Chapter Text
Hob awoke with the simple knowledge that the other side of the bed was empty.
Dream had insisted that they share, with a nonplussed innocence that Hob found both endearing and maddening. The cottage had two bedrooms, yes — but Dream had declared, in that imperious way of his, that the smaller bed offended him with its size and its lumpy mattress. He had said it without arrogance, almost with childlike bluntness, as though the concept of personal space were something for mortals alone.
Hob hadn’t had the heart to argue. Sleeping on the couch would have been uncomfortable, and sleeping alongside the man he’d long harboured feelings for was infinitely worse.
He lay still for a moment, eyes on the ceiling, the faint morning light spilling across the rough-hewn beams. The bedsheets were cool where Dream had lain. Of course they were. Dream’s body was rarely warm — his presence was something else entirely: the faint hum of power, of old silence, of dreams themselves.
With a sigh, Hob swung his legs over the side of the bed, reaching automatically for his jumper. He didn’t know what time it was, but the grey light filtering through the curtains spoke of dawn. He didn’t need to look far to find him — through the small window he could see the pale figure standing in the garden, motionless, a dark slash against the fading stars.
Hob hesitated, hand on the latch. There was something private about the scene — almost sacred. Dream stood barefoot in the cold, head tilted toward the horizon as though listening for a sound just beyond human hearing. The air around him shimmered faintly, like mist caught in moonlight.
Hob opened the door anyway, stepping out into the chill. “You’re going to freeze,” he said softly.
Dream did not turn. “The cold does not trouble me.”
“I noticed,” Hob muttered, wrapping his arms around himself. He stood beside him, though not too close. “You’re out here every morning now.”
Dream’s voice was quiet. “The Dreaming calls. It has been… persistent of late.”
Hob hesitated, watching him. The light was growing now, washing the moor in shades of grey and gold. Dream looked like a figure carved from the dawn itself — unearthly, sharp-edged against the soft world.
“You’re not getting stronger, are you?” Hob asked at last.
Dream’s gaze stayed on the horizon. “Not as quickly as I must. My imprisonment depleted me beyond expectation. Without the tools that once channelled my power, I cannot rebuild myself.”
“The tools you told me about,” Hob said. “Your sand, your helm, your ruby.”
Dream inclined his head once, a shadow crossing his face. “They were scattered when I was taken. To find them, I must return to the Dreaming. But without their power, I lack the strength to bridge the gulf.”
Hob let out a quiet, rueful laugh. “A chicken-and-egg situation, then.”
Dream’s brows drew together slightly. “I do not follow.”
“You can’t get back until you’re stronger, but you can’t get stronger until you’re back,” Hob explained. “Round and round.”
Dream considered this, the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth suggesting the ghost of amusement. “An apt analogy.”
They stood in silence for a while. The wind rippled across the long grass, carrying the smell of damp earth and heather. Hob found his gaze drifting from the horizon to the man beside him — tall, pale, not-quite-human. After centuries, he still wasn’t sure if Dream was the loneliest being he’d ever met or simply the most self-contained.
He would have kept him here, if he could. The thought struck him suddenly, and it hurt to admit it. To keep him safe in this quiet corner of the world, to have him stay, to let mornings like this stretch on forever — the selfish part of him wanted that more than anything. But he knew it wasn’t right. Not for Dream. Not for anyone. The world still needed its dreams, and Dream still had a duty.
So instead, Hob said softly, “Can I help?”
Dream turned to him then, eyes deep and strange in the early light. “No, Hob Gadling. This task falls to my family. I must call upon one of my siblings.”
Hob frowned, rubbing his arms against the chill. “You can call them from here?”
“I can try.”
“Then you can bloody well do it inside,” Hob said, exasperated affection creeping into his voice. “Some of us actually feel the cold.”
For the briefest moment, Dream’s expression softened. “Very well.”
They went back into the cottage. The hearth had burned down to embers overnight, but Hob was quick to coax the fire back to life. Dream moved with quiet efficiency, setting the kettle on the stove as though he had lived there for years.
