XI: Comforts

The child was interested in only the most basic of things that they found in the house she had inhabited with the woman she called the ‘Bad Lady’. Alyxa eventually decided that it had been her stepmother and that her father had died the year before; it was difficult to be sure, since Amy did not seem to have much of a sense of time.

She was very similar to Morpheus in this sense, except that Amy was human and had a vague understanding of age, the way that all seven-year-olds did. Not that Alyxa knew a lot about children, she’d been an only child, and the only dealings she’d had with children had been the occasional visit of a distant cousin.

It wasn’t all that surprising therefore, that Alyxa found herself driving back to her house with a car largely full of the child’s clothes and the twenty-odd teddy bears that had been strewn across the otherwise barren bedroom. They turned back into the driveway and the teddy bears disappeared instantly. Neither Alyxa or Amy blinked, Alyxa because she was too tired and Amy because she took for granted that Morpheus was ‘magic’ and that such things were normal. It was for the same reasons that neither of them were surprised when the house suddenly found itself in possession of a new room, off the end of the hallway, complete with furniture and now outfitted with teddy bears.

“I’m going to bed,” Alyxa declared after she had seen Amy settle down on the new bed.

“I will watch you sleep, witchlet,” Morpheus told her, and he probably meant it reassuringly, but there was just something about today, about the entire day, that seeped all strength from her, and so, she simply nodded and let herself fall into dreamless sleep.

X: Caramel

Amy waited patiently. She stood in the living room and looked at the pictures on the wall: Alyxa with her parents, with eight other women, with a small child. Morpheus had told Amy that Alyxa was a Dreamer, and had explained, as best as he could, that this meant that she could enter the place where the gods live. Amy figured that there was more to it than that, but grown-ups had a way of telling you things in a way that reminded Amy of cooling caramel; they never really got past the part where it was sticky. Children were much more sensible. She thought Morpheus would have understood that, but if he was magic maybe he worked differently.

After several minutes, Alyxa came out into the room. She looked pale, but pretty, there were some red dots on her neck.

“Alright, Amy. Morpheus says you will stay with us for now.”

Morpheus rested a hand on Alyxa’s shoulder and smiled. Amy felt a weight lift off of her. What would she have done if Alyxa had said ‘no’? The Bad Lady was dead now, just like Daddy.

“Do you need anything from where you lived?” Alyxa asked, and Amy wondered why she sounded so sleepy.

Amy thought about it for a while.

“I would like my teddy bears. Daddy gave them to me. Can I have them?”

Morpheus smiled at her, his teeth looked strange.

“Of course, Alyxa will take us there tonight in her vehicle and we will take whatever you want for your new room,” he told her, his voice reminded Amy of a cat’s purr.

“My new room?”

“Morpheus will fix it for you,” Alyxa said softly, “let me find my keys.”

She wandered, unsteadily from the room, and Amy heard the familiar jangle of keys.

IX: Morals

Alyxa stepped into her house, slightly tipsy and buzzing from the night’s work that the small circle of witches had worked. Within a matter of days they would be able to repeat Alyxa’s spell and draw yet another of the gods from Réveille. Of course the question now was who? Of all nine in the circle, only Alyxa was a Dreamer, the others had only caught glimpses of the otherworld. So they’d left it to her to decide which to bring through. Ishtar had been asking, nagging really, and of course Ares was still desperate to come out and play. Isis might be an interesting decision but –

“Who’re you?” Alyxa asked the small child standing in front of her, holding a teddy-bear.

“My name’s Amy. Morpheus brought me here,” the girl told her.

“He…did, did he?” Alyxa murmured, “he here?”

“I am here, Alyxa.”

Alyxa started, losing her balance on her heels and teetering for a split second on one precarious stiletto. Morpheus steadied her, materializing in that irritating way of his, right behind her, until she regained her footing.

“Amy’s step-mother met with an unfortunate accident, we decided to bring her here.”

She could feel the brush of his thumbs along her spine, rushing, coaxing. He wanted to feed.

“Amy…it’s Amy right?”

“Yes.”

“Give me a minute…Morpheus, can I talk to you?”

“You are talking to me, witchlet,” he pointed out.

She took him by the arm then and pulled him into the kitchen.

“What do you think you’re doing? You can’t just bring a child away from an accident! Or from her home and family! That’s kidnapping! You didn’t actually kill her mother did you?”

“Step-mother.”

“Whatever. You didn’t do anything to save her, did you?” Alyxa asked, incredulously, staring up into the emerald eyes.

