I went to the apple store today with the intent to return it because I now have the serial number and the appropriate email and phone number and I'm prepared to tell whatever lies I need to tell to get it out of my hands.
I speak to a manager.
"This was a lease with our business plan?"
"Yes. This lease ended. Its wrapped up. The new lease has started with the new computer, its wrapped up. I just need to hand it in."
"Let me get a business associate."
There are no business associates today. He returns.
"We cant take it back for you. Your leases with CIT. They can send you a free shipping box to send it back. I dont know why they said they could take it back and I dont know why they asked for the serial number."
So after that, I still have the computer.
I'm about to scream so loud my pronouns are gonna be ban/shee.
Listen that sounds all ridiculously exhausting and I feel your pain but the sentence
> I'm about to scream so loud my pronouns are gonna be ban/shee.
is a *work of art* and also hilarious enough I should not have read it with my mouth full of noodles.
Many young wizards have taken to transmuting swans into humans and marrying them. One day, you are lucky enough to find a swan in the wild, and without hesitating, you turn it into a beautiful lady. Unfortunately, that ‘swan’, was a goose. You have just given a goose a human form.
After I explained the mistake, she laughed uproariously.
“You’re damn lucky I’m not a swan!” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “They get by on their reputation for being pretty and graceful, but buddy, a swan ain’t nothing but a bigger, meaner goose. What do you all want swan wives for anyway?”
I opened my mouth and then shut it again. Honestly, I hadn’t actually stopped to think about that much. It had become a mark of status, having a demure, graceful woman following on your arm, always dressed in white and gazing soulfully about.
“They all seem very nice,” I said finally.
She pursed her lips thoughtfully as she finished pulling on the robes I’d brought with me. “Then there’s something else going on,” she said. “I’ve met my share of swans and not a one of them would put up with that shit. Are you sure they were swans to begin with?”
“Well, no, now that you mention it. I mean, everyone says that’s what they are, but I’ve never actually seen anyone else do it.”
“Do they talk? Act like humans? Do they seem intelligent?”
“Well, they are humans, so I suppose they must be, right?” This conversation was not going the way I had expected it to.
“Hah! Fat chance. Transmutation is just changing the shape of a thing. You turn a swan into a human and all you’ve done is put a swan mind in a human-shaped box. Wouldn’t do a wizard much good to be able to turn into a wolf or whatever if they suddenly only had a wolf’s brain to work with, would it?”
“So, you’re saying that if those women were swans originally, they’d still act like swans?”
“Hoo boy yeah,” she said. “Absolutely. Hissing, biting people, trying to build nests, shitting everywhere. The works.”
“Wait, but what about you?” I asked, desperately trying to get the conversation back on track. “You seem like a human, but you were a goose ten minutes ago.”
She grinned wickedly at me.
“I was shaped like a goose ten minutes ago,” she said. “And I appreciate the makeover. But I wasn’t a goose to begin with. Now come on. There’s something hella creepy going on around here, and we’re gonna figure out what.”
She started walking back up the path towards town.
“Wait!” I shouted, hurrying after her, “If you weren’t a goose, then what are you? And what’s your name?”
“You can call me Gwydd,” she said. “And as for what I am, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you some day. But first, you’re going to tell me everything you know about these swan ladies.”
I described again how the supposed transmuted swans acted. “They never speak, but they seem to know etiquette. They look fondly at their husbands, but now that I think on it, the fondness appears more rehearsed than genuine. They move and dance with grace, but if you observe long enough, there is a feeling of repetition. No variance. But…Gwydd…I am dying to know more about you. How did you become a goose?”
Gwydd beckons me to keep up as she heads to town. “If you must know, I’ll give you the short version. I am a sorceress. I came to this place to track down an arcane anomaly affecting my spells. Triangulating the source eventually, I came here and…became a goose involuntarily. I have yet to discover how. And now that I have answered your question, tell me, why didn’t you just cast Awaken on a shrubbery or something? At least then it would have intelligence near your own, even if it would be naive as a babe.”
“It’s just the newest cool thing to do, I suppose. So many others said they had transmuted a swan, and their wives always seemed so demure and mindful. Though upon reflection mindful does not fit well as a descriptor.”
