just minutes later, looking tired but with a sympathetic expression. Esther didn't ask, even though she knew it was Daisy who had called her mother. She simply said goodbye, got into the car and they both stayed silent for a few seconds as they drove through the streets.

As they turned the corner onto Orpheus Street, just a few yards from home, Gabriela turned right into a long driveway. After a few seconds, they came to a small park with swings. Esther followed her mother, a little perplexed, and they both sat on a swing, swaying in the warm breeze.

"A few days ago, I got some mail from Paul." That's what her mother said, out of the blue, looking straight ahead at a house with its porch lights on.

Esther doesn't say anything.

"He said you sent him a letter and that he was grateful for your forgiveness. Him and Alex. If I let him, and if it's okay with you, he'd like to see you at some point."

There was a short pause.

"You'd like to?

The younger one swings on her swing and looks at her mother with a tired little smile.

"Is it wrong to say no? I don’t see an issue with that. It's been almost three years, sooner or later I have to face it. I'd rather not right now."

Gabriela nods in agreement: "It's not a bad thing. When you're ready, you'll go. Or maybe Paul will come by, I'm not sure. We’ll see."

The two women are quiet for a moment, look at each other one last time, and smile before getting back in the car and heading home.

Esther sends a silent thank you to God, has her nightly tea, and falls asleep hugging her cat.

The next day, she wakes up late, around eleven, to find her mother sitting on the sofa in the living room, covering her mouth with one hand and holding the phone in her other hand.

On the dining room table, there's a small package wrapped in paper, about the size of a book, with Fawney Rig's address written on it.

When her mother ends the call, she looks at her with bulging eyes and says: "Alex Burgess is dead."

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Once the funeral was confirmed and they were formally invited to attend, the Carrasco women carried on with their daily routines, feeling a sense of anticipation mixed with sadness. Given that Alex was already over a hundred years old, it was to be expected. 

Esther fed Oneiros, gave him a stroke or two and left him to it before heading to the kitchen to wash the breakfast dishes. She's cleaning the toaster when her mum speaks up. 

"Paul sent this for you." she says, and Esther looks over her shoulder at her mother, who's watching her back, the package on the table held between held between her manicured, ringed hands. "It came through this morning. He told me over the phone that it's a gift."

The younger one nods in agreement: "Just leave it there. I'll take a look once I've finished here.

Gabriela nods, does as she was asked, and takes the keys to her car, saying she'd be going shopping and to get ready because after lunch, she'd be teaching Esther how to drive.

The girl lets out a sound like a crow's caw, watching her mother smile mischievously before saying goodbye and closing the door.

A brief flash of fear crossed her mind, but Esther pushed it aside. She dried her hands on her jeans, put her rings on and slowly approached the table, looking at the small package with wide green eyes.

It's a light brown colour, with the sender and addressee addresses stuck on with paper tape. That's all there is to it.

Esther starts counting in her head, using numbers, flowers and songs as Miss Seaborn taught her.

One, two, three. 

Sunflower, poppy, wisteria...

Dreamer by Axwell and Ingrosso... I Lived by One Republic... Walk Me Home by Said the Sky.

She takes the package in her hands, which are a little shaky, as she's nervous about what it contains. It might not be a bad thing, but she suddenly realises that she didn't even try to contact anyone, nor Paul, nor Alex. She was so bitter and numb from her experiences that she forgot to be kind.

And now Alex is dead, and Paul sent her this, whatever it is.

She dismisses all the negative thoughts, getting rid of them until her mind is clear. She puts the package against his stomach as she gets a knife and goes to sit on the porch of her house, leaning heavily on the rocking chair, which squeaks with age as it's forced to sway. 

The motion soothes Esther's heartbeat, like a lullaby, and gives her the courage to tear open the paper and place the knife on the bedside table.

There's an envelope with a letter inside. The letter is sealed with a wax stamp featuring a small poppy flower. Esther blinks twice when she sees a book underneath.

The cover is a lovely green colour and has lots of intricate carvings in the shape of Celtic knots. The title page says 'Celtic Myths and Legends', while at the bottom right is a name: T. W. Rolleston.

The book is old – it can tell just by the smell that comes out when it's open. The pages are yellowed and dusty, with old drawings. 

Esther closes the book and puts it in her lap. She takes the knife from the bedside table and uses it as a letter opener to break the seal of the envelope. 

Once she’s opened it, she takes a look inside and unfolds it. She takes a deep breath and starts reading:

Dear Esther,

I wasn't sure how to start writing to you, given that we didn't see each other again after you recovered. I guess it was to be expected that you didn't want anything to do with us, the mansion or anything like it. 

I’m sure you’re aware that Alex is no longer with us. He passed away last night, in his sleep, from a series of nightmares. You might think that's fair, or you might think that's not good enough. You have every right to believe what you want, given the circumstances that brought us to this point. I didn't write you this letter to remind you of the pain.

I just wanted to say that your letter was very moving. I just wanted to say thank you for making that decision. I'm really sorry to hear what you've been through. I'm so grateful you took the first step and wrote to me. You're absolutely right. Your story was so moving that it prompted me to make a decision that ended up resulting in the death of my dear Alex. Despite this, I still feel like what I did was a sin less.

I’ve spoken to the being in the basement and I’ve passed on your message.

I broke the runic circle.

Your Sandman is free.

I’m not here to judge you for feeling happy or good. That's up to you. 

I hope we can meet up at the funeral. I’ll fill you in on more details there.

Best regards, Paul.

P.S. The book is the one your father found, the one that made him dream of finding Tir Na nÓg, but ended up finding the Sandman instead. It’s yours now. Take it how you will. 

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

On 8 August, both Carrasco women attended the funeral of Alex Burgess, dressed in black and under umbrellas. There were few people there.

The mahogany coffin that now holds the man's body is decorated with pressed jasmine flowers on the lid. The two elements create a colourful yet solemn contrast, which is typical of a funeral.

It's the second funeral she's been to, but now Esther has a broader view of what a funeral should be like, so she doesn't say anything and just watches. She just hides behind her back-combed locks and listens to Paul's sobbing words.

When the service is over, the small group of around twenty people head to the foyer to share a few drinks and shelter from the rain. 

Esther looks out of the window and sees the water pouring down in torrents, and the earth crumbling under the force of the water. Everything seems strangely calm at this moment. The sound of clattering on the ceiling, cups of tea on the coffeetables and sandwiches on the plates all contributed to that feeling.

"Esther." someone calls. When she turns, she sees Paul, looking a bit tired, holding Alex's former cane. "Come on." he says. "I’d like to have a quick chat with you somewhere private."

The girl nods, gets up, smooths her funeral dress, and follows Paul through the lobby. They stand in silence, the only sound the click of a cane, until the man speaks.

"I just wanted to say thanks again for your letter." he says, without pausing. Esther glances at him from the corner of her eye. "I read it to Alex a few weeks ago, leaving out the parts that were a bit strong. It made him sigh with relief, forgive and be forgiven."

The girl nods solemnly and gives a little lopsided smile.

Paul smiles at her in the same way but keeps walking, so the younger girl follows until they reach a black iron gate.

Esther frowns and squints at the man, who purses his lips in resignation.

"I also told the Sandman what you asked me to tell him." he continues. Esther takes a deep breath, lets out a big sigh, and then nods. Paul pushes the gate open and it creaks loudly. The man goes in first, and the young woman follows. "I think it did some good."

Esther takes a look around at where she was killed; it’s gloomy, dark, and closed off now.

And there, in front of her, she can see the golden edges of the Sandman's prison.

And he's not there.

It's like she's experiencing something really profound, it's almost as if it's squeezing her throat. Her eyes start to burn, and she can't breathe.

Her eyes were brimming with tears as Esther approached the runic circle, taking slow, measured steps.

There's a single, rounded stripe that breaks one of the runes.

She lets out a sarcastic laugh; "That one scratch was enough?’

Paul comes over, the weight of the staff being pressed echoing in the big cellar.

"The glass is gone." the man mumbled, his eyes glazed over. Esther looks up and sees that the glass is actually gone. "The guards said he created a kind of vortex, threw some dust at them, and locked them out. When they woke up, there was nothing."

Esther lets out a little hum. Since it no longer matters, she walks over to the bronze rims, carves the edges with her hands, notices what looks like a small dent, and swallows a lump in her throat as she remembers how her head smashed against the metal when she was shot. 

"He’s gone." she mumbles, her voice quivering as the situation sits in: "He's free."

"Yes." Paul nods.

The girl takes her hands away from the bronze rim. She takes a few steps back, but then loses her balance and falls back on her heels. The scar on her collarbone suddenly feels sore, with a ghostly pain.

"I'm sorry it had to be like this."

The old man in front of her smiles sadly.

"So am I."

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .* ིྀིྀ

As the post-funeral gathering wraps up and the rain lets up, the clouds part to reveal the sun. Esther walks into the sunlit garden in her bare feet, and her mother just shakes her head.

"You're a big girl now. You know how to take care of your colds. I'm not gonna be making a miserable tea with lemon and honey for you."

The girl smiles and nods, as if to say she's being cheeky, and says she'll walk for a few moments. Gabriela looks at her with narrowed eyes, snorts ungraciously, and mutters ‘pendejita malagradecida (2)’ in Spanish, only to smile feebly.

Esther laughs, takes a poppy from one of the vases, puts her hands in her pockets, and heads over to Jessamy's grave.

She finds it where she left it, hidden behind the leaves of the willow tree. The girl kneels in front of the wooden headstone and raises her hand, which is shaking, and slowly moves her fingers down from the little finger to the index finger.

"Hello, Jessamy." she whispers. Then she lets out a little sigh, bows her head, and looks down at the plot of land, which is now covered in grass. "We never had the chance to meet, but we had something in common. I just wanted to tell you that… well…" she says, laughing a little breathlessly. She’s feeling a bit scared and relieved all at once. "The Sandman is free."

There's a shift in the atmosphere. The sun comes out from behind the clouds. The willow leaves drip warm water. A gentle summer breeze caresses her face and tousled hair.

"You didn't die in vain, beautiful bird." she muttered to the gravestone, placing the flower gently on the grass, which contrasts nicely with it. She puts his index and middle fingers together, with a ring of wire, and taps the wood twice. "You can rest now."

Esther gets up, says goodbye to Jessamy, Alex and Sheridan, and laughs. She walks barefoot, bouncing through the grass like a gazelle. 

"So fill to me the parting glass..." she sings, a mix of joy and sadness in her voice. "Good night, and joy be with you all."

Little does she know, that night, as she returns home to her mother, laughing breathlessly because Esther is tense as a hangman's noose from the concentration she's investing in driving, Destiny turns the page, and there, Johanna receives a question from the entity of dreams, after recovering his sand:

"What do you know about Esther Carrasco?"

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

second act !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Remember all those moments where you catched me looking at you?I wanted to make a nest in your heart, and live beside your heartbeat, feeling you live.❞﹚.

⸻ The Solivagant.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Tell me. When you dream, do you dream of the stars? ❞﹚.

⸻ The Raven King, Maggie Stiefvater.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Little bird, you're quite the anomaly. Even the dark don't get you down.❞﹚.

⸻ Little Bird, by The Arcadian Wild.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ WHERE THE STORY CONTINUES . . .

. . . WITH POEMS AND STARS.

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

﹙❝ We all need someone to stay. Hear the fallen and lonely cry out. Will you fix me up? Will you show me hope? At the end of the day, you were helpless. Can you keep me close? Can you love me most? ❞﹚

⸻ someone to stay, by vancouver sleep clinic.

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

⃟✧ ིྀ･. ━━━━━ Where the Sandman finds the Defiant.

Or where the Defiant finds the Sandman.

Or where they find each other.

And then Destiny ask for the debt to be paid.

Turns out that even dreaming has a price.

link to the playlist !

Themes of the act: 

butterflies by tony anderson

someone to stay, by vancouver sleep clinic.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter sixteen !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ You changed me. You should remember me.❞﹚.

⸻Louise Glück, from "Seizure".

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Rachel is a distant memory in Esther's mind.

She recalls her expression of dismay when Johanna informed her that she had relocated. She remembers asking why. She remembers Johanna saying that she, as a good Christian girlie, didn't approve of his relationship with the other woman. She remembers her laughing sarcastically and saying that she didn't care what anyone thought, since she was a Constantine, the dynasty of the Laughing Magicians. She also said that she should stop using her beliefs as an excuse to hide her true thoughts. 

She remembers Johanna looking at her with a stony face, snorting and putting a strange screwdriver in a cardboard box. Ever since, like a coward, she's shied away from every mention of Rachel's name.
 
This doesn't explain why, when she falls asleep with her mother on the sofa at home after returning from the funeral, she dreams of Rachel and Johanna, both in a garden, smiling and happy.

Esther wakes up with her eyes glued shut and has to walk blindly, guided only by the occasional flashes of thunder caused by the heavy rain that fell as soon as she and her mother got inside the house. She reaches the kitchen sink, trying to get the freaking sand out of her eyes, when her phone rings loudly to the tune of Jónsi's 'Where No One Goes', even louder than the rain beating down on the roof.

Her mother lets out a cry that sounds like a zombie from The Walking Dead before curling up in the knitted blanket covering the back of the sofa. Her cat meows piteously and runs off towards the stairs, so Esther practically flies to grab her phone and check who's the heck calling her.

The caller ID says 'Jo of the Heartless' and there's a picture of the sleeping woman with her mouth open, a thin trickle of drool staining the pillow her head was on. It's 5.31am so the girl rolls her eyes. She presses the green button, and the call is answered. Esther makes her way out of the house, pressing the phone to her ear and growling: 

"You'd better hope it's worth it, otherwise my mother will turn into a zombie and eat me and my Oneiros raw."

The rain is pouring down outside her house and she can hear it on her phone for a few seconds.

"Johanna." Esther growls again.

"Trust me, I have a great explanation, a greater reason, and the very grea..."

"Spill the tea, Constantinople."

"Ha ha ha, that's funny. You know what? I think I'll take the explanation to your house. I'm sure he'll be pleased to see those dreamy, defiant little eyes."

Esther frowned, not noticing the way her stomach was leaking like melted ice cream at her feet.

"Him? 

The Constantine woman swears loudly, as she often does.

"I hope you didn't anger an entity and get me involved somehow."

"That's what you do best, being a busybody."

"I'm meant to put my hand on my forehead and apply Melpomene's?"

"What Melpomene?"

"The muse that favours you; the muse of tragedy, brainless."

"How long have you been familiar with the Greek hierarchy?"

"Since I started getting into poetry, looked into the muse Calliope, and shed a few tears at the story of Orpheus, even though I think he had an anxiety disorder because he couldn't wait another freaking second to turn around and look at his wife. Any freaking issue?

"I knew you were well-read, but not quite so well-read as this. We're on our way."

"You and who else?"

There's a forced mocking laugh, as if Desperation has stuck her hook down Johanna's throat.

"I hope I become the godmother."

"What? Johanna..."

The call ends abruptly.

Esther shuts her eyes, pouts, and lets out a sigh. She puts the phone in her pocket and sits in her rocking chair, waiting in the rain for the call to come through.

She doesn't have long to wait, but, despite what she said, the Constantine woman shows up, yes, but alone, walking through the rain, poorly covered by a black umbrella. If the echoing of her footsteps is anything to go by, she's pretty annoyed, so Esther sighs and rocks a little more, preparing for a heavy tirade.

Johanna is muttering angrily to herself in Latin, with an additional Greek-inspired exclamation for good measure, by the time she reaches the porch, shuts the umbrella and throws it against the railing.

"Try not to make such a fuss, please." Esther says, holding her temples with two fingers. You still owe me explanations.

"Take your explanations and shove them up your-"

"I dreamt about you and Rachel."

The woman who can actually scare demons away by singing in a dead language suddenly falls silent, like a tomb.

Esther stares at her, straightens up in her rocking chair, and though she is dressed in a faded blouse and woollen leggings that she herself tried to knit with the needles given her by the Moiras, which come up to her thigh, she manages to look pretty firm, because the formidable Johanna Constantine lowers her head and hides between the lapels of her white pilot's jacket with something that could well be shame.

After a few seconds, she says: "She had the sand."

Esther takes a deep breath. 

"I forgot about it when I moved out. And Rachel used it as a drug to dream. With me."

The younger one remains silent. The space is open but feels closed-in, like the threshold of Desire. The rain pattering on the roof is like the rocking chair Esther is swaying in, which is like the androgynous being itself, hanging over Johanna's bare back in a metaphorical way.

The girl pouts and stands up, placing her hands on her thighs.

"Have a seat." she says to her colleague, pointing to the rocking chair. "Linden with honey, dream mix, Earl Grey or chamomile and anise?"

Johanna looks at her through her auburn hair and gives her a little smile.

"Linden with five of honey."

Ah, carajo.

Esther enters her house as if she were a burglar, ready to rummage through even the dusty corners of the bookcase. She goes to the kitchen, puts the kettle on and reaches for the tea bags, picking up two of the linden and two of the dream mix. She takes Johanna's unofficial cup, a black one with white polka dots, and her own, a large yellow one with the Hufflepuff crest on the side. She makes the teas, puts three spoonfuls of honey in her mug and five in Johanna's, and walks with both mugs in her hands, opening the screen door silently. She gave her cup to Johanna, who was sitting on the stool next to the rocking chair, and sat back down on the old piece of furniture.

They both took a few sips of their respective teas before Johanna continued, "Today I performed an exorcism at Ric's request. When I got to the church, Mad Hettie called out to me from the front square."

"You mean the crazy old woman who accused me of being the Sandman's mistress? "

"That one. "

Esther can't help but hide a sarcastic smirk behind her mug. She vaguely remembers meeting the woman who has been alive for almost three centuries a couple of times. The first encounter was pretty amusing, given that the old woman accused her of being ironic by worshipping the Creator when she was an entity in her own right. She remembers telling him that she plans to live a full life because, in the end, everything will come to an end. She gave her the Katniss Everdeen bow and left her grumbling in the square. The second clash involved accusations of being the Sandman's mistress. This witch sensed some of the Sandman's power within her, even though she was born several decades after his imprisonment. 

Needless to say, they didn't get along.

"And what did she say to you?"

Johanna's posture becomes a little straighter, she takes another sip of her tea, and looks at Esther as if she were about to explode.

"That the Sandman is back."

The silence that followed was quite muffled, as if all the sound in the world had suddenly disappeared.

Then Esther took a sip of her own tea, rested the cup against her cheek, and gave a shrug.

"Yes, I was aware of that."

Johanna's face was a picture.

"And you didn't tell me!? Since when did you know?

"Three days ago."

"You shoulda let me know!"

"Darling, I'm the one who's keeping out of his way. All you had to do was give him his sand and avoid mentioning my name."

Johanna lets out a derisive laugh.

"Ah ha! Best of luck with that!"

Esther lifts her head so sharply that her neck crackles. She tilts her head warningly and looks her friend in the eye.

"Could ye please explain what ye mean by that?"

The Constantine lets out a giggle that sounds a bit spooky. Behind her head, the sun is just starting to peek through the clouds, which are covered in water droplets.

