Morpheus had a father of sorts; popular mythology reads that he was born of Sleep, Sonus. This was not entirely wrong: Sleep comes before dreaming after all, so in many ways, the latter is sprung from the former. However, since he had no actual feelings about his ephemeral progenitor, he found it quite fascinating to hear Amy speak of her ‘Daddy’.
They were sitting on the carpeted floor in Amy’s bedroom, a meticulous picnic spread before them, complete with actual cakes and actual tea; the teddy bears, par Alyxa’s command, were unanimated, and there were no fairies.
“Daddy used to play picnic with me all the time before he married that woman,” Amy was saying, “when he married that woman, he stopped being fun.”
“Why?” Morpheus asked.
Amy looked at him, her eyebrows pursing together as though trying to merge into one line above her nose.
“Because that woman wanted him all for herself,” she said imperiously, and then, seeing Morpheus’ expression, blank and transparent all at once, she added, shyly, “what is your daddy like?”
“I do not know.”
“How can’t you know? Don’t you know your daddy?” she hesitated, “Is he dead like mine?”
The Dream God smiled a little at the question.
“I do not think my ‘daddy’ was ever truly alive.”
Amy thought about this for a moment, and then filed it away in her mind; Morpheus could almost see the cabinets of her brain sorting the information. The thought was there and gone in an instance as both he and Amy heard Alyxa’s car pull up into the driveway downstairs.
“Alyxa’s home!” Amy exclaimed, rushing from the room with all the excitement of a baby elephant on rollerblades.
“And not alone…” Morpheus murmured, sinking through the floor to avoid the stairs, “welcome to reality, Bast.”
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