“It does not fit well for these young wizards, either. Well we’re going to find out what this is all about, and I’ll be dispelling some wives very soon. By the way, I am NOT marrying you, if that wasn’t obvious to this point.”
I smiled and hurried after Gwydd. This was going to be much more fun than anything I had planned.
The first “swan-wife” I pointed out to Gwydd slumped as she cast her spell to remove magical effects. She didn’t cast it as I was taught to construct a Dispel Magic spell. There weren’t enough hand gestures or words spoken. It wasn’t even a word, more like a quick melody.
A strange grinding and clacking began to come from the still woman, and as I turned to Gwydd to confirm that she hadn’t done something very nefarious, observers in the room erupted in a frightened chorus.
“By the gods! Her arm’s off!”
And it was. Her right arm had fallen from her body onto the ground, and even more alarming, the loosed connection between the separated parts revealed gears and cogs.
“Is that an automaton construct?” I whisper to Gwydd.
“Why yes. I believe these young wizards have been acquiring their wives from an enterprising artificer. And it was obvious just looking at the ‘husband’ that he didn’t have the arcane wherewithal to transmute a fly. Thankfully I was here to free the captured soul that was its power source.”
“Wait, constructs are powered by…souls?!”
Gwydd nodded to me solemnly, “It is a wretched act to create, one that knots the weave of magic itself. And I begin to have an idea why I was drawn to this place, and why someone would want to stop me from investigating its core. Are you in?”
Something inside me squealed in excitement at the thought. I was going on a QUEST!
trying not to set myself up to start spiralling back into c2 (i’m always like. a slight gust of wind away from it if i’m being honest) but i was confirming a quote from ep 141 and in general the conversation between fjord and vandran makes me insane, it’s truly some of my favourite rp from travis across all the campaigns, it has one of my personal top 5 cr Thematic™ quotes when fjord tells vandran “you showed me kindness, and love, and honour, and it meant the world to me.”, it has lore drops about vandran and avantika and uk’otoa, it has a silly sweet interaction of jester shouting out a greeting to vandran and fjord going “she’s wonderful.” and vandran saying “she’s a handful.” and fjord agreeing only for vandran to add “she’s perfect for you.” but beyond all that wonderfulnesss packaged into a mere 30 minutes, i am once again struck by how fjord and imogen are very interesting foils in terms of like. the absence of a parental figure who has knowledge of the curse you bear that your own curiosity for has led you through your recent life.
especially with (relatively) more recent imogen literally pretending to be her mother for utility versus fjord who took on aspects of vandran hoping to feel more assured in himself (featuring nightmares sponsored by a malevolent being intricately tied to said missing parental figure and occasionally featuring their presence). like both imogen and fjord start off their campaigns being like I Would Like Answers About My Powers (at any cost implied by the apparent possibility both of them had early on to be swayed away from the Good™ side) only for it to become clearer to them that the person who might have the most answers for their questions was not only their parental figure but was a parental figure they assumed dead only for that assumption to be undermined. and the fact that vandran and fjord stay apart so long because fjord is scared and busy and hadn’t even considered that vandran could’ve survived and because vandran made the same assumption that fjord hadn’t lived — but who also had a sense of hope that maybe that meant the cycle of violence had ended only to be met again with a fjord who tells him “despite your best efforts, your curse is now mine.” versus imogen and liliana who stay apart so long because of liliana’s choices, her insistence that imogen stay away from her even when imogen made it clear over and over that she wouldn’t stop without some answers or some clarity. the fact that fjord is reunited with his father figure and says i have so many questions and vandran gives him answers, even hard ones. that imogen has to beg just for her mother to actually hear her and not just the paternalistic idea of an infant she left behind decades ago. even fjord asking vandran if he wants to leave with them, and vandran making in clear he doesn’t intend on staying with them long term but whose happy to join them. versus imogen who begs her mother for help and to come with them and who ultimately can’t trust her to be telling the truth when liliana offers to come. i just think they should meet. i am always vying for a fjord cameo just because he’s my best friend but i think they should meet.