"He's attractive." she says, seemingly out of the blue, as if she wants to give Esther a heart attack. "He's really attractive. The Chordettes' song comes close to describing him, but only just. He's got a strong jaw and gorgeous, beautiful eyes, blue as the summer sky, with stars in them. He also has a rather enviable bone structure, with cheekbones that make him irresistible. He also has the pink lips from that catchy verse in the song. He's the epitome of a dreamy being, both literally and figuratively. I'd sleep with him if he didn't have 'property of Esther Carrasco' written in his eyes."

The girl pouts. "That's not..."

"He mentioned you.' He remembers you."

...

Esther swallows a lump of saliva that seems like a rock, the way it scrapes her throat. She puts her cup of tea down on the bedside table and takes a deep breath, feeling suddenly cold, as if she were standing in the rain that had eased a little next to them.

He mentioned her. He remembers her.

"I wrote to Paul in May." she says, also out of the blue, because that's the only explanation she can think of. "In the letter, I gave him a quick overview of what had happened since our meeting in the basement. In the end, she told him that she forgave him, her husband Roderick Burgess and the Sandman. Not because they deserve it, but because I'm tired. I want to fulfil my dream, which is to be able to say that I lived. I can't do that if I'm still carrying bitterness and grief. I asked him to pass on my apologies to the Sandman for not insisting. For not trying to free him one more time. I also asked him to tell him that, even though I couldn't grant him the freedom he wanted, I forgive him because that's the freedom I can give him. Let him have faith and hope. Let him know I'll be praying for him and that he's not forgotten.

Johanna gives her a sort of grimace that looks like a smile.

- You're the only person who could possibly pray to your God on behalf of another entity.

Esther smiles at her, looking a little shamefaced, and shrugs as she clutches her large Hufflepuff mug. 

"The Fates gave me a heads-up." she says, recalling the day she got her symbol and needles. "They said he might be coming."

"Did they tell you I'd be the one to bring him in?"

Esther looks at Johanna with her eyes wide open.

"You were going to bring him in? To my house? How could I possibly tell my mother that...?!"

Johanna holds up her hands, one of which is busy with her cup.

"He asked in a really persuasive way! He looked like a puppy who'd been kicked and was looking for its mother. And that he is a primordial entity. He asked what I knew about you and if you were out of his reach. I made him swear by his power that he would not harm you. He agreed and we were on our way, but then I called you and as soon as I finished the call he disappeared. He went 'poof'! I'd say he backed down, but we traded favours fairly. Perhaps Matthew let something slip or..."

"Matthew?"

Johanna stops suddenly, makes a nonchalant gesture and takes a last sip of her tea.

"His raven. My grandmother always told me that Dream of the Endless has a raven. This one was quite the charmer. He was definitely more jovial than his master."

"No shit, Sherlock."

"I'm serious. Your Sandman is pretty handsome, but he's as bitter as one of your mates without honey. I suppose spending a century locked up does that to someone."

Esther lets out a tired groan and leans her forehead against the rim of her cup.

"By a devil, that's all I need."

Johanna laughs and raises her teacup as if it were a glass of champagne.

"By a devil, indeed. Salute."

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

It would be wonderful to say that Esther did what would be expected of any reasonable being.

The thing is, she is trying to be a reasonable being, but the first thing she did was go and talk to Destiny.

After Johanna said goodbye with a little nod and a promise to send a message when she reached her labyrinthine apartment, the girl went back inside and tried to rest, taking a sleeping pill with the cold tea left in her cup. She slept until 10am, when her mother woke her and asked her to clean the rooms while she cleaned the living room and dining room. 

The day passed with the hum of the washing machine filling the kitchen, laundry being folded and the dull sound of kitchen utensils being moved to clear the shelves. Esther scrubbed at every speck of dirt she could find on the floor, on the junk, on anything that wasn't the same sentence, with a rag that had been a T-shirt:

He mentioned her. He remembers her.

"Estibaliiiiiiiz. "her mother whispers in a suggestive tone. "We're collaborators today, eh?"

In response, the girl laughs violently, a 'ha, ha, ha' that seems to be ripped from her throat by Despair's hook. She snorts to remove a strand of hair that has fallen from her messy bun, and continues to rub the steel sponge over the disgustingly rusty pot until she somehow manages to find the shiny buried steel.

And yet she keeps thinking about that damned sentence. She keeps feeling as if something inside her is waiting to be unleashed. She keeps waiting for some trace of jaws capable of shattering glass, or eyes as blue as the starry summer sky to appear out of the corner of her eye.

When she has finished her part, Esther stares at the sun as it begins to move over the horizon. She took a deep breath, like, really deep, as much as her lungs would allow, and then went straight to her mirror, and just as the Elder of the Endless had explained to her, she dipped her hands into the glass, which was transfigured as if it were a fountain. It felt like one.

"Destiny, I am in my chambers, at the gateway to the Portal Between Realms, and I request access to yours. Please respond."

Nothing happened for a few seconds.

Then Destiny's seal, the book with the chain, glowed at the top of the mirror frame, like a mould pressed against biscuit dough. The glass of the mirror lit up and Esther crossed over.

It was a short projected journey, with many reflections and iridescent effects. It wasn't the first time she'd used it, but she still wasn't quite used to the few seconds it took to cross all the borderlands between her realm and Destiny's.

Crossing the frame of the Eternal's gallery, she turned her attention to the familiar stone corridor and the sounds of incessant fluttering.

"Hello, dear ones. " she says to the invisible servants responsible for the sound. "I beg you to lead me to where your master is. It is imperative that I speak to him."

As with her mirror, nothing happens for a few seconds, until the fluttering sound becomes louder, as if the servants were approaching her. Then the sound spreads... to the right, across the garden, into the castle.

Esther concentrates on the sound, letting her feet follow the trail of sound they leave behind, trotting between corridors and stone staircases, until she reaches what is surprisingly a hall, all stone, with no furniture except for a fireplace that seems to have a fire burning without wood, and large windows without glass that offer a beautiful view of the Garden of Forking Ways. 

There, in front of the window on the right, is Destiny, bent over his book as usual. 

Esther whispers a thank you to the fluttering one, and they disappear in the distance.

"Greetings, Proklisi." says Destiny, not bothering to acknowledge her with his eyes.

"Greetings too, Potmos." Esther replies, trying to catch her breath without looking like a fish out of water. "You know why I came."

"You know nothing is certain with you." the Eternal replies, and if Esther didn't know better, she would say he was struggling with a mischievous little smile. "But I have a sneaking suspicion."

The girl laughs inwardly.

"The Sandman is free."

Destiny then turns towards her, his whole toga-clad body pointing towards her.

"I am aware of such a development."

Esther nods and presses two knuckles to her hairline.

"I've come for some answers."

The being before her nods solemnly and takes a few steps closer, his book chain rattling eerily.

"State your doubts."

Esther lowers her head and rubs her eyes roughly, trying to get the last of the sand out of them, as if it's something she can't quite get out.

She suspects it isn't, looking at the whole situation from Destiny's point of view.

"Is it possible that he has bad intentions towards me? For failing? Or because I accidentally acquired some of his power? Should I... Should I run or hide from him?"

The Eternal takes a few... eternal seconds before answering with a definitive tone:

"That's up to him. If you think it wise to run or hide, then do so. But you can't because you are a dreamer, you are part of him and he is part of you. He will always find you and you will always find him."

Esther purses her lips into an almost resigned grimace. She lowers her head and murmurs:

"It sounds like a line from a romantic tale of unhappy creatures."

Destiny lifts his book so that it covers the half of his face that is not hidden by his hood.

"There is no such thing. Only the truth."

The girl nods.

"What should I do?"

The anthropomorphic personification of will and destiny holds up his book so that Esther can see what is written.

Esther hesitates, but finally stands on tiptoe, mentally preparing herself to see whatever is there.

There is nothing.

Empty pages, with the texture of an old book. Not a single inkblot, not a single word to give him a clue as to how to proceed. 

"That's up to you, too."

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

By the time Esther got back home, less than an hour later, it was already dark. She prepares a thermos of camomile tea with aniseed and tells her mother she is going for a walk. Gabriela nods absent-mindedly, and the girl walks for a while with no apparent destination.

She crosses several streets, smiles awkwardly at the people she passes, and when she reaches a small park with swings, the same one where her mother took her to tell her about St Paul's letter, she sits down on the swing whose chain squeaks disgustingly. Far from being unpleasant, it gives Esther a sense of normality. 

What a point I've come to where listening to a swing squeak like an old hinge brings her comfort.

She takes another sip of her tea and looks away from the pets playing, the children with their parents, the cars and motorbikes with their lights on.

Esther stretched out her foot to plant it on the ground and pushed herself up, managing to swing gently on the swing. She takes another sip of tea and continues to observe her surroundings, listening to the whistling of the wind, the distant laughter of children and the occasional chirping of an owl or crow.

When she feels a chill surprisingly pierce her ribs, Esther takes another sip of her tea and looks up at the moon. It's full, and casts soft silvery light over the darkest parts of town. She sighs and remains silent, rocking on the swing.

When she gets up to go home, she gets so dizzy she has to hold on to the swing. She presses her thermos to her forehead, trying to keep it together so as not to attract attention. It's a simple dizziness, not too strong, but enough to make her feel like the world is in a blender.

"Must be the iron deficiency," she says aloud, pressing hard on her eyelids. "I haven't been eating much meat lately."

She swears she can hear a raven crawling, as if it agreed with her.

"Exactly." Esther replies, because she wants to, because she can, and because she's met Delirium in the flesh, dammit. "But everything can be done with faith, trust and pixie du... wait, it wasn't like that." she presses her lip to the edge of her thermos and taps it with her nails, thoughtfully. When the words come to her, she snaps her fingers without humour. "With faith and hope, now yes."

The girls take another sip of her tea, which is now lukewarm, and start walking back to her house with a hand on her throat.

"Dicen que Dios tiene sueños..." she sings, using the loliness of the streets to walk the pavement like the madwoman she is. "Ocho billones de sueños, dicen que eres uno de ellos, mira que hermoso destello eres de Él."

When Esther arrives on the veranda of her house, she looks up at the sky, at the moon, and smiles.

"I apologise for my delirious manners, Lord." she whispers, knowing full well that she's being heard. "It's just that I'm frightened and relieved. What a paradox."

For a moment the moon seems to shine a little brighter.

Esther nods to herself and continues singing as she goes to see what she can cook.

"Dicen que hay una casa, en donde el tiempo no pasa, puedes llegar si te atreves a creer..."

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter seven teen !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ A coward judges all he sees by what he is.❞﹚.

⸻Stephen King, from "The Dark Tower".

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

It happens again. That period of time when nothing unusual beyond the usual happens. If you discount the time she woke up with visions of a red jewel and feeling like something was dying inside her. She doesn't remember much about it, so it doesn't count.

This time, Esther doesn't hesitate to accept that it will last for a while. She just childishly hopes that's all.

After turning 17, she goes back to school, excited to start her junior year.

She carries on working in the bookshop, helping people find what they're looking for and organising the books in each category. She also learns how to make coffee, watching his fellow baristas, including Marco, smile at him and serve him his mocha with Nutella while they're on break.

She keeps on visiting her mother at The New Inn, sitting and chatting with Professor Gadling whenever she can, and asking him all the questions she can think of about his university subject, history. The man is happy to answer her in detail, as if he had actually been to the court of Queen Anne Boleyn, as if he had seen the concentration camps in Germany.

She keeps in touch with Amara, Delirium, Johanna and Destiny from time to time. For the most part, it's just something to do. For the entities, it's a way to pass the time. For Johanna, it's a kind of therapy.

She still looks after Daisy's kids, telling them stories and taking them for walks in Richmond Park because it's such a beautiful place.

She still goes to her aerial dance classes, putting all her enthusiasm into it. 

She continues to knit, and now she can embroider as well. 

She still goes to church, happy and a little lost, but always smiling from the sheer relief of being there. 

She adds one more thing to her routine, though; she goes to sleep every night, hoping she'll have an encounter with the Sandman, and hoping the opposite.

She's basically putting herself on a silver platter. At will.

Destiny said it was her decision, so here she is. Waiting.

But Esther, somewhat suspiciously, doesn't have any dreams. Not about the wasteland, nor about Lucienne, nothing.

She waits.

And she waits.

And she waits.

But he never came.

Which is pretty frustrating, but at the same time, it's a relief because she won't have to face him, for now.

That is, until one Sunday afternoon, while she's reading in the living room, she hears a meow, like, really aggressive, and at the same time, there's a bird squawk that sounds suspiciously like a human cry.

Esther tosses the book (the one Paul had given her) aside and dashes out into the courtyard of her house, opening the screen door to find her cat,  by the lavender bush, chewing on a raven's wing.

"Oneiros!" she shouts, practically flying towards the two animals, grabbing her cat by the scruff of the neck to pull it like a leech. "Oneiros, déjalo!*"

The cat bites the raven's wing, and the bird cries out in pain as he flaps his other wing uselessly.

"Gato!**" Esther scolds in her mother's Latin accent and lifts the cat up with one hand while grabbing his jaw with the other. She forces his teeth open with her fingers to let go of the raven. "Listo!***"

The bird falls like a dead weight to the grass with a thud, cawing and flapping wildly, trying to get away. Esther takes a sharp intake of breath and puts Oneiros down, not very gently, and goes over to the little creature with outstretched hands.

"Easy, easy, easy." she whispers, trying to get closer. She hears her cat begin to growl, and turns sharply to shoo him away with one hand. "Shu! You're grounded! Sáquese!****"

The cat hisses at her, as if she's being ungrateful, and runs off like lightning towards the front of the house, disappearing behind Esteban's neighbour's jasmine bush. The girl snorts like a bull and turns back to the raven, which is gasping for breath through his beak and cradling his injured wing close to his chest.

"That's it," the girl says, holding her hands up in that universal gesture of good intentions, "he's gone. Let me help you with that."

The bird lets out a pitiful cry.

"I know it hurts," she says as she kneels slowly and places her hands in a bowl position. "but it will stop hurting eventually. Right now, we need to take a look at your wing and treat it as soon as we can."

Esther puts her hands on either side of the raven, which looks at her with his unblinking black eyes. When he doen't show intention of pecking at her fingers, she puts her hands under his body and gently holds him.

The raven caws and grabs Esther's thumb with his beak. She pauses, but when she sees the raven breathe an almost human-like sigh and close his eyes, she smiles and lifts him up to cradle him against her chest.

"Easy, little death omen." she says, as she steps back towards her house. The raven opens his eyes with a comical rapidity, as if disoriented. "Just to be clear, I actually know her. She's nice."

She opens the screen door with her back, gently rearranges the bird so that she can hold him with one hand, takes a pillow from the sofa with the one that was left free, and so arranges her unwitting guest on the kitchen counter, leaving him in a position to check his injured wing.

"Right," she says to herself. " be right back." the raven just blinks. Esther gives him a quick smile and heads to the bathroom to get the first aid kit. She puts it beside the little animal and gets some cotton wool, soaks it in alcohol, and shows it to the raven. "Right, first thing I'm going to do is make sure there are no infections. If you could just spread the wing as much as you can without hurting it, that would be great."

The raven blinks a few more times, as if a bit disoriented.

Then he does what she asks; he spreads the wing like an accordion, exposing the radial, which is plucked and leaving the flesh exposed, with a little blood and scabs.

"Oh, sorry I didn't get there sooner, mo stóirín.***** " Esther says, biting her lip.

The raven blinks and lowers his head until his beak rests on the pillow he's resting on.

"I'mma heal you now." the girl continues, holding out her hands to show her palms. "It's gonna sting a little, but it'll be over soon. You can peck me finger if you like." and she holds out her little finger.

The bird stares at her outstretched finger for a couple of seconds, then moves his beak and pulls her little finger away. Unstead, he pecks at the pillow and breathes.

"Okay." Esther says, smiling gently. She takes the radial from underneath with her left hand and pulls the cotton wool closer. All right, little one. Just think of something nice."

As she gently touches the soggy nub to the wound, the raven lets out a cry-like sound that breaks Esther's heart. She puts the injured wing on the pillow and reaches behind his back, stopping for a moment before putting two fingers on the small of the bird's neck and rubbing them across his back twice. The bird relaxes, but its injured wing is still tense, so the girl presses her lips together and continues stroking his back.

"Let's see. I'm going to sing a little, okay? It's a lullaby I use to put two children I consider family to sleep. It might help you feel better. Whatcha think?"

The bird just takes a deep breath, and his body swells with air filling his lungs.

"I'll take that as a yes, then." She takes a deep breath and, as she brushes the cotton against the radial artery, she sings softly. "Hush now, mo stóirín. Close your eyes and sleep. Waltzing the waves, diving the deep. Stars are shining bright, the wind is on the rise, whispering words of long-lost lullabies."

She takes a few seconds to clear the blood, her heart clenching each time the raven caws faintly.

"Oh, won't you come with me, where the moon is made of gold?" ESther continues, with the voice a little tight. "And with the morning sun, we'll be sailing. Oh, won't you come with me, where the ocean meets the sky? And as the clouds roll by, we'll sing the song of the sea."

The raven closes his eyes, and so Esther can continue.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .* ིྀིྀ

On her way home from work, Gabriela lets out a scream when she sees the raven on the coffee table, covered by two blankets and perched on a pillow, with Esther feeding it small pieces of chocolate biscuits, which the bird happily pecks at.

"Estibaliz Alazne Nazareth Carrasco!" her mother exclaims in Spanish, putting a Latin twist on each word, and Esther shrugs her shoulders as they get more intense. "Why is there a raven on the coffee table?"

Esther smiles at her mother, her expression looking like something out of a cartoon.

"Oneiros bit his wing, I managed to grab him from his jaws, and now I'm... looking after him?"

Her mother lets out a little gasp, placing a hand on her chest as she stares at it.

The raven caws, as if saying 'hello', and Gabriela suddenly turns pale.

"Why do you always bring death omens into the house?" she asks, her voice breathless, as she leaves her coat on the coat rack by the door and her bag on one of the single sofas. "What's next?" "Death come with his scythe to tea?"

Esther bites her lip and stops herself from laughing.

"First, the fact that cats are black and ravens are scavenger birds and therefore linked to death and witchcraft isn't their fault. Secondly, he was hurt by my own cat, no less. I guess I could at least help him, right? Look at that little face."

Gabriela looks at the face. Her light blue eyes look at the black beak, the equally black eyes looking back at her, and the feathers so dark they glow blue in the light of the setting sun.

"I'm looking at that little face," Gabriela mutters between her teeth. "y me espanta como el demonio.******"

The raven caws again, but more sharply, and turns his head to one side, like an offended cat.

Esther lets out a short laugh. "Just a heads-up, crows are known to be clever."

"I'm sure he didn't understand what I said." Gabriela gives her assurance, but she suddenly falls silent, her eyes wide open and fixed on the raven. "Or did he?"

"I'm not sure." Esther responds playfully, taking a bite out of a biscuit. "What do you say, little omen? Did you understand?"

The raven blinks, and his black eyes glow a little blue in the evening light. And then, in a very human-like way, he shakes his head up and down.

"The raven just nodded." Gabriela whispers, looking surprised.

The little omen shakes his head at her, in that way that only they do, and opens his beak to caw loudly.

Gabriela lets out a scream and runs towards the stairs.

Esther laughs loudly with one hand on her stomach and walks over, placing a hand on the banister.

"I'll call Johanna." she says, taking a biscuit to her mouth, causing her mouth to be full, hoping her voice will echo through the corridors at the top of the house. "She knows more about animal care than I do. Maybe she'll agree to keep him in her flat until he recovers, so he doesn't scare you away."