Hob cut thick slices from the sourdough loaf he’d baked back in Oxford and laid them under the grill, the sharp, comforting scent of toasting bread filling the air.
“Tea and toast,” he said, smiling faintly. “Not exactly divine fare, but it’ll do.”
Dream took the cup he offered, holding it delicately between long fingers. “You continue to astonish me, Hob Gadling.”
“How so?”
“You persist,” Dream said simply. “In kindness, in care, in hope. Even now.”
Hob laughed, a little too quickly. “Well, it’s either that or sulk, and I’ve had a few centuries to get good at the first option.”
They ate in companionable silence, the crackle of the fire and the soft creak of the cottage settling around them. Outside, the day brightened. The air felt charged, waiting.
When the last of the toast was gone, Dream set down his cup. “It is time,” he said.
Hob looked up from buttering the heel of the loaf. “Who will you call?”
Dream’s gaze drifted toward the window, where the pale light of morning crept across the moor. “Of my siblings, few could aid me — and fewer still would choose to.”
Hob leaned back, mug in hand. “Tell me about them. Properly, this time. You mentioned names, but not much more.”
Dream inclined his head slightly, as though weighing what could be spoken. “Destiny is the eldest. He sees all things — past, present, and that which may yet come. He rarely leaves his garden, for his book binds him to the order of what is and what must be. His oath forbids him from intervening in the affairs of mortals, or of his siblings. He would not come, even if I asked.”
Hob nodded slowly. “All right. Destiny’s out. What about your sister — Death?”
At that, Dream’s expression softened, but only briefly. “My sister carries a heavy charge. She walks among mortals every day, guiding them at their end and welcoming them into the next realm. I would not add to her burdens — nor do I wish her to see me thus.”
“You mean weakened.”
Dream did not answer, which was answer enough.
Hob sipped his tea. “Then there’s… Desire, wasn’t it?”
A faint tightening of Dream’s mouth, something like irritation or pain. “My sibling Desire has ever sought to complicate my existence. To make sport of my principles. Desire’s realm lies within the heart of all living things, but their games are rarely played kindly. I will not call them.”
“Right,” Hob said quickly. “So that’s a no.”
“Despair,” Dream went on, “is Desire’s twin. They are bound by shared understanding. Despair seldom acts of her own will, and I have no wish to bring her sorrow here.”
Hob nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Delirium,” Dream said last, and his voice softened again, touched with something like grief. “She was once Delight. Her mind does not move in straight lines. She drifts, lost between what was and what will never be. Even if she heard me, she could not find her way here. I would not ask her to try.”
Silence stretched between them, filled only by the hiss of the fire.
“That leaves one,” Hob said quietly. “The Prodigal.”
Dream’s eyes flickered toward him, catching the light like glass. “Yes. Destruction.”
“The brother who left?”
Dream inclined his head. “He abandoned his realm long ago, though not his nature. He chose to walk among the living — to understand them, to learn creation through the act of ruin. He has ever looked upon me with kindness.”
Hob gave a wry smile. “So he’s the sensible one.”
“If such a word can be applied to any of us,” Dream murmured. “He may hear my call. He may even answer.”
Hob met his gaze. “And if he doesn’t?”
Dream’s expression grew distant, the firelight catching in his dark eyes. “Then I shall endure, as I have always done.”
Something in the way he said it — quiet, resolute, unbearably lonely — made Hob’s chest ache.
Hob broke the silence first. “So… how do you call a god, then? Some kind of spell? Ritual? Do I need to draw a chalk circle on the floor?”
For the first time in hours, Dream’s lips curved — not into a smile exactly, but close. “Nothing so unsubtle,” he said, voice low, almost amused.
He rose, moving with that quiet, deliberate grace Hob had come to recognise, and crossed to the door. When he opened it, the air that rushed in was sharp with the scent of wet grass and cold stone. The moor beyond the threshold lay washed in the pale blue of early dawn.