The nice thing about Leverage is that they are very consistent with keeping the formula that made you watch in the first place. Sure they also need to develop a story and the characters, they cannot stay completely stagnant. But where other shows diverge from the "monster of the week" or "case of the week" concept, Leverage very rarely (if ever) deviates from the con of the week.
Instead, they make use of subtle changes to the concept. Okay, Nate runs the con, there's a sad person who was wronged, everybody in the team has their role to play etc. But they start to occassionally mix up who runs the con, or the team members need to get out of their comfort zones, maybe take over the role of a different team member. And there's a logical progression. You would think if they work together this long, they would pick up a lot of skills from the rest of the team - and they do!
Or their con doesn't relate to a poor citizen, but instead it's personal to somebody in the team, usually reserved for season finales.
What Leverage doesn't do is lose you because all of a sudden it's not the show you came for.
Also I'd argue the subtle character work and development of the team dynamic provide a much more satisfying pay-off.
fascinating parts from this brennan interview about downfall
downfall was recorded in one week and brennan described it as "one of the most intense roleplaying experiences [he's] ever had"
if avalir was showcasing the age of arcanum, downfall will showcase the actual calamity
even though avalir and aeor seem similar on paper, brennan says the stories could NOT be more different. the themes, player motivations/briefings, and genres are completely unique
downfall embraces the nuance and complexity (moral and otherwise) of the gods and digs into the idea that the gods "called a truce" to fell aeor and what that actually means
brennan says aeor actually has a large population of refugees from the calamity by the time downfall takes place. however, they didnt have a large impact on the city's architecture and so by the modern era their cultures and presence in aeor (and wider exandria) have been almost entirely lost
overall downfall seems to focus on the ways that small errors in history can change a lot
brennan describes his experience with dm'ing in exandria as "going into a sandbox and creating the toys you're gonna to play with there"
the population of aeor is "demographically meaningfully different from who was living in aeor at the height of the age of arcanum," according to brennan. basically, not every aeorian will have bolo's accent (sad)
aeormatons will be in downfall in some way
setting, plot, and character backstories were worked on in tandem
on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of tragedy, brennan said downfall would need an entirely new axis. there is a "different kind of horror" in downfall, something that is distinct from "xenomorph chasing you horror"
brennan said "there are moments in downfall where i could feel my stomach wanting to drop out of my body"
me, whispering to the ao3 page of an author who wrote one life altering banger and nothing else: I hope your pillow is cool and your skin is clear and you find money in a forgotten jeans pocket
This idea won't leave me alone until I write it. A Dreamling arranged marriage AU where Night decides her children could stand to be a little closer to mortals lest they end up like their father and completely separated from them, so she decides one of them needs to take on a mortal consort--who would then become immortal, no she does not think this would eventually compromise the integrity of her idea. Ideally, all of them would have a mortal consort, but even she recognizes the problem with that. Destiny doesn't meddle in mortal affairs at all, Death is far too busy, Destruction has been pulling back from his duties and neglecting his realm (he's still there, for now, but they all know he's not really doing anything anymore, they just don't know how to bring it up to him), Desire is far too immature, making a mortal spend eternity with Despair would be cruel, and Delirium would drive her spouse insane.
So it's decided that Dream (this is about Sandman, not the YouTuber, if this post breaks containment PLEASE understand this is about the Sandman NOT the YouTuber) is the only suitable candidate, and the others will just have to experience mortals through their sibling-in-law. Night declares it, says she doesn't care how it's done as long as it's done, the end.
(I'm sorry all you people that want Night and Time to be good supportive parents, but I read Overture, they fucking suck. Night will not show up to the wedding because she's already written off her children as selfish and ungrateful anyway, this is in part a way to punish them and to punish Dream, and Time finds this ridiculous but knows it will happen, has already happened, is happening, and he doesn't really care.)
Dream hates this. If he had his choice he would pluck the first mortal up, marry them, and promptly forget about them and go back to ruling his realm. That's why his siblings decide that he cannot, under any circumstances, be in charge of this.