Her mother responds, peeking her head over the edge of the wall. "Thanks for thinking of my nerves, my child. I wouldn't want to wake up with my eyes gouged out tomorrow morning. Let's get together with Johanna for a tea party to thank her for this.""

The girl sticks out her tongue at her as she dials the other woman's number, waiting to see her mother head off to her room.

The phone rings once, twice, three times, until Johanna's somewhat strained voice comes through.

"What can I do to help my annoying but dearest colleague in supernatural mischief?"

Just as Esther is about to respond, she hears a loud roar that makes her jump.

"Yer in the middle of an exorcism, aren't ye?"

"Yes. Just a moment." She hears a scuffling sound, an ancient Latin chant, and a rush of choppy wind. Esther watches the raven, who looks at her with his head cocked to one side in that typical raven way. "Done. So, what can I do for you?"

"I have a death omen with a chewed wing in my house. Could you possibly come and explain how to deal with it? "Or better yet, take him away and nurse him back to health before he gouges my mum's eyes out?"

Johanna takes a few seconds to answer.

Esther frowns.

"Put it on speaker and bring your phone close to the raven."

The younger girl frowns, but does as she's asked; she puts the phone on speaker and brings the microphone close to the raven's beak, which blinks in confusion.

"Matthew?"

The bird in front of her opens his beak and squawks as if he was panting, and at the same time, caught in the squawk, Esther manages to hear;

"Johanna?"

The alluded one doesn't take long to answer: ‘ Well, fuck me. I'm there in three."

And the call is cut off.

Esther puts the phone away and blinks. Then she looks at the raven, which is trying to get up from his comfortable nest of blankets, flapping his healthy wing and cawing desperately.

"Matthew..." she whispers. The bird stops, and stares at the girl as he opens and closes his beak.

Then he gives up. Drops his wings, rests his beak on the pillow, and when he opens it, out comes not a squawk, but a strangely accented male voice, muttering:

"Hello."

Esther, unlike her mother, doesn't scream. She simply jumps up from her position, like a spring, and runs into the kitchen, grabbing the bin so she can throw up.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .* ིྀིྀ

Johanna, the tips of her hair singed and her face scrunched up in a manic expression, bangs on the front door to see something worthy of a fantasy film: Esther, dwarfed against the foot of a sofa, knees together and staring madly at the raven on the coffee table with her mystical needles.

"What the actual...?"

"The... raven... the... he... it..."

Johanna looks at the bird, one wing pressed against her body, the other fully extended.

"Matthew," the older woman calls. "What are you doing on Esther's coffee table?"

The girl looks at her with wide-open eyes.

The raven caws. "Her cat chewed my wing. She was kind and helped me. She even sang me a lullaby. But then her mother came and got hysterical, and after she left and you told on me, Esther threw up and..."

"And why was the cat chewing on your wing?"

He shuts its beak.

Esther looks between the two as if it were a ping-pong match, and with her needles still up, she kneels down and leans over the coffee table.

"Amara asked you to come?"

Matthew tilts his head sideways.

"Who's Amara?"

"No. Destiny?"

"No."

"Desire?"

"Why do you say these words as if they were people?"

"Fates?"

"I don't even know what those things are!"

"Then who sent ye here?"

The raven doesn't answer.

Esther turns to Johanna, who presses her lips together so hard they're white.

"How ye know 'im?"

Constantine looks at Esther as if she's cross-eyed.

"Don't you know the stories? Don't you remember what I told you in August?"

Esther has an idea, but she wants to hear it out loud.

"Ye said a lotta things in August."

Johanna sneers cruelly with her hand on her belly.

"Very funny, girlie. That's your Sandman's herald over there," she points to the raven. "Maybe the bastard sent it to you."

The younger girl blinked twice.

Matthew croaks and sighs.

"The boss will be so pissed."

And just then, Esther's brain short-circuits, leaving her as still as a statue, trying to connect points.

Johanna throws her head back and laughs. "I'll talk to your mother and get you to come with me."

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .* ིྀིྀ

When Esther comes to, her mother and Johanna are hovering over her like two condors assessing whether she is really dead.

"What?" she snarls in annoyance as she straightens up.

She's tired, angry and doesn't want anyone bothering her with their questions. But this is her mother and Johanna, so she waits.

"I'm taking the raven to my apartment," Constantine announces, smiling at her ungraciously. "And you will come. I'll teach you how to look after it properly."

"And if I don't want to?"

Gabriela answers, her lips pursed, "Your cat chewed him up, you brought him with you, you'll look after him with Johanna. You have an affinity for strange things.

"Not this one."

The raven crows in the distance. Johanna points at it with the ringed finger of her left hand as a warning.

"Well, you gave him your sacred chocolate chip cookies," her mother counters with a shrug. Esther's eyes narrow at the other woman. "What's different now?"

The girl cocks her head at the bird of prey, who again cocks her head to one side.

Well, dear Mathair of my heart, it turns out that this raven is from the one being who didn't have the decency to show up after I bled and prayed and waited for him. It turns out that he sent it as a scapegoat, because it also turns out that all beings are the same; cowards with powers. That's what's different now. This Dream of the Endless isn't so dreamy, it turns out.

Esther snorts and nods, tilting her head as if her spine were heavy.

"Good," she mutters. She rises from her position, presses her face hard to wake herself up, runs her fingers over her eyelids to remove some of the sand, and looks up at Matthew with narrowed eyes. "You're in luck, you little death omen."

Maybe she's just imagining it, but the raven seems to swallow regretfully.

Then Esther smiles. A slow smile that spreads across her young Grinch-like face, framing her features with mischief and defiance. When she looks into the bird's eyes, they are no longer black. For a second they are blue. Like the summer sky.

Then they are black again.

She bares her teeth as she laughs through her nose.

"Very lucky indeed."

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .* ིྀིྀ

When they reach Johanna's flat, walking quietly in the cool winter night, something glows on the kitchen counter, giving off a soft bluish halo.

Esther frowns, and with one hand she rearranges her rucksack and the raven perched on her forearm, its beak buried in her elbow.

"But I've already salted it," the Constantine woman growls, dropping her bag on the couch as she heads for the light. Esther watches as she picks up a clawed orb from a dead bird and drops it into a box, slamming it shut. "I'll deal with that later. Now put that hideous thing on the coffee table."

Esther obeys, walking slowly as she gently removes the raven from her arms. Matthew caws weakly, and his healthy wing slides down her forearm like little Josephine's tiny arms as she places it in her mother's grasp. Esther feels a sudden lump in her throat, but swallows it like a rock and puts it down gently on the coffee table, because it's not his fault that his boss is a coward.

Johanna returns with her hair in a bun, a tray of biscuits and a small bag of almonds. She sits down on the sofa next to Esther, picks up an Oreo and chews it thoughtfully.

"Very well, Matthew. "She opens the bag of almonds and holds them out to the raven, who pecks at them reluctantly. "Tell us, why are you here? Did Morpheus send you?"

Esther grits her teeth and waits silently.

The raven swallows an almond and scrapes its beak against its coated back, then speaks.

"I'd rather not say."

"Why?" Esther asks bitterly.

"Because as scary as you are, kid, the boss scares me more. All I can tell you is that he hasn't met you yet for a very good reason."

Esther closes her eyes with regret and sighs. She puts her hand to her nose and massages it defeated.

"Okay, then," she grunts. She gets up, grabs her rucksack and heads for Johanna's room.

"Hey." she says, calling out to her. "Esther."

"No, Johanna," she replies. She looks at the raven with the eyes of a surrendering deer and says, trying to hold back her tears. "As soon as you recover, come back. Tell the Sandman not to worry, that I won't use his power. And tell Lucienne that every time I go to sleep, I'll try to dream of a caramel macchiato, so she can enjoy it." she says, looking at her friend and then back at the raven. "I'm done."

She turns and starts for the door when she hears Matthew say:

"Esther, he knows he's let you down, but... "

She gives him a look over her shoulder, one that she hopes reflects the exhaustion, sadness and anger she feels. It seems to work, as the crow closes its beak. Then, out of sheer bitterness, it says something that changes the course of Destiny:

"Dream of the Endless owes me nothing. And like I said, I'm done."

She didn't stay to listen. She went to the bathroom with her clothes, drew a hot bath with lavender-scented water and stood in the water, her hair in a bun, the steam hiding the tears of helplessness and rage that overflowed from her eyes, her broken voice singing slowly:

"I can promise you, yes, I am a dreamer too..."

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter eigh teen !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ I dreamed I forgot you, but to dream you was remembering.I have words for you only, a linguistic fidelity. Cherish and anguish and fool. I look for you, I am finding out if I am brave. Last I saw you, it was the same disruptive season: robins trilling in the young flush, trees shivering, pink all down the street. I thought the ache would ruin me, and maybe it did. Here I am, in the beatific after, still calling back to you.

.❞﹚.

⸻Leila Chatti, "I dreamed I forgot".

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

19 March, 2023 arrives, and with it, it'll have been four years since Sheridan Carrasco closed his eyes forever.

Esther asks her mother if she can go to Daisy's house to spend the afternoon with the kids, and her mother, with tears in her eyes, says yes. She gives her a kiss on the forehead and says that if she wants to, and if Daisy is OK with it, she can stay the night there too. 

The girl calls her mother's friend and, when she gets the go-ahead to go and stay until the next day, she packs a small backpack, washes, dresses in black, ties half her hair in a Celtic knot, kisses her cat on the forehead, and says goodbye to her mother with a hug, a last sad smile, and walks out, letting the spring wind carry her thoughts away.

When she reaches the porch of Daisy's house, she knocks on the door three times, in time with the Wellerman's song, and waits.

It's Marisol who opens the door.

Esther smiles tiredly at her. "Hi there, peque*."

The girl, as intuitive as her mother and as compassionate as her father, holds out her hand, her multiple plastic beaded bracelets jingling with clicks that squeeze the girl's tired heart. The sight of that small outstretched hand, of what it implies, makes her tear-weary eyes well up again.

Esther takes her hand.

Daisy's inside, preparing what looks like a batch of alfajores de maicena**. Her hair is tied up in a tousled bun, and the look of concentration in her dark eyes fades when she sees her.

"Buenas, bonita.***" she says, with an excellent Latin accent and a youthful look.

"Buenas, Margarita." Esther responds with a soft, whispered greeting. "Deberías estar laburando.****"

"Pedí licencia por cuidado familiar." the woman replied, smiling. "La pequeña Josefina está enferma.*****"

"¿'Ta bien?"******

"Está un poco resfriada. Nada que un masaje con grasa de gallina y las historias de la querida Estrellita no arreglen.*******"

The girl smiles and nods. 

"¿Y Santiago?********"

"Su padre fue a buscarlo de su práctica de equitación. Regresarán en unos minutos.*********"

When the first alfajores are ready, Daisy suggests to Esther that she, Marisol and little Josefina go for a walk in Richmond. She just asks them to be back before dark, but to enjoy themselves. If they can, they should also bring two kilos of potatoes to make a fried food and breadcrumbs appetiser.

Esther nods and, while Marisol heads to her room to get ready, she goes to look for Josefina, who, according to her mother, is in the cradle. However, when she crosses the threshold, she is taken aback by what she sees, which can only be described as her spirit falling to the floor, like a glass vase causing a clatter.

Amara's there. She's holding Josephine in one arm, rocking her gently.

"Yes, I'm afraid so." says Death, stroking the baby's cheek. "That's all, little one. That's what you got."

Amara turns, clearly to leave, and to take Josephine with her. However, her eyes fall on Esther, and the look they give each other is indescribable.

"Esther." the entity whispers softly.

The girl is visibly shaken, her eyes brimming with tears, and she reaches up to cover her mouth with one hand while wrapping the other around her stomach.

Baby Josefina laughs and holds out her little hand to Esther, while Amara presses her lips together in a sympathetic grimace.

"Why today?" Esther asks, her voice breaking and tears streaming down her face as she leans in closer. "Why not in twenty years, or fifty? She's only a few months old..."

Amara doesn't answer, and after a few seconds, she sighs and gestures for Esther to hold the baby. Esther hurries to do so, holding the little one to her breast and rocking her with desperate passion. The baby reaches out and touches her sticky cheeks, which only makes her cry harder.

"Ina." the girl whispers, her voice sounding like a flat bicycle tyre. "You'll be fine, okay? Amara's gona to take care of you. You may not have...' she says, her voice thick with emotion, and presses her forehead to the baby's small one, taking in the pure, innocent touch that babies have, still clean from the cruelty of the world. Josephine makes a joyful sound, which makes her sob harder. "Oh, God. Her family..."

Amara puts a hand on her shoulder.

"It's time."

Esther nods and places a soft kiss on Josephine's forehead. She hugs and rocks her one last time, and as she hands her to Amara, she feels her heart being taken away from her, so she takes the baby's little hand.

"You were, are and will be loved, pequeña pulga**********. In this and every life. And not even this damned being of existence," she points with her chin at the entity, who cocks his head and smiles complicitly. "can change that. "

Josephine laughs, her laughter ringing like distant bells, fading at the edges. Amara smiles ruefully at her, squeezes her trembling hand and walks into the next room, the baby still giggling and holding out her little hands to Esther. As Amara crosses the threshold, wing-like shadows unfold and there is the sound of thousands of wings flapping.

Biting her lip so hard she can taste the blood, Esther goes to the cradle where Josephine's tiny, non-breathing, non-moving body rests, peaceful as a pond, and falls to her knees in silence, clutching one of the posts that surround the cradle. The tears are uncontrollable. Her stomach turns. The sobs are loud, even with her hand trying to muffle them.

She feels a presence behind her and, thinking it's Amara, with her wings still out, for she can still hear them flapping, she speaks.

"How will I explain to them that you've taken her? How do I tell them she's gone?"

There's no answer.

"I had to tell her the story of Tir na nÓg one last time." she whispers, her voice barely able to come out through the tightness of her throat." I had so many stories and songs and poems. So many..." she takes a breath and a sob breaks out of her throat and onto her lips. "So many dreams..."

Something settles between her shoulder blades, and it doesn't comfort her in any way, even though it's something warm and big and....

Something inside her, something that's not her own, is crying, kicking and screaming. It fills her with warmth, with rage, with an urge to return to where, to whom, it belongs.

'Home. Home. Home.'

Esther takes a sharp breath and jumps to her feet, turning around so quickly that her hair flies around her head in a halo.

The one behind her isn't Amara. 

It's a man.

Despite her tears and sadness, she thinks he's beautiful, at least for a moment.

That is, until she hears footsteps and sees Amara approaching from the corner of her eye.

She looks at them and her neutral expression turns into a resigned one.

"I really didn't want you two to meet again like this."

Esther frowns, and when she looks back at the man, she realises what's going on.

He looks pale. Too pale. Like he's never seen the sun in his life. His hair is black and a bit dishevelled, as if he's just got up. He's dressed entirely in black, like her, which makes him look even paler. His jaw looks as if it could splinter glass, and his eyes are as blue as the summer sky.

He looks at her with an anticipatory expression. He looks sad, ancient, heavy, but with a strange glow in his pupils, as if he had pole stars in each one. They are eyes that contain galaxies, constellations, nebulae and... dreams.

"Esther." he says. His voice is full of faith, hope, pain, antiquity and endless more.

Her brain stops. Her heart doesn't beat, and when it does, she reacts as Delirium would've done: shaking her head and laughing slowly as she wriggles out of the little pigeonhole she's in, caught between the cradle and this man who is...

"No." she says, biting her lip so hard that she tastes blood again. "No."

The man follows her gaze and his face changes. He looks desolate, like an abandoned child, forgotten and forsaken. He takes a step, then two, towards her.

"You know me." he says, his deep voice that inspires sleep and dreaming now nervous and anticipatory. "We have met before."

"No." Esther says, pointing at him with a finger that has a woven ring, that Marisol made for her. "No."

"You don't remember me?" the man asks, and his feet falter for a second, so briefly that if Esther hadn't been looking, she wouldn't have seen it. "Have you forgotten me?"

Esther lets out a cruel laugh, her sharp cackle bouncing off the walls. Amara, standing next to her, shivers, and the man, his pale face even paler, pulls back slowly and quietly, eyelids shaking.

"Yer not the victim here," she says, looking him up and down with a look of disgust, from the combat boots to the most uncombed hair strand. "Dream of the Endless."

The way she says his name, as if it were a sour candy, makes him shudder all the more. 

"Yes, I know ye." the girl says, taking each step with purpose, approaching the Sandman like a wolf approaching a gazelle. "I've seen ye before. I recognise ye. And I haven't forgotten ye. But that ain't mean things are well between us."

The Sandman looks at her as if she were the cruelest of creatures. His eyes, which could be summer sky blue, are full of tears, or maybe he has conjunctivitis from all the sand. He doesn't move, he doesn't react, he just stands there, still, like a Greek statue, beautiful but tragic.

Then he opens his mouth and regretfully whispers:

"You asked me to forgive you. You also said you forgave me."

Esther swallows a mouthful of saliva. She knows he's talking about the letter he wrote to Alex and Paul, but she shakes her head again.

"That was when I still believed that..."

Esther chokes up a bit. It's like her tongue is tangled up like the threads of the Fates. It's worse than saying what he meant to say because he opens his lips a bit and a single tear falls from his left eye, down his cheek and his jaw. It catches the sun for a second, looks like a diamond, and falls onto his black coat.

Esther takes a deep breath, feeling a bit overwhelmed.

She made him cry.

'Pretty well.' the resentful, bitter part of her says. 'He deserves it after his neglect.'

She turns to Amara.

"What he doin' 'ere?"

Amara opens her mouth to answer, but the Sandman stops her with a word.

"Sister, do not."

This is the third time today that Esther lives up to her position as entity, 'cause her heart has stopped, but she's still alive.

Death's eyes open wide, like two cathedral windows, and there's a look of shock and irritation in them.

Esther turns slowly to the Sandman, who has an owl-like appearance, and bites.

"Sister?"

Time seems to stand still. The sun stops shining. The wind stops blowing. Both entities lower their heads as if Esther is the one condemning them to die.

It might be the case.

But that's enough.

"Get out." she says firmly. "Both of ye. Now."

Amara raises her head and starts saying: "Esther…"

She doesn't get to finish; the girl takes on a wild look in her eyes as she takes her needles out of her bracelet, raises them high and points them at both recently-presented siblings.

"Ye two are gonna leave this house without looking back. You'll do it without complaining, because I'm the Defiant and so I rewrite what is written."

It all happens really quickly. Esther gives them one last look, and then, they're both gone.

The girl suddenly collapses, her knees hitting the floor with a loud crunch. Her needles fall to the wooden floor with a clink. Her sobs turn into pain-filled screams.

She hears footsteps running towards her, and when she looks up from behind her shoulder, she sees Daisy, her hands stained with flour, and Marisol, with a badly buckled gardener, peeking through the door.

She just cries and cries harder.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

The days that follow pass quickly, with lots of dark clothing, anguished cries, and background noise.

They're similar to the days after Sheridan passed away. 

After the baby's small, private funeral at leader Ophelia's church, Esther goes back to school three times a week for a month, her aerial dance classes are on hold for the month, and she goes to work as usual, even though she was commuting back and forth from her house to Daisy's. 
She looks after the kids, cleans the house, or just stays there because Marisol clings to her neck and Santiago is on her hip, both leaning on her because they don't want to disturb their parents, who are still mourning Josephine.