Dream stepped out, barefoot again, though the ground was slick with dew. He stood there a long moment, the wind stirring his hair. To Hob, he didn’t appear to do anything at all — no gestures, no incantations, no sudden flash of power. Just stillness.
And yet the light seemed to shift around him, faintly, like the world itself was holding its breath. The birds that had begun their morning chorus fell quiet. Even the breeze seemed to pause, expectant.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the feeling passed. Dream turned back toward the cottage and stepped inside, closing the door softly behind him.
“I have called,” he said simply.
Hob blinked. “That’s it? That’s the whole thing?”
Dream inclined his head. “He will come, if he chooses.”
“Right,” Hob muttered. “And if he doesn’t choose?”
“Then he is no longer the brother I remember.”
There was no threat in the words, no anger — only a weary certainty, as if Dream had already prepared himself for that possibility.
Hob ran a hand through his hair, looking him over. “So now we wait?”
“Yes.”
Hob poured what was left of the tea into his mug and took a slow sip, the warmth grounding him. The cottage felt smaller now, as though the very air had thickened. “How long will it take?” he said.
Dream looked toward the window, where the pale horizon was already beginning to darken again — not with cloud, but with something stranger, a flicker of gold and red against the sky.
‘It will take, the time it takes Hob Gadling’
The day passed slowly.
Hob tried to read, to busy himself with repairs around the cottage, but his mind kept circling back to the same thought — he will go. Dream would leave, and the quiet rhythm they had built here would end.
He told himself it was right. Dream belonged to another world, and that world needed him. But knowing didn’t make it easier. Every time he looked up from his book and saw the empty chair by the fire, or heard the faint creak of the floorboards as Dream paced somewhere out of sight, the ache settled deeper in his chest.
Outside, the weather shifted through moods — bright morning sun dulled into grey afternoon drizzle, then cleared again toward evening. The air felt heavy, charged, as though the earth itself was bracing for something.
By the time they sat down to a light supper — bread, cheese, and a pot of vegetable stew — the quiet between them had grown companionable but taut, stretched thin by all that went unspoken. Dream ate little, his movements precise, distracted. Sausage curled on the windowsill, tail twitching in sleep.
When the dishes were cleared, Dream rose. “I will rest,” he said softly. “Your hospitality has been… kind, Hob Gadling.”
“Don’t mention it,” Hob said, forcing a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m just glad you’re on the mend.”
Dream inclined his head and left, the soft pad of his bare feet fading down the corridor. The bedroom door clicked shut.
Hob turned back to the sink, sleeves rolled up, hands moving automatically through the warm, soapy water. The small sounds of the cottage — the pop of the fire, the whisper of wind through the thatch — filled the silence. He felt oddly suspended, waiting for something he couldn’t name.
He was drying the last plate when the air changed.
It wasn’t a sound at first, not exactly — more a low, thrumming vibration that seemed to hum in the bones of the walls. The scent of rain and iron filled the kitchen, though the night outside was clear. The lights flickered once.
Then came the knock. Three heavy, deliberate raps that seemed to echo from the foundation to the rafters.
Hob froze, dish towel still in his hands.
The cat, in the other room, gave a single questioning mewl.
He turned toward the door just as the latch lifted on its own and the heavy oak swung inward. The air rushed in cold and electric, smelling of sea spray and stormlight.
A figure filled the doorway — broad-shouldered, ruddy-haired, with a weather-beaten face that could have belonged to a sailor or a blacksmith. His clothes were simple — a worn leather coat, boots scuffed from travel — but the presence that entered with him was immense, ancient. The very air seemed to bend around him, shimmering faintly with warmth and life and endings.
Hob took an involuntary step back, heart hammering.
“Evening,” the man said, his voice deep and kind, carrying the weight of laughter long remembered and sorrow long carried. “I hope I’m not intruding.”
Before Hob could find words, a voice came from the hall — soft but unmistakable.
“No,” said Dream. “You are expected, brother.”