Instead they decide on a friendly competition. They will each (all except for Destiny, who already knows the various different outcomes and has decided to observe but not participate) pick a candidate for Dream. The Endless don't really abide by silly things like linear time and whatnot, so it could literally be any mortal they nominate. They will each then devise a trial to test what they each believe to be an important quality necessary to marry Dream of the Endless and become Prince Consort of the Dreaming. All candidates will be put through the tests until there's one remaining.
(I'm sorry, Calliope will not be in this because I can't think of a realistic way she would be eliminated and she's technically not mortal anyway.)
Death finds her candidate in a dingy tavern on Earth, circa 1389, when she overhears a drunken snippet of conversation. A man boldly claiming she's stupid and he's going to live forever. It's a jest, she knows. He doesn't actually believe he'll live forever, but there is the desire to within him and in thirty seconds he's proven himself a natural storyteller. It's a whim that she approaches him with an amused, "Did I hear that right, you intend to live forever?"
The table goes silent. Hob's companions are smirking between him and the woman suggestively and Hob waves them off with a laugh. "Aye, that's right."
"I believe you and I need to talk, then. Somewhere more private."
There's some immature tutting from his mates, and Hob looks surprised and thrilled all at once, because she's very beautiful though why she's interested in him when her outfit implies she's chaste-- But hell if he's going to pass up the opportunity, so he goes with her, tries to make a move on her the second they're around the corner and she laughs in his face, easily bats him away, and goes, "You're cute, but not my type, Robert Gadling. No, I'm here to offer you a chance at immortality."
He grows wary at first. Asks if she's the devil, but she just stares at him patiently until he realizes who she is and stumbles back in fear and surprise, only to be laughed at again. Kinder, this time.
"I'm not here to take you, though..." She eyes the tankard in his hand with raised brows. "It is a shame you didn't lay off the ale sooner." He quickly sets the tankard down and steps away from it.
The deal is this. He'll be part of a competition, though he won't know it or remember this conversation. Should he win, he'll be immortal. If he loses, he'll be returned to his life right before she approached him, to live out what few hours he has left, never remembering any of this. She leaves out how he'll become immortal, leaves out that he'll end up marrying her sullen little brother and becoming Prince Consort to his realm, but what are the changes he'll win anyway?
Dream is surprised to find that each of his siblings picks someone that does, on some level, appeal to him. He's a romantic at heart, it's hard not to fall a little bit in love with each other of them as he watches how this plays out.
The competition is this:
Each candidate will live what they perceive to be four lifetimes in a dream. For the most part, they're just going to be jumping from important decision to important decision, with the blanks filled in for them through false memories to make it feel like it's been four lifetimes and not a few days at most. At the end of each lifetime, they'll be asked if they wish to continue living. That is Death's trial, because anyone marrying an Endless must be resilient enough to keep going.
The first lifetime is Despair's test, in which the candidates discover that they won't age, they won't die, that their life may very well be unending. They lose their families, their friends, and realize that they always will. They don't know if there's any way to opt out or not, so for all they know, one day in the very distance future, they will be the only one left. Despair wants to make sure the idea of Endlessness is not a curse for Dream's spouse to bear, though she herself would thrive off that, personally.
Ironically, it's Despair's candidate, the queen of the first human civilization, that falls to this test. Nada lives the first lifetime without ever knowing true, passionate love. She's pushed into marrying someone who is a good ruler for her people, and when they pass, she marries someone else who is also a good ruler for her people, and she sees that there are those besides herself who have the judgement necessary to rule. She's proud of the city she's created, she's proud of her people, and the idea of eventually watching them die and come to an end as all things do, it kills her inside. It doesn't matter that it might be millennia from now. When a gentle voice asks one day if she wishes to continue living, she contemplates it, contemplates her current husband, closes her eyes, and says, "No. I think it's time for a new queen to rule my people."
Hob, on the other hand, has spent his lifetime fighting, mostly, a bit of highway robbery when he couldn't find a war. Lots of brothels. He's eaten stuff he shouldn't have, gotten himself mortally injured more than a few times, bounced back from it, and now he's into this printing thing. No guilds to restrict it yet, it pays well, and he's been teaching himself how to read. He's sitting in an inn, drinking ale next to the hearth, no smoke in his eyes, and thinking about swindling the table next to him in a round of cards to pay for some more ale. When the same voices asks him if wishes to keep living, his eyes get bright and he answers, "Oh yes." The thought of what his immortality might mean never really crossed his mind. He lost people, sure, but he would have lost them anyway, and there's always more people to meet. This is amazing.