Everyone's mourning her.

Esther can't get the image of the small coffin covered in jasmine being lowered into the grave they'd dug out of mind. She makes a conscious effort to avoid sleeping deeply. She drinks lots of tea to stop herself dreaming, and she doesn't relax much so she can keep an ear open for the kids or William and Daisy having a disagreement. She's trying to avoid running into him. 

In mid-April, Esther takes them out for a walk in Richmond, where she meets Johanna. They'd last spoken a few weeks ago, when the older girl told her that the Sandman's raven had already left, a couple of days after Esther had retired.

The girl tells the kids to stay put and heads over to meet Constantine, who smiles tiredly back at her.

"You look like shit."

"Hi, it's good to see you're doing well. I appreciate you coming by, ye ungrateful punk."

"Having your symbol carved into my skin helped. But I wasn't the one left to deal with the raven of a primordial entity."

"I already met him."

Johanna falls silent.

"I'm aware."

The two of them are standing in the middle of the park, chatting away. There are a few words that speak volumes in this conversation. Johanna tells how she took care of Matthew until he was ready to leave, and Esther tells him how Amara was with the Sandman at Daisy's house.

When they've finished chatting, Santiago is clinging to Esther's neck as she dozes on his shoulder, and Marisol is swinging like a scarecrow in Johanna's grip.

"To sum up," says Esther, as they head back to Daisy's house with the sun setting behind them, "pretty rough time, all in all."

Johanna gives a little grimace in agreement. She rearranges Marisol in her grip and they both cross the road as the traffic light turns red.

"I suppose I can blame you for my lack of sleep."

Esther frowns, adjusting Santiago in her arms, who mutters something about milanesas and falls back to sleep.

"Whatcha mean?"

Johanna pouts playfully.

"I don't often dream, but the few times I have recently, I've dreamt of you."

Esther stops in the middle of the pavement. The soft snoring of Santiago against her neck is the only thing that keeps her aware that she's on the ground.

"What?"

Johanna shrugs her shoulders as she continues walking, and the girl hurries to catch up.

"In the dream, you were crying. You weren't screaming, but you were bent over a cradle. Your tears looked like rain. The last thing I remember is that you pulled your needles out of seeming nothingness and looked like a Greek goddess about to condemn someone to the gallows."

Esther swallows a lump in her throat.

" Seems to me the Sandman is a bit down." Constantine says, smiling.

"Leave it, Juanita," the younger one says, holding back. "I've better things to do."

Johanna doesn't respond, and the woman simply nods. They walk in silence until they reach Daisy's house.

William is sitting on the porch steps with a notebook in his hand. He looks up and greets them with a polite smile, which is a little worn at the edges.

"Hello Esther, Johanna." he greets. His voice is rough, as if he has sand in his throat. Esther knows why; the man has cried for his little baby in silence, trying to be strong for his wife and children, letting his own sobs tear at his flesh. "I see we won't have to try too hard with them today."

Esther shakes her head and smiles sadly.

They go into the house and see Gabriela sitting with Daisy on the sofa, both of them with cups in their hands and chatting quietly. Or, well, Gabriela is chatting, but Daisy is just staring at the empty space on the small tablecloth that's covering the coffee table in front of them, her hands clenched tightly.

Esther lowers her head, takes a deep breath, gently rearranges Santiago, and says, "Hello, mathair. Daisy."

Johanna follows, whispering firm but soft greetings, acknowledging the mourning that covers the house like a storm.

Both women look up, listening, and Gabriela smiles and nods to them both, and Daisy does the same, keeping her face straight until she sees her remaining children in Esther and Johanna's arms.

Quietly, she points towards the stairs, asking to be taken to their rooms.

The two women climb the steps quietly, making no noise as the old wood creaks, and lead the kids to their room. They put them on their beds, and Johanna shakes herself, looking a bit disgusted, but she's got a smile on her face, just to annoy Esther. The younger girl sticks her tongue out at her maturely and tucks the children in, giving them each a kiss on the forehead, before indicating Johanna's exit, closing the door very carefully behind them.

They both go down the stairs, very, very slowly, the same way they came up, and join the other adults in the living room. 

Johanna says goodbye, saying she's got some work to get through. She waves awkwardly to the mums, nods to William, gives Esther a knowing look, and heads out the door, promising to text when she gets to her flat.

Esther sits next to Daisy and puts her hand on her shoulder, and the woman tenses up but gradually relaxes.The girl watches her, and she looks like she did when Sheridan died: a ghost of herself, quiet, still, dead in life.

She thinks it must be worse for a parent to outlive a child.

The air in the house is thick with tension, as if something bad is about to happen.

Mourning can do that, can't it.

Esther can't help but feel guilty. She could say goodbye to Josephine with a few words, and she could kiss her forehead one last time. She could smell the pure, innocent scent of her little blonde head, and hear her laugh one last time. 

Daisy couldn't, nor could William or the kids. All they could see was their beloved baby's tiny body in the cradle, still, no breath, no heartbeat.

So, she put her head down and held still, feeling unworthy of the chances she had taken.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

The next day, when he says goodbye to the family to go to his mother, Santiago looks at her with misty eyes.

"What's wrong, little boy?" Esther asks, kneeling down in front of him. He rubs his eye slowly, still feeling drowsy.

"The Sandman gave me a nightmare." he mutters.

Inside the girl, her Defiant side stirs like a caged animal, clawing at her ribs viciously.

Oh, damned being of the-

"Why do you say that? Was she that bad?" she demands, clenching her jaw discreetly as she places a hand on the infant's head.

"You were crying." he starts to count, pouting. "Crying horribly. You were hovering over my baby sister's cradle, and then you pulled long, sharp things out of nowhere. You were going to say something, but I couldn't hear you."

Esther takes a deep breath.

"Don't worry, little one." she says, calm as a storm about to break. "It was just a dream." she continues, pressing a kiss to the boy's forehead, who hugs her as tightly as his little arms can. Esther, summoning all the power she possesses, takes a deep breath, feels the energy in her eyes, and declares: "No more nightmares for ye."

Something changes. Maybe a knot is loosened. Maybe a letter is sealed. Esther only knows that it will be as she said.

After they'd said their goodbyes, she smiled at the family one last time and went with her mum to her car. Quietly, Gabriela handed her the keys, and Esther took them, opened the driver's door. 

They go in silence, daughter watching the road while driving and mother looking out the window. 

When they reached Orpheus Street, Esther parked the car in the free space on the street and turned off the engine.

"What now?"

Gabriela looked at her.

"Now, I guess we move on"

Esther nods, but she's not really with it.

Once she's finished with the housework, the girl sits in the rocking chair on her porch while her mum prepares dinner. She rocks quietly, enjoying the gentle comings and goings, the spring wind, the soft rays of sunshine.

Then, with a feeling of resolution, she pulls her phone out of her pocket and dials Johanna's number.

"Well, we-..."

"Tell me how I can call him."

"What the actual f...?"

"Oh, right, witchcraft terms. Tell me, how can I summon an Endless?"

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter nine teen !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Forgive her for how her agony reveals itself, child.❞﹚.

⸻Mothers and Daughters, by Nikita Gill.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Johanna tells Esther that she's going to talk to Mad Hettie about it.

Esther falls silent, trying to remember the last prank she played on the older woman, wondering if this is her revenge.

Was it when she threw away the vial of green liquid that Johanna said was priceless?

Or when she threw boiling water on a talking statuette? That Johanna said it was a Greek goddess with whom she had certain disagreements?

Or was it when—

"Esther?"

The girl shakes her head and massages her temples.

"Why wouldn't you know?""

"Of course I know, but only in a rudimentary way."

"And that would be...?"

"Blood, feathers, runic circles... I really don't think it's necessary, or convenient, considering how you two met and what your faith asks of you."

Esther sighs. She melted into her rocking chair and pulled her knees to her chest.

"But you have some of his power. You could attract him, perhaps."

"No." the girl rejects, suddenly straightening up."Don't wanna owe him any more than I already do. There must be another, simpler way to summon him that doesn't involve rituals. Could it be like we did with the Fates?"

"No, it's horribly dangerous. If it has..." Johanna curses for a moment. "I gotta get rid of that thing. If there is one, Mad Hettie would have to know. I'll ask her. I'll come and tell you when I find out. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get on with my business."

"Thank ye, Johanna." Esther said thanks, her voice soft. "I'll have to see how I repay the madwoman."

"I'll take care of that. Just prepare those delicious Irish dishes for me. See yah later."

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

'If you keep scrubbing that glass, it'll turn to sand again.'

Esther blinks, looking first at her mother and then at the glass in her hands. It lets out that squeak that indicates it's already clean. She shakes her head and puts the glass in the sink.

"Sorry." she says quietly, picking up the last dirty plate. "I'm tired, that's all."

Gabriela leaves the dishcloth on the counter and leans on the counter where Esther is washing up.

"Haven't you rested well?"

The girl purses her lips.

"Slept enough."

Gabriela purses her lips in the same way her daughter does.

"That's not what I meant. Have you been... writing?"

Esther leaves the plate to dry and puts her hands in the sink.

"Why ye askin' me that?"

"You do a lot of writing, you know. Just..."

Esther grits her teeth and spits. "What ye really wanna tell me, Mother?"

Ay.

Gabriela's eyes drop to her shoes. When her daughter calls her 'mathair', the Irish word for mother, it's because everything is okay.

When she calls her 'mom', it's because everything is more than okay.

And when she calls her 'mother', it's 'cause the freaking world's gonna burn like Troy.

The woman brushes some hair away from her face and sighs.

"Don't you dream anymore, Estibaliz?"

The girl relaxes her jaw and blinks twice. She picks up the falling-apart blue grid and uses it to dry her hands. She knows what she means. Esther has stopped writing. She has paused her aerial dance classes. She has stopped dancing and singing. She has stopped dreaming.

The words she said to the Sandman's raven come to her mind like a bad omen.

"Define 'dreaming'."

Gabriela's face takes on an expression bordering on extreme concern.

"Estibaliz." she begins, her voice soft but tense. She sits up straight. "I know these last few years have been difficult," Esther thinks, restraining herself from telling her that they have been supernaturally difficult since she hasn't told her mother anything about it. "And that you've been practically fending for yourself."

"Matha..."

"I know I left you alone." Gabriela lowers her head again, unable to look her daughter in the eye. "I know I haven't been the best mother since Sheridan died. But if there's one thing I know... She looks up again and her blue eyes are filled with tears. "It's that you always dreamed. Even when I was berating you for it, you always did. And now you don't..."

Esther sighs and ignores the light knock on the window next to her (possibly a bug). She lies down in front of the sink the same way her mother did.

"Dreams aren't real." she says bitterly, angrily, and with the rage that comes with declaring such a thing. "Ye said so yerself. Several times."

Esther frowns and turns to look at her mother, who seems to be experiencing a sudden menopausal hot flush; her face turns literally green for a moment.

"Mum?"

Gabriela grabs the counter and turns sharply, cocking her head towards the sink and vomiting.

Esther raises her eyebrows, suddenly remembering that she has inherited that trait from her mother — getting so nervous that her stomach regurgitates bile — but quickly helps. She pushes her hair away from her mother's face and strokes her back as the woman continues to vomit, retching with disgust. She pulls back and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

Esther goes into sonic mode, bringing a chair and forcing Gabriela to take a seat before handing her a glass of water and instructing her to rinse her mouth. While her mother does so, Esther runs upstairs to fetch the appropriate toothbrush and toothpaste and hands them to her.

Gabriela follows her daughter's instructions to the letter. When she has finished, Esther takes her to her room and tucks her into bed.

"Ye'll feel better at morn'." says Esther, smoothing the blanket with one hand as she leaves a glass of water and a couple of ibuprofen on the bedside table. "Sure it's nerves or somethin' ye ate that left..."

"Estibaliz."

The girl pauses. She takes a deep breath and looks up until she can see her mother's eyes.

Tears fall from those eyes, which look at her with guilt and self-loathing. Esther recognises that look; she sees it every day in the mirror.

"Iníon." she says in Sheridan's Irish with a rough, thick accent. 'Daughter'. "For... forgive me."

"Shhhh." the girl whispers, placing a hand on her mother's forehead. "Ye don't gotta apologise. Calm down.”

"No." Gabriela exclaims, letting out a short but sharp sob. "I'm sorry I took away the most precious thing you had."

“Mathair...”

"You're right." the woman interrupts, taking Esther's hand. Her lips tremble. "I did say it. But hearing you say it... it was horrible. Look... I only realised recently when Daisy told me that she'd had a dream in which you were crying by Josephine's cot."

Esther bites her tongue.

"According to her, you said the baby would be fine." Gabriela continues haltingly, but manages to sound firm. '"That she was loved. In this life and in any other, and that not even death would change that. She told me that it gave her hope. It made her realise that maybe her baby had completed her time here and that her death was not her fault. She'll still mourn and grieve her, but she'll also continue to live. She still has Marisol and Santiago, and they need her. So I understood."

"Mom, ye don't gotta..."

'Yes, I gotta." growls the woman, baring her teeth like a wolf. "Escuchame bien lo que te voy a decir, Estibaliz*. Dreams give you hope. And faith. They give you something to hope for. Something to fight for. Forgive me." she begs, literally begs, taking Esther's hand in his and squeezing it with a surprisingly crushing grip. "Forgive me. Dreams are a part of you. They're a precious, priceless, unique part of you, and I tried to crush them over and over again."

Gabriela takes a breath and, before Esther can interrupt, continues: "I thought your father was being too condescending with his stories and songs and his dreams. But now, after what Daisy told me about that dream and that decision... I'm sorry, my child." she says, raising a hand to caress Esther's cheek. She's surprised to feel it's wet. "I thought I was protecting you from getting hurt when those dreams inevitably died. But then you got shot, you tried to kill yourself, and..." Gabriela takes the deepest breath she can.  "But you're a pest, and now I see that I was the one hurting you. Just... live, okay?" Gabriela then smiles, and it's a smile chipped around the edges, yet still beautiful. "Fulfill your dream of living, laughing and crying, and don't regret it. Don't be like me. Dream with your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground, and don't let anyone — not even your Sandman, no matter how unreal — take them away from you."

Gabriela lies down again, taking slow, deep breaths, looking as if she has shed a suitcase full of rocks.

Esther thinks, for a second that lasts eons, that something has broken in her mum, like a porcelain vase. It was as if her daughter's words, filled with such resentment, were a mirror to her own efforts to instill her values over the years. It was as if she was experiencing the physical and emotional symptoms of pregnancy.

It's amazing what hearing your own words in someone else's mouth can do.  Especially if that someone turns out bein' hurt by those words.

All Esther can say is: "Not my Sandman."

Her mother looks at her and laughs.

Esther laughs too, because she also feels as if a suitcase full of rocks has fallen off her back.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

That night, Esther doesn't drink any tea or take any pills.

That night, Esther gives her mum a kiss on the forehead, wishes her good night, goes to bed, and dreams.

She dreams of walking barefoot along a beautiful blue ocean, and of taking a piece of sky and wrapping it around her shoulders to make a blanket. She dreams that the ocean blends into huge waves that look like a giant throne room, with tall white pillars and church-like frames above her head, showing a sky full of stars, nebulae and more. There's also a curved staircase that ends with a throne at the top, or at least what looks like a throne, made of carved stone . Behind it is a wall with three display cases, whose glass changes every second.

It's a simple, unadorned throne room, but it's clear that it belongs to a powerful king.

Esther knows which king it belongs to, and only because she is the Defiant does she step inside, her bare feet making no sound on the shiny floor. She breathes slowly, puts the blanket of stars against her shoulders, and looks around, turning her head every so often up, to the right, to all sides, taking in every little detail of the room. When she reaches the first step of the curved staircase, her heart almost jumps out of her throat when she hears a clattering sound, as if piles of glass were falling.

But when she looks ahead, she sees that the three main display cases are changing.

The display cases are being remade, one by one, in countless combinations and a kaleidoscope of colours, like a puzzle.

Esther blinks when she sees the image of a cookie being chewed, as if the display cases reforming is similar to the process of chewing.

She's got a bit of a shock when she sees a vanilla cookie appear out of nowhere in her right hand, behind a little cloud.

"Wow" she whispers, like a little girl who can't believe her eyes.

She actually is just a little girl who can't believe her eyes. She's got an idea of how it happened, but she's not worried about it. She puts the cookie in her mouth and is even more amazed when she looks up and sees what the three display cases reflect as a complete image: her.

It's her in the present, with her hair falling in barely perceptible curls, her simple silver earrings, and her head tilted upward, looking at a night sky. It's like a close-up photo, showing her from the neck up, with her silhouette against a blurry background.

Esther nibbles the cookie thoughtfully and wipes the crumbs from her mouth.

"May a car would hit me" she whispers, absently, more focused looking at how the lights in the sky are showing off the shop windows.

The thing is, she hears a warning shout.

"Wait!"

The girl spins around quickly, her hair flying around her face, temporarily blocking her view.

She only sees a pale hand with a black sleeve reaching out towards her before two honks leave her dazed, followed by a black Chevrolet that appears out of nowhere and sends her flying towards the windows, which shatter into pieces, trailing her as she falls into an infinite void made of multicoloured nebulae and stars.

When she wakes up, she's gasping for breath, brushing her hair away from her mouth and feeling as if she'd really been hit by a car, as her hip hurts.

She throws herself back onto the bed when she realises she's awake, which makes her squirm and moan in annoyance. She turns her head to the right and sees the small face of her cat, who's looking at her with big blue eyes.

"Didn't I wake ye up?" she says, putting her finger on his head as she strokes him. Oneiros purrs happily as he gives in.

Esther lets out a sigh and strokes her cat for a few seconds, finding peace in the feel of his fur and the vibration of his throat.

That is, until Oneiros suddenly jumps up, pulling away from her hand, and hisses towards the window.

Esther looks out of it and sees a dark shape that looks like a cat. It's a pretty big cat, with eyes that shine in the moonlight and furry ears that stick out.

The girl sits up and puts her hand on Oneiros's back, telling him to calm down. The cat does so, but he still swishes his tail like a scorpion about to strike.

"Shh, ceann beag**" Esther whispers to her cat. "He's probably just feeling a bit lonely."

The cat's ears at the window fall back, and it seems to open its mouth, letting out a hiss that Oneiros responds to.

Esther raises her eyebrows, gets up, and walks to the window, opening it and using her body as a shield so that neither cat jumps on the other. The cat at the window stops hissing when the girl reaches out to it.

"Chill out." she says, smiling a bit. "No need to get like that."

The cat's got bright eyes, and they're moving slowly between her face and her hand. Then, just like Toothless approaching Hiccup's hand, it rests its forehead on Esther's palm and starts purring.

The girl smiles gently and uses her fingers to scratch his ears, causing the cat to purr even louder. The cat sits on its hind legs, melting into Esther's hand.

"Aww." she coos, using her other hand to stroke his back. The cat gets all tense, but then he calms down again, until he walks into the room and lies down really heavily on Esther's notebook, which she had been trying to write on before going to sleep. "Ye just needed a bit of affection."

She hears Oneiros hissing behind her and silences him with a hiss of her own.

"Don't be jealous, Oneiros." she says, looking over her shoulder at her cat. "Every living creature needs a little love."