“Should I have?”

VIII: Dying

Amy’s mother was quite dead. Morpheus could see her soul, all grey patches and blue, fading. As it was the first time he was seeing it, he found himself trapped in rapt fascination, staring for long moments until he became aware that Amy was staring too. There was a thin line of blood running down from her scalp, tracing the gentle contour of her cheek.

“You are bleeding,” he told her.

“I know.”

The car was the wrong way round, Amy was hanging upside down from the belt that secured her to the seat.

“Are you comfortable?” he asked her curiously.

“She’s dead isn’t she?”

“Yes,” he said, and then realized that humans tended to be highly attached to each other, and added, “I am sorry.”

“I didn’t like her. She hated me. She was suppose to take care of me after Papa died.”

“And she did not?”

“No. She locked me in my room.”

Morpheus realized he did not entirely enjoy the sensation of being upside down.

“Shall we get out of the car?” he suggested after a moment.

“I don’t know if I can move, I’m a little dizzy.”

“I will help you.”

Morpheus steps out of the car with all the grace of a figure skater stepping onto ice and suddenly Amy is standing next to him, her hand in his. The bleeding has stopped and she realizes suddenly that she is holding a large lollypop in her free hand.

“You’re magic aren’t you?” she asked him.

“I am Morpheus.”

“Yes, I know, you told me,” she replied, but her eyes were on the woman in the car.

“What happens now?” Morpheus asked the child.

“In the movies the police always come.”

“Do you want to wait for them, or would you like to come with me?”

VII: Strangers

The woman who Morpheus – and everyone else watching – assumed was her mother, hauled Amy out into the street. It was not concern that made him follow; that is to say, he did not think of it as concern. It might have been curiosity, but to be completely honest, he had nothing better to do, and the child had spoken to him. So he followed.

It was a green car. The kind of green that would have set the heart of Réveille on fire, the kind of green that only marginally rivaled Morpheus’ eyes. Amy was strapped into the back of it. She said something and the mother ignored her, starting the contraption instead. Morpheus idly took the seat beside Amy, no one seemed to notice him. The seats were smooth, comfortable, but the car smelled strange, as though someone had attempted to light a fire inside it.

The world flashed by as though someone spilled their water colours outside the window, making everything run together until it was all meaningless. Morpheus enjoyed that. Amy said something else, but he was far too mesmerized by the streaming colours to hear. He did hear the woman’s reply, however, because it cut so deep into what passed for his psyche that he would have heard it at the other end of existence.

“Your dreams don’t matter.”

Dreams always mattered, even if you were not a Dreamer.

“My dreams come true!” Amy retorted sullenly, “I told you we would meet someone special today, and we did!”

“You shouldn’t talk to strangers!”

Morpheus raised an eyebrow.

“I am not a stranger,” he said, and then several things happened at once.

The woman made the car shriek, Amy shouted for her to watch out for a ‘cyclist’, and Morpheus realized that driving was possibly very complicated.

VI: Undercurrent

A little girl peered at him curiously as Morpheus stepped into a place lit up by brilliant blue and green lights. There were clothes hanging from the walls and from strange frames set up for presumably this purpose.

“Do I knows you, mister?” the child asked him, coming up to him and tugging his finger.

In return, Morpheus studied the little girl. She appeared to be of the princess variety, dressed in what passed for fairy pink in this realm.

“We may have met before, little one,” Morpheus said, “but not here.”

“No. I’ve never been here before,” she informed him.

“Nor have I.”

“My name is Amy,” she said after a brief pause, “I’m seven.”

“I’m Morpheus,” he replied, “I was here before the world.”

Amy nodded as though this was the most normal thing for him to say. When she moved her head the strange lights caught in her sunset hair. She was quite…pretty. The word seemed to fit.

“Can you save me, mister?”

“Amy? Amy!”

The girl cringed away from the sound of the voice. The woman was tall. Sophisticated. The word materialized behind his eyes as he saw her rush towards them. The woman scowled fiercely.

“Amy! How many times have I told you not to wander off? I’m sorry if she bothered you.”

The sentence came out in a breathless rush, and Morpheus was momentarily mesmerized by the flow of it.

“I wasn’t botherin’ him. We were talking!” Amy insisted fearfully.

“So sorry,” the woman said again, and began tugging Amy along with her towards the door before Morpheus could make a reply. Amy shrieked.

“You know better!” the woman hissed at her, and the undertone of threat was clearly audible, “when we get home you’re in deep shit, brat.”