The second lifetime is Desire's test. Desire, who actually cares on some level, in their own way, and knows that if their big brother marries an idiot, they'll have to put up with them, so they have to make sure Dream marries someone halfway decent. Someone who might keep him busy. Someone who desires things strongly, but is not so ruled by them that they'll give up their duty to chase distractions, nor will they give up if Dream doesn't desire them the way they wish--which is very likely. In Desire's test, each candidate is given people to love, fully and completely, with all their heart, and are forced to watch that thing die violently and terribly only to be asked right afterwards if they still wish to live.
Delirium's candidate is Killala of the Glow, who finds out that the beautiful green star of her solar system, which is the cause of her power, is a conscious, living thing. And he loves her. He is everything she ever wanted. With him, her powers grow. She learns to use them better, to get stronger with them, to understand them and herself. It shouldn't have happened so soon, they should have had millennia together, but something happens and he has just enough time to warn her, to explain that he's dying and that she needs to be strong and use her powers to shield her world from him or his death will raze it all to the ground. She doesn't understand how this could happen, she can't concentrate through her grief, her planet is destroyed and as she's floating amongst the burning cold heat of her lover collapsing in on himself, she's asked if she still wishes to live and she says no.
Hob meets Eleanor, who is charming and funny and matches him wit for wit. She doesn't ask about his past or how he acquired his money. He's never been in love before. He thought he would continue finding his companionship in brothels and had felt perfectly content with that, but now there's her, and he wants so very badly to marry her, to be her escape away from her traditionalist of a father who stifles her wit into silence. So he does. And he has a son, a beautiful baby boy that he promises the world to. Then there's the promise of another child, and he's thrilled.
He's there in the room, holding Eleanor's hand, terrified when she goes into labor months earlier than planned. She's in so much pain. The baby isn't crying. The midwife is trying desperately to stop the bleeding. The blood is still warm on Hob's skin and clothing as he holds Eleanor's lifeless body and sobs. His son needs a mother. Needs a father but he knows, in that moment, that he will be a useless one to the boy like this. Robyn has his temper, he'll die too young and Hob will have failed him.
When he's asked if he wishes to keep living, he thinks of how the blood is still warm on his skin, and how ashen Eleanor looks in his arms, and he brushes her hair back from her face and says, brokenly, "Someone has to remember her. She wouldn't... She wouldn't want me to give up, now would she?"
Delirium knows better than any endless how pain and suffering can break a mind. Dream is the Lord of Nightmares as much as he is the Lord of Dreams. Or maybe she was just feeling particularly sadistic because she doesn't understand why she can't get married, she would love to get married, she could turn her spouse into bubbles and they would look so pretty floating around her realm, or maybe even glitter, or frogs! But no, she's not getting married, Dream is, and Dream is mean sometimes, so maybe she just decides to be mean to whoever he gets to married. It's hard to tell if even she knows her own motivation.
But the candidates suffer for her trial, pushed to their breaking points and then past them.
Destruction's candidate has never really known suffering before these trials. Or living, really. See, Destruction hadn't actually gone out to try to find someone for Dream, he had been busy trying to learn how to carve a piece of marble into a shape without reducing it to rubble. Once everyone else had found their candidate, he went to Desire and was like, "Hey, so..."
Desire sighed, and rolled their eyes, and was like, "Fine, I'll help you. I'll construct a woman to be your candidate. If I don't win, maybe you will."