Her cat stops meowing, and Esther takes this as a sort of agreement, even though she doesn't really want to.

The other cat is loving all the attention the girl's giving her, and he's purring so loudly that she can feel the vibration in her own chest, which makes her smile a little. She uses her elbow to cover a yawn a few seconds later, and raises her eyebrows when she sees the sky beginning to lighten.

"Well, cat." she says, sounding a bit tired but not too bad. The cat looks at her with its ears perked up, as if asking why she stopped. "Sorry I can't continue. I've gotta sleep. Hope you'll be okay after this"

Esther, feeling a bit sleepy, leans over and gives the cat a little kiss on the forehead. The cat lowers his ears and purrs even louder. Then the girl presses her forehead against the cat's for a few seconds: "Night."

Then she pulls away, stifles another yawn with her left hand, and gets into bed, kissing her own cat's forehead so he won't be jealous, before covering her head with the blankets.

She falls back to sleep, oblivious to the catfight going on between the two of them. They're just staring at each other, tails wagging, as if they're about to have a real scrap.

Oneiros hisses again.

'She's under my protection, Dream Cat.' he says in his own words, quiet and low. 'Yer sister left me in charge of that, and ye'll not interfere"

'Peace, Sheridan,' the other cat replies, blinking slowly. "I seek no harm"

'Ye already have. Several times. Ye may be the first story I told her, and she may have called me by yer name, but that gives ye no right over her. What's more, she has a claim on ye, as Defiant, and as a dreamer. Now turn around and go back to yer kingdom. If ye show up again, do so in yer human form, and repay me daughter what ye owe her, or I'll scratch yer face so badly that no sand will e'er restore it."

The bigger cat doesn't respond. He just gets up, nods in a majestic way, and jumps out of the window, landing behind an alley. There's a whirlpool of sand that swallows him up and he's gone from the mortal world.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter twenty  !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ So I have done wrong, to put me right. My judgement burned in the black of night. Then I give less than I take, it is my fault, my own mistake.❞﹚.

⸻Learn Me Right, by Birdy ft. Mumford & Sons.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

The next day, while eating breakfast alone after bringing her mother breakfast in bed, Esther receives a call from Johanna.

She bites into her cheese toast and answers, bringing the phone to her ear: "Johanna?"

"You naive girl!"

The girl blinks repeatedly as she moves the phone away, rubbing her ear. 

"Yer not Johanna." she says, aware that she will be heard.

"Of course not!" replies Mad Hettie's shrill, gravelly voice. "But at least she's not the one messing with the Endless."

Esther grimaces disinterestedly as she takes another bite of her toast.

"I suppose she asked ye for what I asked her for.’

"And she granted me this devilish thing called a telephone so I could tell you that you're being an idiot. Why would you risk displeasing your God by summoning another deity?"

"Yer not gonna tell how to summon 'im, are ye?" Esther counters, because she knows her faith is going to be questioned anyway.

"Foolish child. Lord Morpheus is already infatuated, the last thing I need is for him to get excited like a kid with his new toy and there to be a plague of dreams in which you appear."

Esther's brain stops working when she hears the words "dreams in which you appear". She straightens up.

"What ye dreamt of?"

"Ha! You think I'm going to tell you that..."

"What ye dreamt of, Hettie?"

There's a groan of annoyance, and Johanna's voice, saying something broken, but sounding threatening: "Tell 'er, you damn decrepit old woman."

Esther waits impatiently, her lips pressed tightly together, her half-eaten toast left on her plate.

"First, there was a large throne room with three display cases that formed an image of you." says the witch, her voice strained, as if she were being forced at knifepoint. That was probably the case, considering she was with Johanna. "And you were there, wearing a cloak made of stars. Then you were hit by a car and flew through the air, shattering the display cases."

"Uh-huh." Esther murmurs, her throat tightening. "Then?"

"The dream changed to reveal Lord Morpheus in the form of a large black cat. You kissed him on the forehead and then rested yours on the same spot, in a disgusting gesture of affection. The cat melted like chocolate in the sun. I woke up with a nauseating feeling of..." A retch is heard, but that's all Esther needs to see red.

"Tell how I can summon 'im."

"Girl, I refuse...!"

Esther refrains from shouting, and instead grabs her phone with white knuckles and growls, her voice thick and threatening: "Damn it, Hettie! Tell me how I can summon the bastard of Morpheus before ye find yerself hanging upside down from Big Ben for eternity 'cuz I decided that's yer destiny!"

The line remains silent for a few moments, during which Esther brings her free hand to her wrist to unsheathe her needles and condemn the witch, and then, through gritted teeth, Mad Hettie spills the tea.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Esther spends the whole day sulking because it turns out that to summon any entity, no matter how important they are, all she has to do is 'take a piece of paper and write the name on it, then set it on fire and wait for the ashes and smoke to rise to the sky. After that, it's just a matter of whether or not she gets a response.'

The result? The girl is going about her business as usual, going to work with an impressive frown that scares some customers away.

"Esther..." someone calls from behind her.

"What!?" she exclaims, turning around abruptly to see Marco, her classmate and work colleague, with one hand outstretched towards her. In the other, he's got a mocha coffee with whipped cream, grated chocolate, vanilla powder and small ice cubes.

And just like that, Esther starts crying, with tears streaming down her face. She covers her mouth with her hand to stop herself from making any noise.

"Thank ye." she says quietly.

Marco transforms; he leaves the coffee on the counter Esther was tidying up and approaches her, gesturing for permission. The girl nods, and the young man wraps his arms around her, helping her to sit down on a stool. He brushes away the strands of hair that have escaped from her bun and then takes one of her hands in his and squeezes it like a vice.

Esther is grateful to God for this boy, who helps her as if she were a loved one, even though they don't really know each other. She's glad the boy's keeping quiet. She's glad he's there, giving her a comforting handshake in the midst of work, even though they might get into trouble for this.

A few agonising seconds pass, during which Esther viciously rubs her free hand across her face until her cheeks feel irritated and her skin feels as tight as cling film.

"Better?" asks Marco, tilting his head like a kitten.

Esther nods, smiles knowingly and strokes one of his hands. Then she takes her mocha and takes a huge sip. The prickle of the ice, plus the heavenly combination of flavours, makes her feel infinitely better.

"Now, yeah," she growls, her voice sounding raspy. It's probably the ice. "Thanks, Marco."

The boy nods and smiles at her, like he's her big brother, putting his hand on her head.

"Any time, enana*."

Esther kicks him in the shin, which Marco takes for a moment, and when he takes a deep breath, he shakes his head and says. "Thought you didn't know Spanish."

"My mum's Latina, pibe**" she replies, wrinkling her nose in a mocking way.

Marco blinks, brushes his dark hair out of his eyes and laughs briefly.

"So, you've got a salad of genes, then."

"Maybe, if you're part Latina, Irish, Basque, Jewish and Greek."

Her friend looks at her with brown eyes as big as windows, and you can see surprise in them as he picks up a medium-sized glass to serve a frappuccino to a customer who is clearly trying to flirt with him, batting her mascara-coated eyelashes... purple?

The boy concludes: "You're something else."

Esther has a quick laugh as she takes her drink, looking in her pockets for some cash to put in the cash register.

"Of course I am."

Marco looks at her over his shoulder as he hands the drink to the customer, who leaves pretty annoyed because he didn't give her dyed hair a second glance.

Esther survived the rest of the day by focusing on cleaning the utensils, tidying up the books that had been moved out of place and taking out the rubbish. When the sun's starting to beat down in the middle of the afternoon, she says farewell to Marco. He gives her a hug and almost breaks her ribs, and then he kisses her on the forehead. Then they go their separate ways.

As she walks back home, she stops in front of a yellow house with a porch full of flower pots. She goes over, rings the bell, and waits.

The person who opens the door is exactly who she was hoping to see.

"Hi, Ophelia."

The woman brushes her dark hair away from her eyes and smiles warmly at Esther.

"Hi, sweetie. Come in, I've made some tea."

A few minutes later, the two women are sat on the porch, looking out over the back garden, watching the little birds and butterflies flit between Ofelia's flowers.

Esther sips her tea with honey and squeezes the cup, using the heat of the black ceramic (which reminds her of Sandman and his coat) as an anchor to stay in the real world before her mind wanders to dark places that, even though she has been there thousands of times and overcome them a few, are still not something she is excited about.

"Can I tell ye somethin'?"

Ophelia looks at her from over the rim of her cup.

"Of course, dear. Go for it."

The younger woman leans back in her chair and runs her fingernails along the edge of the cup.

"It's a long story. I'm about to let ye in on a secret I've kept to myself since I was 14, something I've never even told my mum. It's a heavy story, full of impossible things, incredible things, and, to be technical, things that I'm not quite sure are... tolerated. But that's exactly why I need your help. I'm so confused that I thought I'd come and ask for yer guidance or advice. Could ye... could ye do that?"

Ofelia puts her cup on the porch railing, looks at Esther and then holds out her hand. The girl bit her lip, feeling a bit unsure, but in the end, she took the older woman's hand.

Ofelia's grip is similar to Amara's, back when she bled to death.

God, she has to talk to her too.

"Whatever you've got to say, just say it. I'll help."

Then Esther smiles, squeezes her hand, and starts telling her how they came to London almost five years ago.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

The sun is starting to go down when Esther finishes speaking.

After she says she's not sure about the sumoning, they just sit there in silence for a bit, but it's not unfriendly. Esther really feels better, yet guilty.

Ophelia scratches her forearm and sighs.

"And you've been dealing with all this alone for nearly four years?"

Esther bites her lip.

"Not alone, alone. I had Johanna, and I still do, but I'll be honest with you, she needs urgent therapy. We're both in the same boat, even though I still see my school therapist."

Ophelia smiles down at her condescendently.

"As a leader, I'd tell you to find another way," she begins, leaning back in her chair and staring into the distance. "This summoning is similar to what the prophets of Baal did. It's just a simpler version, but it still counts as a summons. But from what you're telling me, this Dream of yours..."

Esther wrinkles her nose.

"You too?"

"What?" Ofelia asks, confused.

"Sorry. You know, you reminded me of the Fates. Whenever we mentioned the Sandman, they would always say 'Your Sandman' on purpose. Dream of the Endless isn't mine, and I don't have him. The only thing we have in common is that he represents dreams, and I'm a dreamer. I also accidentally got a part of his power. That's where it begins and ends.

The woman next to her blinks, then scratches her head.

"So, from what you're telling me, this Dream is basically like a god, right?"

"It's an entity, yes, but more powerful than a god. Or something along those lines. The whole family of not-so-eternal Eternals is more powerful, since they don't just represent a concept, they are that concept, and they'll exist as long as that concept does."

"My God." Ophelia places her hand on her forehead. "Esther, what have you got yourself into?"

"In the basement of a mansion with a bit of a spooky history," the girl replies, laughing a little. Then she shakes her head. "To be fair, it was my dad who sent me there."

Ophelia laughs, a short laugh bordering on hysteria, but then she massages her temple.

"And I guess that after this... dream about the cat that this woman told you about, and what you remember, you're practically vibrating to face him, right?"

Esther just shrugs.

"I'mma drag him by the hair to the mortal plane, with or without the paper turned to ashes. To be honest, I hadn't expected 'im to be quite so... well, so..."

"Difficult?"

"That's one way of saying it."

Ophelia looks at her with a smile that makes her feel a bit sick.

"What?"

"I'm sorry to say this, but it looks like a lovers' quarrel."

The next thing Esther says is something that makes Destiny, from her garden, let out an uncharacteristic laugh:

"Of course, what I need to do is propose to the guy who won't face me for some freaking reason he thinks is reasonable and justifies him for play hiding in his kingdom like a scared puppy. Right. Lia, that's very romantic! You'd get along great with the Fates."

"You're right," the woman replies, smiling slightly. "This... From what you told me about what you saw with baby Josephine, it's clear that Dream was terrified. You all met again at the worst possible moment, when your friend, Amara, who is the..."

"Death."

"Oh, God. That. Yes. And you were in mourning. Esther, I know you had good reason to say what you did, but it was a bit harsh on both of them. It's only natural that they'd be a bit hesitant, especially him, to come and see you."

Esther lets out a sharp sigh.

"Those two've been around for ages, Ophelia, Endless, who came into being when their concepts did. They've seen worlds being created and destroyed, and they've had some experiences that are pretty much indescribable. They really should know better. Also, beyond being the Defiant, I'm just human. They could finish me off in a second."

"That doesn't guarantee anything, either for you or for them."

"How ye're so sure 'bout that?"

That came out more bitterly than Esther had expected. She bows her head and says sorry quietly.

Ophelia tilts her head and smiles at her, in a more maternal way.

"Let's take a look at the issue with him. From what you've told me, the man... —she pauses for a moment— that being spent a century and a bit locked in glass because a man accidentally summoned him, when the one he wanted was your friend, Amara, who is death." Ophelia bites her lip and closes her eyes for a few seconds before continuing: "Rodrick Burgess might have wanted to get his eldest son back, but he was pretty negligent with his youngest one and ended up using the failed summoning as an excuse to get what he really wanted, at the expense of your Dream." Esther is just about to have a go back at her, but Ophelia raises a ringed finger. "Let me finish. This Dream was in that glass for years. He couldn't move or speak, he was naked and humiliated, and was used like an object. It's a very serious wound, even for a being of eons, an Endless as you put it. It's even worse when you think about what you said before, that even though he's who he is, he's still got a mind, a heart and a soul. I'd say run and not look back, but you're already in over your head. I mean, considering what happened to you, how you coped with it, and what you ended up becoming."

Esther raises her cup, as if toasting. Ophelia shakes her head and carries on:

"So, my final advice would be to find another way to call him, or to attract him. From what you've said, he might be an entity, an Endless, but the heart he has it's the heart of a man. And the heart requires severity, which you have in abundance, but it also requires patience. Lots and lots and lots of patience. The Bible says that the heart is deceitful, but that we should also guard and protect it, because life flows from it. More than anything, a man's heart requires firmness, kindness, constancy, care. Keep that in mind when dealing with your Dream."

He may be an entity, an Endless, but the heart he has it's the heart of a man.

Ah, carajo.

This feels like when Miss Seaborn said that phrase that changed her perspective on life.

"Only I end up havin' to take care of the human heart of an entity. What an oxymoron."

Ophelia frowns, but Esther smiles, feeling more on top of things.

"Oxymoron: is a way of using one word with another of opposite meaning. In this case, the human heart of an entity."

The woman laughs.

"Somehow you ended up in this world, Esther. There must be a reason. I'll be praying for you and your Dream."

"Not my Dream."

Ophelia just laughs and nods, like she's in on the joke.

"Right. I'll ask him if you'd mind introducing me to him."

"God forbid."

And Ophelia laughs again.

When she's done, she looks at the girl with a big smile and eyes full of affection.

"You're going to do great things, Esther," she says, and it feels like her voice is the most definitive in the world. It's, somehow, more definite than Destiny's. "And think about this: your friend Amara and your Dream... they both had their reasons. Please consider it, and if they don't take the first step, you do."

Esther takes a deep breath, and after a quick think, she nods, feeling determined.

She already knows how to take the first step.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Esther gets back home, has dinner with her mum, has a quick chat with her after washing the dishes with a cuppa in her hand, and then, with Gabriela telling her that she's gonna be spending the next day with her boyfriend, the girl goes to her desk and opens the drawer with the manuscript of her book of poems in it.

She reads the title she gave it.

'To the Sandman: A collection of poems written in different times' by The Solivagant.

Then she flips to the first page to see the dedication.

'Dedicated to my dad, and to that first story he told me; about a creature who sprinkles sand in children's eyes to give them the most precious treasure of childhood, and maybe even of life itself: dreams.'

'For all you dreamers out there, wherever you are.'

"You haven't been forgotten; you can find truce here."

Esther remembers that when she wrote this, she did so with that true intention: that those like her, who breathe dreams and exhale hopes, might find truce in these little pieces of her heart that she has managed to capture as she grew up.

She thinks it could also be a message to the Sandman.

Lucienne had told her in one of the dreams that the library contained everything that was, is, and will be written, along with what could have been written and what was written but never saw the light of day. Esther hopes that once she's published the book, it'll appear there, and that Lucienne will find it and take it to the Sandman.

That's what she calls it. She hopes it'll be clear enough, as if it were a summons in itself.

Esther falls asleep after drinking tea to stop herself from dreaming. The next day, after chatting with her mum and getting the green light, she heads to work and has a chat with her boss, Marco's dad, Mr. Nicolás Pereira. He's a friendly but strict man who, after having a look at her manuscript, agrees to edit and publish it, but says she'll have to pay the fee with work, which ends up being two months without getting her monthly salary.

Esther agrees, and as soon as she sees her manuscript being handed over to the bookshop's editor, she feels like she's floating.

It's done.

That day, she works with a smile on her face and spends the rest of those two months waiting impatiently to hold the book in her hands and, therefore, for the message to be received.

It looks like she gets both earlier than expected.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter twenty-one  !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Kairos.
(n.) the perfect, delicate, crucial moment; the fleeting rightness of time and place that creates the opportune atmosphere for action, words, or movement.❞﹚.

⸻Of Greek origin.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

About three weeks and two days after her chat with Ofelia, when she gets back to her usual routine, Esther sends Amara a message.

'Hi Amara.' she wrote. 'It's been a while. I've got a few things I wanna chat to ye about. I know I'm not in a position to do that, but... ye wanna come over one of these days? I'll make us a cuppa or a mate with honey, and then we can go for a stroll while we chat, if yer not too busy."

Then, as if her phone was some kind of radioactive object, she leaves it on the bedside table in her room and doesn't touch it again until nap time, when she goes to lie down after lunch.

By then, there's a reply.

'Of course, Esther. I'll try to come tomorrow. Should I bring the usual sandwiches?"

Esther manages to relax and says yes.

The next morning, Esther gets back from a quick shopping trip and finds her mum and Amara sitting in the living room, laughing and chatting, with Oneiros on the entity's lap.

'I'm back, bitches.' she says, smiling as she leaves the shopping bags on the counter.

"Language, gal" her mum replies, but she's still smiling.

"Leave her alone, Gabi," Amara says, brushing her hair away from her face. 'I've heard worse.'

Ugh, Esther thinks, much worse, I imagine.

Gabriela shakes her head, no. 'Okay. I've gotta go and cook something. Why not go for a walk and catch up? Esther, Daisy's mate is ready on the counter.'

The girl nods, and the other woman heads to the kitchen, giving Esther a quick glance before picking up the grater and a carrot.

The younger woman turns to her visitor and nods, keeping her lips together. Amara nods, takes Oneiros in her arms and puts him on the sofa, where the cat rubs against her until he's lying on his back. Then she stands up and extends her arm like an old Victorian gentleman.

Esther takes her mate and links arms with her friend, and they both leave the house at a steady pace, as if they had never been apart for a single day.

But of course, the discomfort of what happened that day by Josephine's crib follows them like a ghost.

They're on their fifth mate when Amara speaks.

"So... you've been busy."

The girl sips her mate and raises her eyebrows.

"How'd ye know?"

Amara gives her a wink.

'Oneiros told me.'

Esther rolls her eyes affectionately as she pours another cup of mate and hands it to the entity, feeling as if a missing piece of the mental puzzle she had put together to understand the world she is part of has fallen into place.