Morpheus watched, considering his options.

V: Orchestration

Morpheus found himself staring at a tall structure. He could only define it as a pillar of indecisive light. Réveille had nothing like this. To be sure, there were towers of light, but these lights turned on and off, winking in and out of their rectangular existence at the most sporadic moments. What madness had generated this?

There were humans everywhere; Some talked into shining boxes carried in their hands, some talked at thin air. They fascinated him in a way that no dreamer ever had. They waited at the edge of roads for lights to grant them permission, and then, like cattle unleashed from a coral after centuries of imprisonment, they flooded forwards in an unstoppable mass. The contraptions they used – ‘cars’ – were likewise beautifully coordinated. Like a river of polish, they would wait, and then move, orchestrated by some previously-agreed-upon plan.

“Yo, dude, nice coat.”

Morpheus glanced at the three young men who stood in a couple of feet away. He took a moment to analyze their words, decided they were attempting to be friendly and smiled at them.

“Thank you.”

Their eyes glazed at the sound of his voice. A minor irritation. He could hear their heartbeats, slow, tender. Fragile. It would be a shame to waste their forgetful state. Morpheus beckoned, and like all humans, they followed docilely.

The back of the strange structure leveled into a quiet, small street, and it was here that Morpheus let his nature take form and drank his fill, fangs licked clean after the deed. The following hours would eventually reveal the slightly disorientated boys to whatever authorities might exist to take such matters into hand. Morpheus moved on, there was far too much to see to linger over the comforts of those who existed to satiate him. Beauty everywhere.

IV: Wandering

The door was locked. Morpheus knew it was locked because Alyxa had said she would lock it on her way ‘out’. He had watched her apply her face powders and tints with expert touch in front of the hall mirror. Was this part of the process of going ‘out’? Or merely something that Alyxa did? He hovered in front of the mirror. What did she see? The blue-black hair – more blue than black – the viridian eyes that in her dreams Alyxa had told him reminded her of the feeling of the first vodka shot of the night. He had not entirely understood, Réveille limited certain experiences. He looked at what he was wearing, ideas borrowed from a young man’s dreams that Alyxa had said was appropriate. The ‘jeans’ were interesting. Enough of this.

He walked through the door.

Night air burn through his lungs. It is cold, he thinks. A woman walking a dog glances up at him, eyes curios, she looks away and keeps walking. What does she see? Morpheus shrugs his shoulders against the leather jacket. Did it matter? He can sense Alyxa somewhere far to his left, a distant glimmer of fleeting fun. He turns in the other direction and walks, one foot in front of the other. His shoes make different sounds on the concrete. Morpheus pauses and looks down at his feet, tapping a toe against the sidewalk. Tap. He walks to the small stretch of grass that covers the lawn in front of Alyxa’s house. He steps onto the green. Different sound. Different feeling. Interesting. He kneels, touches the turf. Soft. This must be soft? Moist. There were words, but without Alyxa’s mind to guide him he did not know them.

He kept the thoughts in his mind and went back to the walking.

III: Existence

The first time that Alyxa went out it was like the light had left the room. Morpheus hovered. One might have called it the pacing of a god, but since he did not understand impatience, he did not think of it as pacing. Everything was new. Everything was interesting. He made the fluorescent lights change colour, he made the fire in the stove dance around in circles. Everything was beautiful. Everything was real. The only trouble was, Alyxa was not in the house.

“I have to go out,” she had said.

“‘Out’?” he had asked, taking her hand lightly in his.

“Out,” she had repeated, “you know, out of the house? I have to visit with some friends.”

“Friends? As in other people with whom you share a human bond, connection.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Oh.”

So she had left him, to ponder the meaning of ‘friends’, and ‘out’. Humans were strange creatures, even the ones that had some small understanding of Réveille. Why was it that they bonded each other? He had seen their vast ability to love, to attempt understanding, but in reality they were all alone, each isolated like their own little pockets of dreams and nightmares, occasionally brushing past each other and sharing the most common elements of their lives: their hopes for roughly the same things, their actions of roughly similar lives. It seemed almost pointless, but at least here he could touch things, bend things, move things, be things. That he had to share this existence with humans, it was a small price.

Alyxa Fairchild had come into his world accidentally, but then Dreamwalkers were a rare commodity, for any deity. He considered finding her, to see what these ‘friends’ were like. Were they like her? Or he could avoid the humans altogether. He needed nothing.