Thus Alianora was created. She's strong, smart, and while she can handle loss, she was created to be a lover. To be loved. To be a partner. Under Delirium's trial, she is alone, she suffers alone, no one pays her any mind or they hurt her worse, and she withers. She grows morose, she grows desperate, she grows hysterical in her isolation. She loses her mind. She never does answer the question of whether or not she wishes to keep living. It's questionable if she can answer the question, if she even fully understands it. Unfortunately, there is no coming back from such a thing, even if they fix her mind and these trials became like just a dream to her. There's no place for her to go now that she's lost this trial, no home for her to go back to. She's the only true causality of this game and Dream, aching for her and bitter over Desire's causal indifference, makes a Dreamscape for Alianora to live in where she'll never be alone. It's the least he can do.
Hob goes a touch insane himself, but the cracks in his mind are strategic. Like crumple zones in a car, it's to survive what comes next. He's drowned as a witch. Over and over, rocks tied to his ankles, tossed into the water, and every time he surfaces they catch him and do it all over again. Again and again. Dirty pond water filling his lungs, his chest fit to burst, throat and nose raw from inhaling liquid, skin clammy and near rotten. He lets himself break so that when the moment for real escape presents itself, he's not so gone that he misses the opportunity or that he stupidly cocks it all up.
He does escape, but he's lost everything in a world where value is determined by wealth. He sleeps on the street, mutters to himself, has arguments with made up people in an attempt to kept his mind sharp and to distract himself from the decades where he starves and starves but never dies, his stomach endlessly digesting itself and he throws up what little bit of scraps he can get his hands on, which just makes it worse.
When he's asked if he still wishes to live, he tosses his head back and laughs, startling a couple people walking past him on the street, who walk a bit quicker, and he asks, "Are you crazy?" Dream is leaned in where they watch these dreams projected above the family meeting table, and if one paid attention they might see that his eyes were rimmed red, thinking that Delirium's trial would claim another. At least he could be fixed, and would soon after go to the Sunless Lands to live in peace. He deserved that. They all did.
"Death is a mug's game! I have so much left to live for!"
And now there are two left to face down Destruction's trial.
Destruction may not have put effort into finding a suitable candidate, but he did devise a good trial. While his brother did need someone strong and resilient, they had to be what Dream lacked as well. They needed to be flexible. They needed to learn and grow from their mistakes. They needed to have compassion. All of these things to teach Dream the same, to encourage these things during the moments that Dream lacks them. His trial isn't about pushing the candidates into choosing Death, there's a very clear answer to his and if the candidate does not find it, they fail, whether they want to continue living or not.
Desire's candidate has yet to break. She has no intention of dying. She's more than willing to let go of what she desires if it means furthering her ambitions. Suffering doesn't break her, it only pisses her off. Dream isn't sure what to think of this woman. He doesn't really like her on a personal level, she would be nothing but trouble actually, but there is a certain appeal to her. He would never have to worry about hurting her unintentionally, at least. But she's greedy and she doesn't care who she hurts to get her way. And when Destruction's test rewrites her memories to have it where her immortality is granted to her through the blood of other witches, of her sisters, killed by her and sacrificed to the Hecate, the Three-in-One, the One Who is Three, and that more will die by her hands to keep living, she feels a twinge of grief and guilt.
So Thessaly simply decides to not think about it. She misses them, but it's just proof that she was stronger than them. Smarter than them. That she deserved to be here instead of dying out with them. And if she's able to continue making these sacrifices, if no one is able to stop her, then clearly it's just more proof she deserves this.
She fails, and no amount of Desire calling bullshit on Destruction's verdict changes his mind.
Hob, meanwhile, has rebuilt his life. His fortune. He's living well again, he's at no risk of starving, no need to fight in anymore wars because he has pockets of money all across the world he can run off to at the first sign of trouble. He has connections and a successful business.
He's talking with someone about said business only to have them eye him judgmentally. He's told, "It is a poor thing to enslave another."
He's a bit rankled at being called out on it. He shrugs, says that's just how it's done, because it is. It is. And at first it looks like he's going to fail too and this whole venture will have to be start all over, new candidates found, but as they watch him, the words aren't easily pushed from his mind. He dwells on them. He starts going through charters and logs. He gets restless sitting at home, surrounded by his newly regained wealth. He starts contacting his ships, digging into their practices that's never really taken the time to learn the specifics of before. A captain offers to let Hob sail a round with him so he could show off how safe the investment is, fearing that perhaps Hob is only questioning because he's afraid of potential repercussions.