'I should have guessed, since he's your messenger and my guardian.' Yeah, I've been all over the place lately, juggling mourning, work, helping out and everything else.

Amara lowers her head slightly.

'Yes... Esther, I...'

The girl raises a finger, cutting her off.

'Look, I know you were just doing your job, and I get that,' she says first, looking her friend in the eye. I was a bit thrown off by the Sandman's presence, and even more so when he called you "sister". So, if you wouldn't mind, could you tell me about that?

Amara finishes her mate and nods slowly. She hands it to Esther and, looking straight ahead with glassy eyes, tells her another story.

"Dream is the Lost One I told you about. The one who comes after me in line. In order, we are Destiny, me, Dream, the Prodigal, also called Destruction," Esther raises her eyebrows internally. "Then comes Desire, Despair, and Delirium. We're all part of the Eternals, or as some of you know us, the Endless. " Amara has a little sip of the mate that the younger girl thoughtfully hands her, and then hands it back before continuing. "I wanted to tell that Sandman is my little brother, but Destiny ordered me not to tell you."

Esther's lungs squeeze momentarily.

'Why?' she whispers, because she doesn't trust her voice to stay quiet in the face of this omission on Destiny's part.

"He told me it'd just make you accuse us of negligence." Amara says, looking at her sideways. Esther doesn't respond. "And because it wasn't time yet. You had just defied me, asked me to help Dream. You didn't know half of what you know now. For example, that we should avoid interfering in other people's business unless they ask us to."

"Another rule?"

"No, just an agreement that became law. Just like the one your Jewish namesake defied to save her people."

Esther smiles a little as she pours another cup of mate.

'Right. And I guess Morpheus didn't call anyone for help.'

Amara keeps her lips tight shut.

"You got it. After Jessamy died, when I went to look for her, I wanted to help him. I was of course keen to help him. I saw him there, locked in a Christmas decoration..." The entity clenches her teeth. "But he was also in mourning. He didn't look up. He didn't move. He was sat there crying quietly for his raven, with tears like raindrops. It hurt like hell, but I took Jessamy and didn't look back. He knew I was there, but he didn't ask for my help, even there, at one of his lowest points. Pride wouldn't let him."

Esther takes a few seconds to react, imagining the Sandman in that glass dome, his head bowed and his eyes brimming with grief.

"It happened before, ages ago." Amara continues. This grabs the girl's attention, and she opens her mouth in surprise. "Two gods had tried to dethrone him, and they locked him up in his own castle. Back then, I was what everyone fears: death, bloody, bitter and terrible."
The entity lowers her head, her eyes all wrinkled up from the pressure. Esther puts her hand on her elbow and says: "So when he summoned me, I didn't answered. He asked for help to all of us, but only Desire came. They created Alianora, a woman who helped him overthrow these gods and use their bones to carve the great entrance gates to the Dreaming, along with his helmet, and who consoled him for the disappointment we caused him, taking the place of his lover for a time, before his love for her faded. That was the only time Dream asked us for help, and he never did so again. I guess he was still feeling rough, so he didn't bother calling anyone while he was stuck, yet again, in Roderick Burgess's basement."

They walk in silence for two blocks, and then Esther makes a noise to break the silence.

"Ye Endless, ye really get on my nerves."

Amara's laughter makes the sun come out again.

"Well, love," she says, laughing between breaths she doesn't need. "You're one of us now, even if you're not an Endless. You'll share my martyrdom."

When she's better, Esther smiles back at her, so hard that her cheekbones ache. The girl raises her mate, as dry as a desert, and shouts, as loudly as she can: "Salute."

They both crack their ribs and laugh so hard they double over. And so, they make up.

They walk, stretching their legs like ducks, laughing at everything they say, teasing how enigmatic Destiny can be, and generally catching up.

"I also suggested naming the cat Oneiros because it reminded me of my brother, who often takes the form of a cat."

"How so?"

"Well, Dream has many names, and one of them is Oneiros. That's how he was known in Greece. "

"What the-"

"I didn't mention it because I didn't want to, that's all. And because I was thinking about the times Dream would escape in the form of a cat."

"At least I know that one."

"How so?"

Esther teases her and gives her a brief rundown of her dreams, which include the throne room, the display cases, being run over, and ending up with a stray cat that turns out to be her little brother, all confirmed thanks to Mad Hettie's... colaboratión.

Amara goes blank, muttering something in the dead language she uses to curse, and just then Esther nods and spots the porch of Ophelia's house a few metres ahead, and prays quietly that the woman is at home.

"Hey, Amara." she says. Amara tilts her head like a confused puppy. "There's someone I'd like ye to meet."

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Esther isn't nervous when Ofelia opens the door.

But she's surprised when she blinks, and the next thing she knows, Amara and Ofelia are chatting about something her dazed brain can't comprehend.

She thinks it's a good thing. Ofelia didn't do anything bad, and Amara didn't do anything crazy. What's more, they're both smiling and still chatting away.

Esther wasn't expecting that. She's thankful she didn't expect anything.

"Dear," Ophelia calls, pointing to the girl, "do you mind getting me the King James Bible from the coffee table? I just want to be sure about something."

"Ye using Amara as a reliable source?" Esther asks, grinning mischievously as she does what she was asked.

"Obviously I am." the woman replies. "You know, you really should make the most of opportunities like this."

"I agree." Amara smiles.

Esther shakes her head and hands the Bible to Ofelia. Just as she lowers her arm, her phone rings with the tune of Where No One Goes. 

She apologises and takes a few steps back towards the front door, looking to see who's calling her. It's Marco.

"Hello?"

"Esther." the boy replies. He sounds pretty excited. "You've got to come to the bookshop right away."

"What? Did I do—?"

"It's ready."

The girl will keep denying it until the day Amara locks up the universe and proves what she did right there. As soon as she understood what her friend had said, she laughed like Maleficent, but more joyfully and less sinisterly. She jumped up and down and spun around, almost falling down the steps of the front porch.

Ophelia sticks her head out of the door, with Amara behind her.

"What happened?"

Esther turns around, not realising the women are moving back a bit because of her wild smile, and says the words that tie another knot in the thread of Dream of the Endless:

"It's ready."

Marco can be heard cheering along on the phone too.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Esther is flying! Amara and Ofelia follow her, feeling a bit confused but mostly curious. They're smiling at the girl's happy energy, seeing her practically leave them in her dust with every excited stride she takes.

When they get to Foyles bookshop, Esther almost bumps into a table where a young couple is having tea. They complain, and she apologises profusely, red as the sun at dawn, but when she spots Marco out of the corner of her eye, she takes another leap and approaches him, belatedly processing Amara and Ofelia's affectionate laughter.

Marco sees her, smiles broadly, and only then does Esther realise that he has both hands behind his back. His dad is standing at the counter behind him, smiling at her politely, then nodding and going behind his office door.

The girl says: "Gimme it now." in a voice that's as thick as a well.

Marco flinches a little without even noticing. 

"Carajo*, you can be scary when you want to be. What's the magic word?

"Por favor**, just give it to me now, before I resort to some dodgy methods to make your fate the worst of all beings to ever breathe in the universe."

The boy's tanned skin goes grey for a moment. The place goes quiet for a minute, to the point where a crow can be heard cawing somewhere.

Esther makes a gesture of possession with her hands, opening and closing them twice, her fingers making a cute little noise as they bump against her palms. It sounds just like a baby asking to be hugged.

Marco blinks, sighs and smiles, taking what's behind his back and presenting it in front of him as if it were the greatest of treasures.

For Esther, it feels like just that.

In her friend's hands is the epitome of her dreams, her sorrows, her own childhood, the stories that influenced her, her blood and her constant defiants. 

The book is black, covered with removable plastic covers, just like the original script J.K. Rowling wrote about The Crimes of Grindelwald, which is engraved in gold with spirals of sand and stardust. The name and author of the book are written in cursive letters:

To the Sandman: A collection of poems written throughout a lifetime, by La Solivagante.

The girl takes the book, her eyes welling up with tears. Her hands are shaking a bit, her lips are barely moving into a weak smile, and she slowly pulls off the plastic covers with her writing info to show the hardcover of her book, which has a lone gold star with a gold border, with four more gold stars at the tips.

Esther bursts out laughing, tears welling in her eyes as she holds the book to her chest.

It was achieved, daid***, she thinks, remembering the times her dad encouraged her to write, to feel, to dream. It was achieved.

She hopes that wherever he is, he can see her and smile.

When she opens her eyes, she sees Amara, Ofelia and Marco looking at her with big, happy smiles.

Esther lets out another hearty laugh, this time with tears in her eyes, and puts the plastic covers on the book. She sighs and smiles brightly.

"It was achieved."

They hug each other, laughing and crying, and Amara rests her chin on Esther's head as her brother's raven takes flight and disappears among the trees.

The only thing the entity does in response is close her eyes and hug her friend a little tighter.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

After a great day where Esther bade her goodbyes and jumped and ran at the same time to get home and inform her mother, they both returned after grabbing dinner. 

"You could be like the women in Fast and Furious if you put some spirit into your driving." Gabriela teases, since they had come with Esther at the wheel.

Esther just laughed and left the Burger King bags on the kitchen counter. "If you ever want to meet death, just let me know."

They both get on with their usual stuff, like washing up, getting dressed, helping each other, eating while watching a Disney film, The Little Mermaid, with crisps and Pepsi in wine glasses, and Esther washes the dishes while Gabriela is in the bathroom, doing who knows what.

Esther takes a moment to show her book to Oneiros, and the cat looks at her with wide and blown eyes. Looks like he's almost smiling.

The girl was humming the chorus of One Republic's "I Lived" while doing the dishes when she heard a death cry coming from the stairs. Esther suddenly drops the glass she was washing, which smashes on the floor. She runs towards the stairs, with Oneiros following her, climbing over the railing. When she gets to the bathroom door, she throws it open and sees her mother, Gabriela Juanita Suarez de Carrasco, who is a very reliable person, curled up in the bathtub. She was hugging her knees with white knuckles, staring at a rusty stain on the white ceramic. It was a residue of Esther's blood when she first attracted Amara, and it wouldn't come off, not even with turpentine. Oneiros gets up close to the bathtub and tries to reach a bit of the woman's hair. She ignores him, preferring to whisper tirelessly what sounds like one denial after another.

"Mathair." Esther calls softly, her voice whispering, and she extends her hands, using a technique for approaching a frightened animal. 'Breathe. Take a deep breath." The girl crouches down next to the bathtub, and her cat jumps inside and starts rubbing against Gabriela's bent legs. Esther looks at him and gives him a congratulatory look when he starts to purr. "Mumma. Tell me it's wrong, please."

Then her mum looks at her.

Her eyes are like Delirium's, distant and struggling to focus on anything in particular. This is how the girl recognises the state of terror.

"Mumma." she calls again, this time raising a hand that's still wet from washing the dishes, and waits. Gabriela looks at her hand, noticing her fingers, which are long but agile. She sees Marisol's woven ring on her index finger, and the other ring with an antique cut, which used to belong to Mrs Judith back in Ireland. She slowly raises her own hand, her right hand, and tremblingly takes her daughter's. "There you go. Chill out. Take a few deep, slow breaths with me, okay? Now."

Esther breathes in this way and watches attentively as her mother imitates her, closing her eyes, breathing in through her nose and letting the air out through her mouth. She does this a few times, until Gabriela relaxes and leans back against the ceramic of the bathtub. Oneiros jumps up onto her now-free lap and settles in, purring like crazy. The woman looks at him with a slight smile.

Esther doesn't ask any more questions. She just sits on the floor, leans back against the edge of the bathtub, and squeezes her mumma's hand. They stayed like that for what felt like forever, but was only a few minutes.

Gabriela looks at her daughter. The younger woman sees shame, exhaustion, surprise and resignation. She doesn't get it at first, but then the older woman hands her something long and white. Esther takes the small stick and has a look to see what's left her mother in such a state. 

The stick has a little yellow screen, and there's a word written on it that makes her glucose levels drop.

Pregnant.

It feels like the sand in the hourglass has run out, because time stands still. Amara's dad is wasting the last few seconds. Esther's mind goes into overdrive with a bunch of questions: when, where, how, what, who...

Ah.

She blinks and leaves the pregnancy test on the carpet next to her feet, then looks at Gabriela, who looks back at her through the strands of her brown hair, her hands gripping Oneiros's fur in a way that makes him meow a couple of times, but he doesn't stop purring.

Esther lets out a sigh and leans back against the edge of the bathtub.

"Ah, carajo" she says, speaking in proper Spanish with an Argentine accent she hasn't used in ages. "mirá lo que nos vino a pasar.****" 

Gabriela just keeps going. The look in her eyes says it all: fear, shame and desire.

She wants this.

Esther can just picture Desire's face when they see this kind of desire, and she smiles at her mum and says: "Estaremos de diez, má. De alguna forma.*****"

It's only then that the woman flinches, closing her eyes. She reaches out a hand and Esther takes it. They both stay there, in the quiet of the bathroom that holds so many different stories, holding hands, with Oneiros purring and a tacit agreement of support.

"Thank you, daughter." says Gabriela, her eyes welling up. "Thank you."

Esther smiles at her again and squeezes her so hard it could have broken her mother's bones.

"You're welcome, Má.******"

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Esther helps her mother get up, and just like a few days ago, she takes her to her room, tuck her in, kiss her on the forehead, and gives her cat to her so she won't sleep alone. 

Gabriela stares at the ceiling with one hand on her stomach and the other on Oneiros' back, whose little head is resting against the woman's ribs. Esther gives her cat a little kiss on the forehead, tells her she's going out for a bit, wishes her good night, and heads downstairs to clear up the broken glass on the kitchen floor.

Then she puts the kettle on the hob and leans against the worktop, gripping the sink edges firmly. The sound of the water slowly getting hot is a bit of a comfort for her, because she's feeling a bit anxious and can't stop thinking about a child who looks like his mother but has Edward's eyes. 

Her relationship with that guy is a bit of a mix. It's not great, but it's not terrible either. Esther doesn't actively seek him out, and he doesn't seek her out either. They talk when they need to, and that's about it. The only thing they have in common is Gabriela.

She smiles, which she wasn't expecting. 

She's gonna have a little sibling.

She lets out a sigh and shakes her head. Then she looks up and stares at her backyard for a few seconds. 

That is, until she hears something like a 'whoosh'. She blinks, confused but also a bit suspicious, and ready to pull out her needles. But then she looks back at the window and takes a deep breath, straightening her back when she sees what is clearly reflected there. She turns slowly, unable to stop a slight smile from spreading across her face. She feels a sense of satisfaction knowing that her message was heard and responded to.

"You came.

As the shadow takes shape in the dying light of the living room lamp it reveals a pale man, with eyes as blue as the summer sky, a jaw so sharp it could shatter glass, and hair as black as a raven's feather, tousled in a style that suggests he just rolled out of bed. He's dressed all in black, with a long coat that bunches at his neck and extends in three separate pieces to his ankles.

The Sandman opens his mouth and says something that sounds like semi-sweet chocolate and feels like velvet, making the girl's stomach feel like a fish that's taken the bait:

"You called."

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter twenty-two  !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends.❞﹚.

⸻Hafiz.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

The silence surrounding them is unbearable, and thank God (thank you, merciful God, for saving me from this cringe, thinks Esther), the kettle begins to whistle.

Esther takes a deep breath and goes to the stove, switching off the heat.

"Sorry, I wasn't expecting anyone at this time." she says, realising it's sorta silly, but she already said anyway. She stretches like an accordion to reach the shelf where the cups are. The Sandman doesn't say anything, so she tries something else. She looks over her shoulder and offers:"Tea?"

The guest doesn't say anything; he just moves a bit closer, crossing the kitchen island, until he's exactly five feet away from her, against the wall. Then he shakes his head.

"Ye sure?"

Now he nods.

Esther presses her lips together, looking a bit put off, but still takes just one cup, the Hufflepuff one, and puts it on the counter next to the kettle. Then she goes to the shelf with the box of teas, takes a red fruit tea bag and puts it in her cup. She takes the kettle and pours in the hot water, her eyes fixed on it as it slowly turns red, her mind trying to find the words to speak to this being.

When the water reaches the rim of the cup, Esther puts the kettle back on the hob and picks up the cup. Her movements are sharp, and water spills and splashes her fingers, but the adrenaline stops her from feeling irritated. She leans on the counter, looking over at Sandman. 

They're just staring at each other for what feels like forever, until the girl finally exhales a sigh that's been sitting there for ages. She gets her Victorian side going, the one she uses every time she writes a poem, and starts speaking in old words, just in case.

"Ye have some explaining to do."

...

That came out worse than expected.

In the dim light of the lamp, Esther can see him raise his eyebrows, as if he's thinking 'You dare...'

"I guess we're in the same circunstance with each other, then." says the Sandman, standing up straight and looking enterily like the eldritch creature he is. "I have heard everything that has happened to you, Esther."

The girl takes a sip of her tea to stop herself from accusing him. It burns her tongue. And she didn't put honey in it.

"Is that so?" she says, a hint of sarcasm in her voice as she looks for the honey container on the tea shelf. "How?"

The Sandman hides his head in the darkness behind him. His eyes are black and have a single star as a pupil, showing that he's not an ordinary being.

Presumptuous.

"After retrieving all my tools back, I asked the Fates about what I heard from the Morning Star, about this new entity known the Defiant of Destinies. It is said this new creature defied Destiny himself by creating a spontaneous fork."

Abort mission. Abort mission. Run and hide in Destiny's maze until even he can't find you. Then follow the path with Ariadne's thread and go to Liri's painting to cross the border into her colourful kingdom. You won't be any crazier than you already are once it's safe to leave.

Red alarms start ringing inside Esther's head. But she just stirs her tea with two spoonfuls of honey.

She asks, a bit evasively: "Who's the Morning Star?" as she leaves the spoon in the sink and lifts the cup to take a sip. The Sandman, though, remains unperturbed.

"You would know him as the devil."

The tea scratches her throat. Esther coughs a couple of times as she puts her cup back on the counter, which clinks from the abruptness. With one hand on her chest, she coughs twice more.

"M' fine," she says, her voice unnecessarily raspy and with her natal accent. She glances out of the corner of her eye and sees that the Sandman has moved, enough to be three steps away from her now. "How'd ye come to that?"

"My helmet, the symbol of my authority, was in the possession of a demon." he says, and his voice causes a cotton cloud to begin to appear in the younger woman's brain. "After I got my sand back with Johanna Constantine's help, I went to look for it in hell. After getting it, the Morning Star mentioned a saying." Esther looks up and sees him staring at her, unblinking, as if analysing her every little gesture. "It seems that the Defiant did not smile upon to my path."

There's a bit of a pause, and the girl decides to play dumb, partly because she's not sure how to take the fact that, according to Sandman, the devil himself knows her, so much so that there's even a phrase in her honour. Why? She doesn't know. She just does.

"And what did these Fates tell you?"

Next blink, the Sandman's right in front of her. His black coat brushes against her knitted jumper, and his height makes him look like a lamppost. Esther has to tilt her head back until the back of her neck wrinkles. She sorta realises that her forehead's almost touching his chest, which explains the pain in her neck.

"Do not mock me." he says, serious. "For I am sure you are aware of the Fates, my sister, Death, Destiny and my other siblings. I know for a fact that you know about my kingdom, about Lucienne, and that, in your blood, you carry a part of my power. Do not think, for a second, that you can defy me, Defiant."