He's shown how people are collected. Chained together. The conditions they're kept in on ship, the treatment the sailors give them. The captain explains that if they're pursued, it's easy enough to dump the cargo into the ocean, the chains ensure they all sink, no one is the wiser.
They don't leave port until everyone is loaded off the ship, and Hob demands they go straight back to England. He contacts every ship in his business and puts a stop to it. Cuts every shipping tie he has and when captains tell him he'll never make another quid, he tells him them he doesn't care, it's not worth it. The guilt still eats at him. It's not enough to make him forget the imagined faces of all the lives he's destroyed, drowning the same way he had, again and again, or resigned to a fate worse than death in most cases. He drinks himself into a stupor most nights.
He's drunk when he's asked if he still wishes to live. It's not the kind, understanding woman's voice that usually asks. It's a man's, soft and deep, curious, and Hob swirls his glass of brandy, contemplating whether he deserves to or not when he was responsible for the death of so many innocents. They weren't killed in a fight, they didn't have anything worth taking from them, it was just cruelty against helpless people. He swings back the rest of his drink and mutters, bitterly, "History has a way of erasing these things, doesn't it? It forgets what it doesn't want to remember. Someone needs to remember. Someone needs to remind people of this. It won't ever be enough to make up for what I've allowed, but this is something I must live with. To die now and let the world forget would make me a coward shirking responsibility for myself."
Just like that, he's sober again and standing in a room that's a mix of the time periods he lived through in his dream. It's warm, inviting. There's a four poster bed, a large hearth with piles of comfortable pillows in front of it. An oak wardrobe simply carved but beautiful. Rugs over stone floors. There's a large balcony that lets in plenty of natural light, and it overlooks fantastical mountains in the distance, and a harbor filled with ships of every kind, and sea serpents lazily winding their way through them. Hob had never given much thought to what his perfect room would look like, but he knows he's standing in it.
The dream he lived through feels like a dream, it's hazy and indistinct, disconnected from the emotions that he once felt were so real and consumed by. But he's not the same man he was when it started. He's retained the lessons learned about living, about compassion, he's more mature, he still remembers how to read. It's all still there, but the loss and grief and guilt are distant now, more like a story he read than a life he lived.
And Death is there with him, dressed in black jeans and a tank top, smiling proudly at him. He suddenly remembers the competition and has a brief moment of panic, blurts out, "Oh god, I lost and drunk myself to death and this is heaven--"
"No, you won, Hob!"
"What?"
"You won!" And then she has to explain that while yes, he technically will be immortal, it's only because he now has to marry her little brother. They move out to the balcony and she explains that they're in the Dreaming and what that means while Hob looks around in awe. "He's not bad, my brother," she assures. "He's a bit distant, mostly. A stickler for his rules. He's prideful and can have quite temper if you insult that. It's wise to remember that he rules dreams and nightmares here. But at worst, he'll probably go back to his work and forget you exist, and you'll have the whole of his realm to explore. Unfortunately, you can't back out now."
"Oh, I wouldn't if I could," Hob assures quickly, waving the concern off. "Marrying a nightmare sure beats rotting to maggots in the ground. I'll take it. What's expected of me?"
She tells him that he probably won't have any actual duties, and Prince Consort will more than likely just be a title. Theoretically, Hob could hold sway over the Dreaming nearly as much as Dream did, but that required getting close to Dream. "Consummating your marriage," she tactfully puts it. "Each time you got closer to my brother, each time he lets you closer and as his trust and care grows, you would find the Dreaming responding easier and easier to you. The Dreaming is an extension of him, after all. And it's better that way, because you're immortal but still human, and suddenly having awareness of this would be way too much to pile on your mind all at once. But I doubt you'll have to worry about it. My brother seems curious about you but he's stubborn and easily distracted."
The wedding happens that night.
Hob hasn't met his betrothed yet.
Death dresses him in a stunning white suit with gold accents. His cravat is the finest woven white silk, embroidered in gold. He has a halo of gold light. There's a bloody cape. It drapes like heavy velvet but it's light and sheer and glitters like stars. He's a nervous wreck and she laughs gently and assures him that he'll know what to do when the time comes.
Everything that dreams attends the wedding. It shouldn't have been possible to fit so many people in a room, but they're there. It should have taken years for Hob to walk down the aisle to the staircase to the raised dais and the throne, but it was a short walk and the whole time Hob can do nothing but stare at the man standing in front of the throne who has his chin raised, his dark eyes a host of starlight. He does seem vaguely curious. And haughty. And prideful. And beautiful. He's dressed in a similar suit of black, his sheer cape swirling with galaxies and nebula, and there's a sword of obsidian glass in his hands, the point resting gently against the stone floor.
Hob knows intuitively to kneel the second he ascends the last stair, but he can't quite manage to duck his head like he knows is proper because he can't look away from this creature. Thankfully it produces something startlingly close to amusement in his betrothed.
"Robert Gadling," he murmurs, his voice soft but carrying, the same one that had last asked him if he wished to live. He holds out his hand, a ruby ring already on his finger. "Swear your fealty to me." And then lower, softer, just between the two of them, "Do not be nervous, the words will come."
And they do. A bit breathless, but they come after Hob reaches for the hand and presses his lips to the ring, his eyes still on the entity soon to be his husband in what has to be the weird marriage ritual of all time. "I swear my undying fealty to you, Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming, Ruler of the Nightmare Realms, Prince of Stories and Shaper of Form. I swear to reside at your side, to give my loyalty to you and this Realm first and foremost, and to never raise a hand or support any threat to the denizens here. I am yours, Dream of the Endless." The words tighten through his chest like a binding and good lord, there's the smallest little smile on the Lord's face and he doesn't have a halo but the way the light from the stained glass windows behind him shines, it looks like he does and it's beautiful.
Dream takes back his hand. He raises his sword and taps both of Hob's shoulders. At the second one, Hob feels the weight of a ring on his own finger. "Arise, Prince Consort of the Dreaming."
Most people leave after that, they wake up and go about their lives, knowing something changed but not sure what. Some stay, and there's some mingling, and a reception dinner, and Hob barely gets a second to say two words to his husband. He's introduced to family, to Titania and motherfucking Lucifer. A librarian gives him her congratulations, a scarecrow with a pumpkin heads does so with a bit more reluctance and wariness, a raven with a white breast chats with him. She explains that she retired not too long ago, and nods towards a larger raven currently trying to figure out how to get his head into a champagne glass, explaining that he's her replacement. Despite how stupid he looks, she assures Hob that he's a good raven.
There's a murder at one point. A man is stabbed through the eye with a serving fork. Some blond man in sunglasses looks intrigued by the turn of events, but he's the only one that bothers to react. The murderer tells him not to fucking try it, and then drags the body off. His husband merely tells him that it's normal and fine and that's pretty much the most he says aside from introducing Hob to people and staring at him from the corner of his black eyes. It's a whirlwind night and Hob ends it champagne drunk and passed out alone in his bed in his private quarters, not realizing until morning that he doesn't even know how to find his way around, let alone where the fuck his husband's room is.
But when he stares at the ruby on his ring in the morning, he knows that he won't stop trying to woo his husband until they are properly, happily married, because one glimpse and Hob Gadling or whatever his surname was now, was most definitely head over heels in love. And thus begins the long and arduous process of courting his husband, the most stubborn man in existence, who is terrified of falling of in love and potentially being too much and would just rather keep his distance thank you very much. He makes it hard for Hob, until Hob remembers Death explaining that the Dreaming was an extension of him. If getting closer to Dream makes him closer to the Dreaming, maybe getting closer to the Dreaming will make him closer to Dream? It's worth a shot.
At the very least, Dream definitely takes note of the way everyone in his realm seems to be so smitten with his Prince Consort all of the sudden.
And that's it, that's all I have. I'm yeeting this out there to get it out of my head and now that you have it, you're free to do whatever you want with it. Change it up, write it, draw it, whatever, I don't care, you can have it now, just tell me if you do something with it because I wanna see okay thanks byee.
blakekathryn
snowghoul
origamiaround
dededos
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