By the time he says she can't defy him and says 'Defiant' in a rough but mocking way, Esther has already decided this being is worse than Desire.

It's hard not to feel disappointed.

"Right then, Sandman." she spits, taking a long sip of her tea without breaking the eye contact. Her characteristic defiance spills from her tongue. "I'll assume then ye got my message and came to punish me for failing in freeing you or for telling you to get lost when your sister took Josephine. Or am I wrong here?"

Sandman's expression of superiority softens as his eyelids tremble and his skin relaxes, until his features come back to normal and his eyes look at her from beneath his unusually long eyelashes.

Is he giving her puppy dog eyes?

Apart from being worse than Desire, he's also bipolar? What the hell's wrong with this entity?

"You misunderstand me." he says. "No, I did not come here to punish you for either of those situations. You were the only one who was kind enough to at least try to help me, and for that, I owe you, Esther."

The way he says her name makes her shiver, not from the cold, but from something else she won't admit to.

"Ye don't owe me anythin'." she says, taking the last sip of tea and then leaving the empty cup on the sink. She moves out of Sandman's reach and heads for the door. "I failed, so any kind of ancient debt or custom of the universe that binds you as an entity doesn't apply."

She turns to look at him over her shoulder as she grabs the doorknob, clearly intending to wander around at this time of night, as she'd told her mother before wishing her good night.

"Nothing binds me." the Sandman replies, coming up to her with quiet, measured steps. "I do choose to return your kindness. You may not have given me freedom, but you gave me hope and faith, the two things that sustained me through the next years I spent in that basement. "

The girl spins around, her hands on her elbows. She's a bit surprised that he casually mentions how they met, because she didn't think this was something he would be willing to talk about. The Sandman is standing over her again, but not in the same way as a few seconds ago. He's solid, ancient, and calm, like a tree. 

She thinks he's either lying or hiding something. But it doesn't matter. He can keep his secrets.

Esther lets out a sigh, puts on her slippers and opens the front door of her house, stepping out onto the porch. She turns to see him standing in the doorway.

"Walk with me, Sandman." she invites him, putting her hands in the pockets of her well-worn cotton trousers. "I'll have explanations, and so will ye. But I don't need my mum to get up to fetch a glass of water and bump into Kozmotis Pitchiner in her living room." 

The Sandman's forehead gets wrinkled like an angry old man's.

"You dare…?"

"So, ye know who's Kozmotis Pitchiner, right?"

The entity falls silent, his rose-and-clover lips tighten, and his head tilts slightly, very slightly, downward. He shakes his head once.

Esther lifts one corner of her mouth in a slightly smug smile.

"Come." she says, turning around and starting to walk in the middle of the night. "There are several things to catch up on. I'll explain them to ye."

By the time she reaches the street, the Sandman is already beside her, walking at her pace, one foot in front of the other, in sync. Esther just smiles again.

They walk for a block in total silence. Only the whistling wind and the crows can be heard.

Esther walks to the little park where her mum took her to tell her about Paul's gift. It's empty, street lights shining on the dew-covered grass. She goes over to one of the swings and sits down heavily, sighing. The chain squeaks grossly, but that just calms her down. She uses her feet to push and swing, then looks over her shoulder. 

The Sandman stares at her, looking like he has no idea what to do.

Esther gives him a playful smile: "I know it might not be yer usual style, but come, sit on a swing. It's like a rocking chair, but floating."

"Is this really necessary?'

"If ye'd rather stand there stiffly, that's up to ye."

Two seconds later, the Sandman sits down on the swing next to her, gesturing like a pianist with his long coat, so that it extends backwards. His long legs are like wires, but he uses them to push himself, and he swings listlessly. 

But Esther isn't stupid. She can see from his less rigid back and less pursed mouth that the short, swaying and squeaking of the swings grounds him.

They both are alike in that, it seems.

She wishes she'd brought her phone. She'd really like to send Amara a photo of her little brother, who's been scorched, trying to fit and stay on a swing made for kids. He looked regal and majestic, blending into the night and wearing a distant expression as he gazed at the houses in front of them.

"You promised explanations." says the Sandman, nodding towards her. "I must confess I am quite interested in hearkening them."

Esther raises her eyebrows.

'Did I explicitly say I "promised" them?'"

"We agreed that we both had things to explain. So, ladies first." He gestures with his hand like a Victorian gentleman.

"How Darcy of ye." she retorts.

"Did you just compare me to Jane Austen's most famous character?"

"Yes."

The Sandman's looking at her intently, making her cross her legs and pull her knees up to make herself smaller.

"What an honour you have given me. Who would that make you? Miss Elizabeth?"

Esther's eyes widen.

"It doesn't make me anyone, Sandman. Anyway, we'll have to save that for another chat. Or do you want to debate about one of the classics? We've got all night."

The Sandman nods once and looks ahead, as if he's ponderind what to say.

"The Fates told me about your accidental acquisition of a part of my power." he begins, his legs rocking him slowly. "I have to admit that I am unfamiliar with such an event, and likewise, I do not know how to address it."

 "Can I just ask what your sand can do to me?" Esther says, gripping the rusty chains tightly. "I'm a bit worried it might have side effects."

"If you were an ordinary human, it would have consumed you already." the Sandman replies, his pale hands pressed together like a businessman. "Even for such a small portion of my power, it is capable of covering an entire galaxy."

Esther isn't surprised by the news.

"I figured." she says, swinging a little harder. "Then why am I not destroyed? I've been like this for nearly four years now."

"You are the Defiant." he replies, raising his head to look at her with his polar star pupil, and Esther almost believes those words are set in stone. "You are second only to Destiny in terms of power. My own destiny is malleable your hands. It is understandable that you carry both with grace."

The girl raises an eyebrow.

"I don't carry 'em with grace." she says. "Only with resignation." 

The Sandman tilts his head, just like crows do.

It makes her smile a little.

"Regardless you carry my sand, it is imperative that you learn to handle it." he orders. His voice, ancient, becomes firm, leaving no room for discussion. "I can sense it wreacking havoc on your essence, and taking it from you is not an option. You know how to control your abilities as Defiant, but not completely. That kind of power is really dangerous for a mortal body. If an Endless' power gets mixed in with it, it can be lethal. If it continues any longer, I fear it will consume you in the end."

Esther puts one foot on the ground to stop herself from swaying.

"What a sophisticated way of telling me that I might actually run into Amara this time."

The Sandman frowns. "Amara?"

"Teleute, your sister." she clarifies. "When we first met, she said I could call her by that name. I got used to it and to meeting her regularly, and my life didn't come to an end. We're friends, you see."

The being's face looks thoughtful and distant, but not hard.

"I am glad to know that my sister has someone who doesn't judge her for who she is." is all he says.

They're both quiet again, and the sounds of the night are really loud.

"May I ask how we should move forward?"

The Sandman sees her like a scientist sees bacteria under a microscope.

"I would ysuggest that, from now on, you spend time in my realm." he replies, taking his time and being careful not to scare her away with a few quick words. "By being in the Dreaming, you are within my power, not just my power within you. This should keep sudden manifestations and the possibility of your perish, at bay."

"Sudden manifestations?"

"You were able to summon a biscuit and order a vehicle to run you over in my throne room." he says, all casual, as if he's commenting on the weather. "I could give you a part of my kingdom, the same as the power you wield, for you to reside in. You will have total control there, and that will prevent your demise."

For God's sake.

"Ye sound like Destiny and the Fates." she snaps irritably. The Sandman opens his mouth, but Esther stops him. "They serve me everything on silver platter, expecting me to manage on my own and not cause any more trouble, as if the tools they grant me are electric leashes to keep me contained. Ye said before, ye've never been in a situation like this, and since ye have no choice, you give in, because I'm a problem, something to be contained, to be kept at bay. This is just a temporary solution, so why don't we just let your power of Endless and my power as Defiant finish consuming me? My death may cause worse consequences, but ye all are in a strong position. You can handle it."

By the time she's finished her tirade, her chest hurts, not just from the air she's forced out, and the Sandman doesn't even deign to answer her. They're both quiet until the squeak of Esther's swing chain sounds louder as she gets up clumsily, her right leg cramping.

"See ye in my dreams then." she retorts, her tone feigning politeness, even though she knows she's acting like a child throwing a tantrum. But for now, she's a child, and she's already had more than her fair share of disappointments when it comes to the entity staring at her with what looks like a bloody pout. "Bonafide, valeas."

Which means 'In good faith, may you fare well' in Latin.

She might be angry, disappointed, upset and tired, but this idiot is still the Sandman, the first story she was ever told, the flesh and blood of everything she has ever believed, and she bled, prayed and waited for him. She just hopes that it was worth it and that this isn't all that he has to give.

Esther hugs her elbows, squeezing her skin as if they were folds in a sheet, and is about to take a step when her head hits something hard and firm. When she looks up, there's the Sandman, looking at her with the same pout, but now with human eyes, with blue irises.

"My apologies." he says, and his voice is even more gentle than before. Not smooth, or tempting, or making her want to fall into his arms to sleep 'till the next century. Just soft, like the drizzle covering them. "I didn't mean to make you feel the same way as the Fates made you feel."

Esther takes a sharp breath. "And how ye think that was?"

The Sandman looks up, as if he's trying to remember something.

"I seem to recall the Crone said something like 'aberration of the universe'."

"Wow. Ye even know that." the girl teases, a bitter laugh with sharp edges escaping from her nose. "They really are a bunch of gossips."

"I can't find any failure in your logic."

And then he smiles.

It's not an easy smile to spot; Esther has to focus twice to make sure that slight lift at the corners of his mouth and the wrinkles around his eyes are there, making it seem as if he had never smiled in his damn endless life, but there it is, after all. She doesn't miss the complicity that this gesture seems to seek. 

An unnamed part of her thinks he looks like someone she'd share more than just smiles with.

The Defiant does her thing and smiles back, in the same way.

"So, would I have to go to your castle every time I sleep?" she asks, trying to figure out a routine.

"No." the Sandman answers, which surprises her. What else would there be to do? "You must spend time there with your body, not just your subconscious. This way, both your body and your subconscious will get used to it. There will also be an opportunity for me to teach you how to handle the sand. It is no easy task, but it is not impossible either."

Esther raises her eyebrows and narrows her eyes, her lips pressed upwards, registering the difference between this entity and the others who simply left her to her fate. She nods a little.

"Guess I'll have to go regularly, maybe once or twice a week, right?"

"You shall go to the Dreaming every day until those freckles disappear."

"What?" Esther despairs for a second, but then she covers her eyes with her hand and remembers the faint lines covering her dark circles. She also sees the freckle bracelets on her wrists, as if they were two handcuffs. "Ah. Just to be clear, what are these?"

"They are the physical manifestation of the sand." replies her companion, looking at her right wrist. "I myself had them in my early years of existence, until I could control my abilities perfectly and transfer them in the sand. They will fade away as you gain knowledge and experience."

Esther tries to imagine him with freckles, squinting her eyes and analysing his alabaster cheeks without shame. She can't.

"Is there something on my face?" the Sandman asks, expressionless. But Esther can see a slight blush on his cheekbones, which is surprising. His pale skin made the red blood she didn't think he would have stand out a little more in the dim light from the lampposts.

"No." Esther shakes her head. "I'm just trying to picture you with freckles. It's complicated.

The Sandman looks at her again, without any expression, and his cheeks are slightly more flushed, which makes the girl frown.

"Can ye entities feel cold or heat?" she asks, as she starts to walk. The Sandman follows her at a steady pace. "Your cheeks look a bit irritated. They're red."

Just then, they  pass under a tree with s bit of shade. The next moment, when the light returns to illuminate his face, there's no trace of the blush.

Wait a sec-

"We do not feel like you do, we do not need food, and we do not carry blood." he says, his hands in his coat pockets, his jaw sticking out as he lifts his head to look at the stars. "But we usually try to imitate you, so as not to make you uncomfortable."

"How considerate of ye." Esther teases, without malice, offering him a crooked smile. "No need with me. I've seen and lived through worse."

The Sandman stops and looks at her, his eyes shining again.

"I am aware of that, and in light of the original events, I beg you to accept my sincere apologies." he says solemnly, but Esther just frowns and blinks a few times, confused. "Because of my absence, the sleeping sickness started. Because of it, your father died. Because of his death, you went to the mansion to try to fulfil his last wish. That is why you found me, and that is why you died. All of those events have brought us to where we are today. This shouldn't have happened, especially not to you, but it did, and you must be aware that I am... sorry."

By the time he's finished speaking, he's too close. At some point, Esther saw was right in front of her. The sand inside Esther (because it can only be that) churns in her stomach like a vortex of water, wanting to return to its owner.

Still, damn thing.

"Ye forget that all of this happened because I chose it." she says, lifting her chin. She feels a bit of a shiver go through her when her crown brushes against the Sandman's jaw, but she keeps her cool. She takes a step back, hugs herself to rub her arms, and continues: "It's not yer fault. Not if I chose it.There's nothin' to apologise for."

The Sandman opens his mouth, maybe to contradict her, but Esther lifts her chin, as if defying him to say something. In the end, he stops talking and nods, sinking his jaw a little, giving himself a vampiric look that makes Esther laugh quietly inside.

How weird is this? She was expecting more of a fight. And for him to don't get too close.

"Okay." she says, and nods to her companion to follow her. They both walk down the street in the middle, because Esther likes to do that, and the Sandman, she thinks, because she is doing it. "Is there anything else you want to add for now? I'd love to chat, but I've got school tomorrow."

The Sandman doesn't say anything, but he makes a weird movement with his shoulders, and when she blinks, she feels something on her own shoulders.

Esther blinks again, and then she feels, and sees, a big piece of black fabric draped over her shoulders, covering her like a blanket, trailing slightly behind her. 

When she turns to look at the Sandman, he's wearing another coat, shorter and also black, with lapels that rise up against his neck like Dracula's cape, making his jaw look even more striking. He looks at her over his nose, like he's assessing her, as if he's thinking about what he sees, whether to criticise or improve it.

"What's your coat here for?" asks Esther, tilting her head to one side, kinda suspiciously.

"You were shivering." the Sandman says, looking her straight in the eye. "What other reason could there be?"

The girl narrows her eyes, feeling a bit suspicious, but she nods and slips her arms into the sleeves, which are a bit too long for her and she has to roll them up a bit. It's nice and soft, and it's not too warm for her either, so it's perfect for cool spring nights. It's not too heavy, but it's not too light either. Esther would call it a fashion masterpiece.

"It's…" she says quietly, burying her nose in the sleeves that are piling up at her wrists. It's got that fresh-out-of-the-forest kind of smell, with a touch of woodiness and a hint of that spring breeze. "Pleasant."

The Sandman doesn't say anything, but Esther can see that his walk is more noticeable, and it looks like he's pretty satisfied. Not to mention his hands buried in the pockets of his new coat and his raised jaw. He looks like a proud black peacock.

Esther tries not to overthink what her analogy might mean.

They walk in silence, the sounds of the night filling the space between them, until they arrive right in front of Esther's house, where Oneiros, lying in the rocking chair, wags his tail, his eyes fixed on the man dressed in black. He looks back, and they both stare at each other intensely.

Esther remembers, then.

"Ah, I've got something to say." The Sandman nods towards her, spending a few last seconds glaring at his cat before looking at her attentively. "Can ye make people stop dreaming about me? Also, I don't even want to see you as a Maine Coon in my bedroom window."

Dream of the Endless is a pale being by nature, but now, surprisingly, he seems to be turning transparent. Literally. Esther can almost see his bones, or what look like bones, around his blue eyes.

"I did not mean to make you uncomfortable." he says abruptly, his voice with an urgency that fits the situation quite well, which amuses Esther. Not that she'd ever admit it, though. "Things that happen in dreams often have consequences in the Waking World, and now, especially for you, since you carry a part of my sand. And you were hit by a car and injured with glass. I had to make sure you were not hurt."

Okay, Esther doesn't see any flaws in his logic.

"And ye thought the best way to do that was to take the form of a cat that looks like a stuffed animal and show up at my window as if ye were one?"

"I do not think you would have appreciated me appearing, as you see me, in the middle of the night, on your private chambers."

The girl wants to laugh at the way he says 'private chambers,' as if her room, which is less than five square metres in size, with peeling paint and centuries-old furniture brought from her childhood home in Ireland, were the chambers of a queen or something.

"Yer right about that." she says, despite herself. "But don't even think about denying it, even in my semi-conscious state, ye enjoyed it when I scratched yer ears and kissed yer forehead."

Ay.

The Sandman's face changes into something ancient and honestly scary; his eyes go completely black, and his jaw lines and rise above the lapels of his coat. Esther doesn't bat an eyelid.

"Are you suggesting I took pleasure in such a... such a... vulgar act?" he asks, as if the girl in front of him is just an average person who's not friend of death. "As if a creature such as me needed... affection."

The Defiant really does live up to her name; she smiles with her cheeks all raised, which confuses the Sandman, but then she opens her mouth and says something that makes Destiny raise his eyebrows under his hood as he reads the italicised words being written in his book:

"Ye look quite pretty denying that I'm right with trick questions that have a common answer, which we both know very well is yes, Sandman."

Carajo.

What she actually said was: 'Ye look quite petty.'

But never mind. If she's honest with herself, she'll also admit that he looked pretty cute with that scolded baby pout, like, cute in an irritating way. Seriously, he Endless? He's a spoilt boy who'd rather deny something he clearly enjoyed because, God forbid, his pride is as fragile as a porcelain jug.

But between her and God, she's loving his dry face right now; the blackness that were his eyes had become these tiny dots, his mouth was still open, looking all angry, and then, his pale face was covered with a thin layer of blush that was almost invisible, but still noticeable.

Dear God, he really is pretty. Look at him squirming like a worm in salt.

Esther smiles mischievously at him once more, then folds her ring-adorned hands in a negotiation gesture.

"Well, since we're done here, I'm off to sleep. Don't wanna see you lurking around like a cat-like stalker. I'll catch up with you tomorrow in your kingdom as soon as I can. I'll use the Portal between Kingdoms." The girl starts to leave, walking backwards towards her porch. The Sandman's stunned gaze follows her like a hawk. She says goodbye with the following words, because she can, because she wants to and because she feels like it: "Now, bonafide valeas, buachaill álainn."

It's a pretty long goodbye, but it's necessary. It's made up of two parts, the first part being 'bonafide, valeas', which is Latin for 'in good faith, you fare well' and the second part is 'buachaill álainn', which is Irish for 'pretty boy'.

Esther picks up her cat without waiting for a response. The cat meows annoyedly and digs its claws into her forearm, but she is so pleased with herself that she doesn't even feel it. Then she enters her house and turns to see the Sandman staring at her, squinting his eyes and surely planning to make her regret it.

"Oh, and Kozmotis Pitchiner is a literal representation of the ruler of nightmares in a series of books called "The Guardians of Childhood'." she adds, before opening the screen door to her house with one hand, while holding Oneiros with the other. "Ye should read 'em. Ye'll love 'em."

Esther goes into her house and closes the door quickly without even thinking, but then she realises that the Sandman was standing right behind her.

"Wai...!"

Esther doesn't wait, though. She slams the door in his face and hisses with pity when she hears a sharp thud against the wood of the door and a silent cry of pain.

Oh, shoot. So it looks like he's not made of sand, then.

And she slammed the door right in his face.

And he slammed into that same door.

And he probably broke his nose. 

She immediately lets go of her cat, who lands on its feet on the floor, and grabs her coat with one hand as she opens the door again, with a quick apology ready to say.

There's nothing there.

Just a little golden mound of sand that the wind blows away.

Esther follows the trail of sand with her eyes, which practically flies through the air, playing and creating a fluid illusion until it disappears, just like Sandy's sand in the books and film 'Rise of the Guardians.'

The girl shakes her head and looks up at the moon, which is a bit further away and looking half full.

"Honestly, I don't even feel sorry."

And she goes back into her house, feeling pretty good about herself and her talent for leaving entities in bad positions.

Chapter Text

┏━━ ⧼ 🌌 ⧽ ━━━━━━━━━━┓

⃟✧ ིྀ･. 𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

chapter twenty-three  !

┗━━━━━━━━━━ ⧼ 🪡 ⧽ ━━┛

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ﹙❝ My eyes are wide awake.❞﹚.

⸻Good Day for Dreaming, Ruelle.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Esther's defiance continues when she takes a sleeping pill that ensures a dreamless sleep before going to bed, with an evil laugh stuck in her throat.

Oh she's definitely gonna enjoy this.

As expected, she doesn't dream that night. Unless you count the darkness and stillness of her closed eyelids as a dream. She's pretty sure she could see a frown, though. 

When her phone alarm goes off, she wakes up laughing. She laughs with a clear laugh, full of joy. Playful, but also joyful.

She's really gonna enjoy every second of this.

When she gets up, she realises that the sun is just coming up, and when she looks at the time, she sees that she only has 30 minutes to get to school. But even that doesn't stop her from enjoying herself. She just grabs an apple, a thermos of tea, a packet of Oreos, changes into some decent clothes and a pair of boots, and gently wakes her mother with a glass of water before leaving.

When she gets to school, she walks down the main hallway until she sees that some of her classmates are looking at her strangely.

Esther takes the biscuit she was chewing, removes it from her mouth, and with her voice taking on a hostile edge, asks: "Somethin' wrong?"

This girl who's the most annoying person in the universe (only joking, Desire beats her), Jasmine, takes a step forward, her trainers echoing as she puts her heel down, as if they were a pair of high heels. Esther wrinkles her nose at the sight of her flushed cheeks, her lips covered in red, and her eyes painted blue.

"It's funny." says Jasmine, with her arms at her sides. "Well, I think it's funny anyway."

"What's funny to ye?" Esther lets out a low growl as she adjusts her rucksack on one shoulder.

"You look happy." the other girl says, not noticing Esther's wide eyes. "Like, really happy. Did you burn the curtain in the amphitheatre? Did you manage to annoy Miss Seaborn?"

"Dear Jasmine," says Esther, using the biscuit to scratch the corner of her mouth, "believe me. If I had set fire to the curtain in the amphitheatre, no one would have noticed. If I'd annoyed Miss Seaborn, she would have quit. Now, if ye excuse me, I've got better things to do."

The girl ate another biscuit and trotted down the hallway without waiting for a reply. She trotted on until she saw Miss Seaborn's office door, which had her name printed on the glass, knocked politely and waited.

The click of her heels echoed through the wood of the door, which opened after a short squeak. There was the psychiatrist, her blonde hair in a bun at the base of her neck, black-rimmed glasses making her blue eyes look bulging.

"Esther!" the woman greeted her, arms wide open. The girl smiled and went over to hug the older woman. "What a lovely surprise! Come in, I've got some tea ready."

The two women catch up, and the younger woman completes her weekly session. After a couple more classes, Esther begins to jog towards the exit, until the school principal, Mr Howard, stops her just as she passes his door.

"Oh, Esther!" he calls, a warm smile on his face. "Just the person I was looking for. Could you come with me? Someone wants to see you."

Esther stops in her tracks and nods, somewhat confused by this statement, and tense. Very tense.

Her confusion turns to surprise and then annoyance and distrust when she enters the small, cosy office and sees who the headmaster was referring to.

There, in front of the desk, is the anthropomorphic personification of desire, dressed entirely in red and looking exactly like they did on the day they impaled her cat.

"Esther." they greet her, voice as cloying as the thickest honey harvested in summer. "it's so nice to see you again."

For the first time in her life, Esther is grateful that this is her nickname, and for a second, she despises her birth name, which means ‘sweet as honey’ and, at the same time, ‘born in summer’.

She, at this moment, is not sweet as honey, and technically, she was born in the autumn.

She's a living contradiction, the defiance of which the Fates accuse her, so, letting her Defiant side show, she lifts her chin and looks at Desire from under her nose.

"Hello."

The being smiles like a panther, turns to Director Howard (who is obviously under the influence of desire itself, as his pupils are dilated), thanks him, and stands up, adjusting the lapels of their suit jacket.

"Let's go for a walk, dear." they say, approaching Esther and placing a ringed hand on the back of her neck. She hisses low, like a snake with its fangs out. "There are a couple of things I'd like to talk about."

Esther stands firm, slaps away Desire's fingers, which have begun to squeeze her jugular, and snaps her fingers in front of Director Howard's face, who blinks rapidly.

"Here, sir." she says, handing him a bottle of water from the other corner of the desk. "Have some. See ye next week."

She doesn't wait for a response; she leaves the glass in front of the man, opens the office door, and with a single glance signals the intruder to follow her. Desire struts as they walk, long strides revealing red heels that click against the ceramic floor. As they walk towards the exit, all eyes are on them, basking in the attention like the damn feline they are.

When Esther sees them blow a kiss to someone, she growls loudly, grabs the entity by the lapel of their coat and drags them behind her, ensuring they keep pace.

“On this plane of the universe,” she begins, stopping where the pavement divides to form a concrete path to the school entrance and crossing the lawn. “yer not in charge here. This' my world, and I won't allow you to go around using your tricks of Endless.” The girl leans the being down to her face, their noses almost touching. "Now, take those infernal things off yer feet and walk quickly and quietly."

‘Oh dear.’ the androgynous being laments falsely, touching their red lips with two fingers. "How bossy! I understand why you get along so well with Dream."

Esther stares at them expressionlessly, waiting, one boot tapping rhythmically on the ground like Thumper announcing to half the world that a new prince had been born. 

“You even have the same bitter expression. Your ey...”

The young woman's eyes widen and she grabs Desire's lapels tightly, shaking them as she reproaches them:

“TAKE OFF YER DAMN HEELS AND STOP COMPARING ME TO YER BROTHER, YE SPAWN OF NIGHT!”

Esther's voice stretches out and creates an impossible echo that reverberates through the street. The people around her look at her like she's annoying them, or shocked, or  judgement. But she doesn't care. She waits for her eyes to pierce Desire directly through the crown of their head as she watches them sigh like a condemned person and bend down to remove their huge heels, leaving perfectly manicured feet with red nail polish on the dirty pavement.

"You'll have to wash my feet before we part," growls the entity, walking with a disgusted expression, the heels dangling from two ringed fingers. "with rose oil and egyptian cotton."

"In yer darkest fantasies." Esther growls back, her voice scratchy.

"Oh, little star, in my darkest fantasies, other things happen."

Esther wrinkles her nose, and the freckles that the sand has painted on her stand out for a few seconds, iridescent in a golden tone mixed with white, in the sunlight.

"No inventes. Given who ye are, it's no surprise you're a bit of a first-class promiscuous."

"Such lovely compliments."

Esther rolls her eyes and gestures for the entity to follow her.

"Tell me exactly whatcha doin' here, Desire." she demands. "Cuz let me tell ye, I think ye have better things to do than try to ruin my life even more."

The creature looks at her sideways, scarlet lips parting in a Cheshire cat smile.

"It has caught my attention, this... preference that my family has for you." they say, their own heels making the same clicking noise as the high heels they're holding. "Destiny and you meet for tea and a good chat every now and then, Death and you do something similar, but here, in your... territory." Esther wrinkles her nose again. "Delirium comes to visit you too. And now, as I understand it, you'll be spending some conscious time in the realm of Dream. As far as I know, it's because..."

"To the point, if ye don't mind."

Desire snorted like a horse.

"Bitter. Having part of his existence inside you has rubbed off on you."

"To the point." growls the Defiant, teeth pressed together viciously as they turn a corner.

This time, the being stops. They look at her, golden eyes appraising. Then they sigh, a heavy one that carries something Esther can't seem to identify. 

"Would you believe me if I said I've come to apologise for impaling your cat?"

Esther's eyebrows shot up towards the universe. 

"I've been... thinking." says Desire, looking up at something above Esther's head. "And I've come to the conclusion that, despite my... animosity towards Dream, it wasn't your cat's fault, nor yours. So, I offer you my sincerest apolog..."

"Amara went to scold ye, didn't she?"

The androgynous being stops mid-sentence, their feminine and masculine features freezing as if liquid nitrogen had been thrown on them, and their left eye twitching slightly.

Esther gives a knowing smirk, which makes her plump cheekbones look like little apples nestled in her cheeks.

"For once," Desire mutters, a hand with rings buried in their blond hair. "for once, I'm trying to be nice..."

"Uh-huh. But that's because Amara told you off."

"... And you're not able to..."

"That's not a no."

"... let go of your annoyance."

The girl adopts the 'Darcy pose' (left leg forward, hands clasped together) and looks at the entity, as if to say, 'Oh, get lost.' But when she sees the 'not-so-endless Endless' there, with red lips pressed into a discontented pout, and eyes narrowed, she smiles condescendingly.

"I'm a bit more perceptive than ye'd think." she replies. "It'll take me a sec to accept your apology, but I'm flattered you came to offer it. This will be recognised, Epithumia."

That day, in the middle of the afternoon, on a pavement in front of a café with wrought-iron chairs, Desire of the Endless smiled without any bad intent.

Or so Esther thought, at least. But she wasn't totally convinced.

But at least they're trying this. Who was she to crush their hopes?

The Defiant, that's what she is.

Yet, she's grateful for the effort.

"I'm hoping our relationship improves from now on," says Esther, staring into Desire's golden eyes. "since there's a chance we may have to... coexist."

The being shakes their head with a cheeky grin.

"It's more than confirmed," they reply. 'if you're going to be spending time with Dream."

Esther narrows her eyes.

'What did they mean by that?'

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

After saying goodbye to Desire on the corner of Orpheus Way, Esther arrives at the porch, where she sees her mother sitting in her rocking chair, with a cup of tea half full, Oneiros at her feet. 

"Thought ye'd be at The New Inn." says the girl, as a way of saying hi. She's leaning on the porch railing, stroking her cat with her foot.

"I asked Hob to take a day off." Gabriela replies, taking a loud sip of her tea. Esther smiles at her like a little girl. "He agreed on the condition that I make him his favourite Irish coffee for a week, free of charge."

"Negotiator, I see." the younger woman laughs, crossing one leg over the other. Her face softens. "So... what now?"

Gabriela rests her teacup on her left thigh, covered by loose trousers, and leans back against the rocking chair, making it rock back and forth a little more.

"I haven't spoken to Edward yet." she says, her thumb rubbing the side of the cup. "I've got a feeling he'll want me to get an abortion."

Esther clamps her jaw shut as she feels the stomach drop to the floor.

"But, what do ye want?"

Gabriela pulls her lips back into a smile, but it doesn't look very real. She raises a hand to her forehead.

"Estibaliz, I'm almost forty. My life's a bit of a rollercoaster. I wasn't a very good mother to you when you needed me most. I don't... I'd hate to see such a small, tender creature go through that. I'd also prefer it if you didn't bring it up as your own, as I don't think I'm the best person to deal with depression.

Esther looks a bit shocked and grips the railing tightly, until she can't feel the blood in her fingers.

"But what do ye want?" she repeats, because she's got a lot of things that make her angry, and her mum might be right, but she's not going to let her insecurities take away one of the few things that could give her life meaning and happiness.

Gabriela falls silent, pressing her lips together so hard that they turn white as chalk. 

When she lifts her head, her blue eyes are red, but they've got a dark tint, which is made even more obvious by the red background caused by the injected blood.

"I want this baby." she replies, her voice firm but trembling, as if the mere idea of wanting something were worthy of contempt. "I'd like the chance to have another kid, even if it's not Sheridan's. I'm sure he would have loved them as much as if they were his own, and I'm sure you'll love them too. I want to be able to be better, I want to be able to give you a little brother or sister and not leave you with the burden of loneliness like me and your father, even if you're practically grown up already. I want you to name them whatever you like, sing them lullabies and teach them to dream. I want to be able to hold them in my arms, to see their first steps, to watch them grow, to watch them live. I just want them, whether a boy or a girl. I want them, and it feels like a curse to want something I once had and didn't treat as the 'taisce' it was, is and will be

Taisce, meaning "treasure" in Irish, and it's a name that Esther dreams of one day giving to her firstborn, whether it's a boy or a girl.

And she is aware, and it hurts her, that her mother feels guilty, even though she has many reasons to do so. 

But Esther also has things to feel guilty about, even if they were done out of love.

Her mum looks at her like she's an executioner, and whatever she says is like an axe blow that'll decapitate her.

So the girl takes a deep breath and drops the axe:

"Then have them."

Gabriela blinks once, twice, thrice, four times, rubs her fingers against her mouth and sighs, sinking into the rocking chair.

The Defiant smiles, and not for the first time, she thinks that this piece of furniture, inherited from her dad's mum, has calming powers.

┅ ࿐ ✧ ˚.⭑ ━━━━━━━━━━━ .*   ིྀིྀ

Gabriela puts on a denim jacket that actually belongs to Esther, gives her a kiss on the forehead and tells her she's going to walk to Edward's flat to clear her head and plan what she's going to say.

"Let's try your technique of... What was it again?"

"Solivagant."

"Esa madre." *

They both smile, Esther wishes her mother luck, tells her the fake Mexican accent isn't funny, and asks her to text her if she wants her to pick her up in the car, now that she knows how to drive. Gabriela nods and leaves, hands in her pockets and head held high.

Esther takes a deep breath when her mum disappears from view. Then she goes to her room and spends a few minutes, or maybe eons, staring at the Sandman's coat, which is spread out on her bed from every possible angle.

The damn piece of fabric has a galaxy on the inside.

It's like the Sandman took it and sewed it into this coat, leaving the black void on the outside and the stars, nebulae and other celestial matter on the inside, like a well-kept secret he entrusted to her.

The idea of her holding a galaxy in her little hands, which have caused headaches for humans and supernatural beings, gives Esther a courage that comes from somewhere deep within her. She knows in her bones that the Sandman knew she dreamed of this, of a cloak made of stars.

The bastard who strutted around as if he were proud of making the people around her dream about her, who sneaked into her room in the form of a cat in need of affection, and then basically gave her the dream of her childhood in the form of a giant coat because he could, because he wanted to, and because he felt like it.

So she decides to take advantage of this white flag (black, technically, which, in her mind, indicates a manipulated truce in a game of defiance for defiance), and she puts the coat in her wardrobe, folded gently and placed reverently, because it's still her childhood dream.

She'll never give it back, not while she's alive.

She doesn't think it's necessary. As far as she can tell, the idiot can make a lot of these without even breaking a sweat.

So there goes Esther, 5'4", her hair in a high ponytail, no shoes, wearing a floral dress that reaches her calves, a denim shirt that belongs to her mother, and carrying her bag full of unnecessarily necessary things. She sinks her hands into the reflective surface and says, loud and clear:

"Sandman, I'm in my chambers in front of the Passage between Realms and I request access to yours. Please, answer."

When the Sandman's symbol of authority, the mosquito head (the helmet, supposedly), appears and glows in soft golden tones, Esther steps into the mirror and submerges herself in the borders of the realms until she sees the reflection of a large carved entrance with two horns crowning it above. She's just about to walk on by when she spots the helmet carved on each door, so she shakes her head and steps outside the border, leaning on a dune of black sand.

Esther blinks, and the floating effect of the Passage disappears, leaving her in an endless desert of black sand with only one entrance to what looks like the Dream Realm.

Just as she reaches the front of the entrance and sees the carvings, she hears a soft 'whoosh' that blows her hair forward.

She just ignores it, though, and focuses on the carving of a phoenix taking flight. It looks really beautiful, and it's obvious that whoever made it has seen this amazing bird loads of times. They've clearly taken its shape and put it on the carv-

"Defiant."

Esther freezes halfway to the carved figure. Her fingers bend gently, and her hand drops to her side. She stands up straight and, without turning to look, greets him:

"Sandman."

She feels him approaching, rather than hears him. She feels him standing beside her, watching her out of the corner of her eye. 

"Welcome to Dreaming, in all its glory."

The carved doors open, slowly but surely, and reveal a world full of colours, ideas, stories, creatures... a world that Esther loves the moment she sees it.

It's impossible to describe just how beautiful and lively this place is. There's this amazing sense of childhood and home in every corner. It's something that shouldn't be seen by human eyes.

But there she was, taking in every detail, from the grand statue palace to the crystal-clear water, every ship, creature, mirrored surface and element around her. There are still so many places and possibilities out there to be sees, to be explored, to be lived.

Esther has to close her eyes and bring a hand to her face to prevent tears from falling and contaminating this place. She makes a sort of quiet but real noise, like a quiet sob.

She doesn't need to see to know that the Sandman is by her side in an instant, leaning over her trembling, sobbing figure to find out what's wrong.

"Esther?" he calls, and his voice feels like a caress on her head, a warm summer breeze, the blanket of her childhood wrapping her up like a little burrito.

She can't help it; she laughs.

It's short but meaningful, full of wonder, disbelief and more that Esther can't name, even though she's a poet. 

She decides she doesn't deserve such a title.

She looks up at the sky, feeling the tears roll down her cheeks. Vast, blue, infinite. It's a comforting sight, even if it's not the sky she's used to, and it helps her feel grounded enough to turn and look at the Sandman with a playful smile.

"I'm fine, it's just that..." she replies. She looks ahead, towards the dreams that used to feel out of reach, like something she was part of at one point, something she misses like a selkie misses the sea. Home. "Your realm is something I wasn't prepared for. It's pretty embarrassing to be a poet and not be able to find the words to describe this place."

The Sandman looks at her with a slight frown, lips almost smiling (if the micro-expression of a barely tilted corner of the mouth counts as such) and surprisingly knowing eyes, as if they had known each other for eons.

"I am pleased to know that you approve of my creations. But, with all good intentions," the being rises to his full height and looks down at her over his haughty chin, his face lighting up ever so slightly with a mischievous expression that reveals his kinship with Desire. "you have not seen anything yet."

Esther narrows her eyes, tears still falling, but her dazed expression melts away to reveal features that defy with a single glance.

"Are you defying me, Sandman?

Dream of the Eternals does nothing more than gesture for her to follow the bridge that connects where they are standing to the great palace that stands proudly like its king.

"Take it as you will, Esther." she hears him say, softly but clearly, as if the words were meant just for her. "Take it as you will."

So she does. She walks steadily, in tandem, and with the heart of a child, she sings:

"There's a hope, there's a spark, there's a fire. There's a light in the dark, burning brighter..."

Pretentious perhaps, but she can't be blamed.

Esther has been, is and will always be a dreamer.

And standing there, singing that song, walking with the Sandman in the realm of dreams... well.

Needless to say, its a good day for dreaming.