tuesday's child
part 12 of the cottagecore series (complete)
Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling || M || 10k || Complete
Alternate Universe - Medieval, Established Relationship, Hedgewitch!Hob, Fae!Dream of the Endless, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Mpreg, Childbirth, It's Non-Graphic But It IS Realistic, Dream Is Not Enjoying Himself, Neither Is Hob, They Def Should Have Hired A Midwife
They had tried, such as they were able, to do research. Hob had wracked his brain for conversations past, for his mother's cluckings and his friends' whispered tales of wives and sisters, and Dream, his own prolonged childhood and its interval arrivals of four younger siblings—and when memory and detail had fallen short for them both, Lucienne had even arrived with a scroll from a physician's letters. It is long memorized but still currently spread on the table beside a loaf of bread gone well stale, a mess of herbs, and the latest bowl of sick.
Hob is doing his best to ignore the golden spill of dawn through the window of their cottage, because he knows that it marks now two full days of labor. This begins the third.
And three days is too long, for a babe to come.
Hob may not have much to show for nine months' best peasant efforts to learn, but he knows this much to be true.
"It's—lower," Dream insists, palm slipping against Hob's. His eyes glow brighter than the dawn, lit with some blue flame that had ignited in the late hours of the first night and had not dimmed since. "It's lower, it's—I can feel—I need—Hob, I need—"
Hob does not say you said that last night. He does not say but you just got into this position.
He does not say I think something is wrong.
Instead, he helps haul Dream up onto his knees, says, "I've got you, love, I've got you," as Dream tips kitten-weak against his chest, and kisses a sweat-damp hairline before getting Dream propped against the side of the bed. "There you go," Hob murmurs, rubbing up and down the knobs of a spine bowed with the weight of unborn child.
By popular request: the deleted scenes of how Dream and Hob ended up confessing their respective Big Secrets to one another. Below the cut are a series of conversations that take place a few days after Dream announces his pregnancy with Orpheus, and they are incredibly angsty. They also heavily feature abortion as a conversation topic. These were originally written to intercut with at least two miracles but didn't end up working out due to tone issues, and also don't really work as a standalone fic, so. If you're interested--enjoy!
The possibility of a child—their child, their own, of them—had occasionally crossed Hob’s mind, in the same way that other fantastical things like dragons and public libraries did. Fleeting. Unformed. Simple, wonderful little daydreams.
The reality of it was both impossibly more exciting and terrifying than he could have ever imagined.
Hob thought of a beautiful child with tiny pointed ears and glowing amber eyes. He thought of a babe born to the world still and pale, never to draw a single breath of life. He thought of all the stories his mother used to tell him, the skipping games and the toy swords and songs that lived inside of him, waiting to be passed down to someone small and new. He thought of a fae child, enamored of the forest and magic and books of learning, with little use for its mortal father.
Once, when Hob was young, his mother had been called to help an ewe who had been laboring for the better part of the day. Twin lambs, both trying to emerge at the same time.
They’d had mutton for dinner, that night. And for many nights after that.
Hob could not stop thinking about it. About everything.
What if the child came out completely human.
What if the child came out completely fae.
“You told me once,” Hob said, the words leaving his mouth even as lead weights sank pits into his stomach, even as his heart said don’t ask this don’t ask this don’t do it, but he had to, he had to know. “You told me once. That it took you a very long time to grow up.”
Dream paused. “Yes,” he said, at length. “But time in the realm of the fae is not so… linear as it is here. It is—it was subject to neither law nor order. Time was fickle. Changeable.”
“You said that it was almost a hundred years.”
“That was… a guess,” Dream said.
Hob stared.
“It was unusual,” Dream added. He did not meet Hob’s eyes. “It. It was a choice I made. The rest of my siblings came of age much faster than I.”
“How fast?” Hob asked, heart in his throat.
Dream swallowed.
“How fast?”
“The child is half mortal, Hob it should not—it will not age as a fae child would. It cannot, it—it will not have the same power, the same gifts, and moreover, the laws of this universe would not allow—”
“Oh, you know that, do you?” Hob asked, eyebrows raised. “Like you knew that a mortal man couldn’t get you pregnant in the first place?”
Dream flinched.
Hob sighed, and scrubbed at his face. “I’m just. I’m just thinking. We don’t know what we’re going to get, eight months from now—” If they were going to get anything at all. “—and we’ve got zero precedent to go off of, here. It. It could be anything. It could grow like a human and take sixteen years and be done. But, it could also…”
“It will not,” Dream said, but there was a traitorous wobble in his voice.
“It could,” Hob insisted. “It could, Dream, and we just. I just want to be prepared for that. I want you to be prepared for that.”
Dream stared, like the whole world was crashing down around him. As if he had not considered this at all. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Hob—”
“But, listen—listen, it’ll be okay,” Hob said hurriedly, and took Dream’s hands into his own. Put on the bravest face he could muster. “Whatever happens, it’ll be okay. I promise. I’ll be with you every step of the way, for. For as long as I can be. Even if it means being stuck in the terrible twos for an entire decade. You just might have to do the teenage years on your own, that’s all. And. You know. The thousand years that come after that.”
Dream closed his eyes.
Hob tried desperately to rally. “And, hey! The good news is, at least I won’t be around to give any dodgy sex talks when it comes time for that, since I obviously—”
Dream’s eyes were open again, and they were full of tears.
“Hob,” Dream said again, and it caught in his throat. “Hob, I—I am not going to live for another thousand years.”
Hob frowned. “But—”
“I made,” Dream said, and with the next blink the tears spilled over, “a bargain.”
The reason that Hob had kept it a secret for so long (was because he was a coward) was because, in his opinion, there had been no good that would come of the truth.
Dream had assumed that the people of Eskham had turned against Hob for being a hedgewitch. He’d assumed in turn that mortals were prejudiced against any being with magic, which was a category that happened to include the fae but more importantly included Hob, who did not have the ability to summon tornadoes or fell ancient oaks. Dream still sweetly seethed about the injustices Hob’s own people had done upon him. He had yet to even once seem concerned for his own safety.
This was fair.
Dream had, after all, taken out an entire village of mortals in one wrothful fell swoop.
Now, Dream had confessed what had happened in the aftermath of that massacre—what he had so readily sacrificed, to save Hob’s life—and it had been devastating in its own right. It had left Hob awake at night, imagining what it would be like to grow older and older and older, while his child did not.
But it had also pulled on the string that unraveled whatever remained of their tapestried joy at the possibility of impending parenthood. The happiness was gone. The happiness should never have existed in the first place, because the ache of its absence was far worse than to have never known it at all. Hob could not believe he ever felt such simple, mindless elation at what had quickly become a question to which every answer was more horrifying than the last.
Hob thought of a babe with perfectly pointed ears, stolen away in the night, drowned in the river.
Hob thought of a child with huge, phosphorescent eyes, tied to a stake above a pile of dried tinder. Screaming.
Hob thought of black-nailed teenager who had had forty-odd years of childhood with its parents before they succumbed to old age, and left their child alone in a world it did not belong in. Orphaned. Ostracized. Hunted.
It filled Hob’s stomach and left him unable to eat. It pressed down on his chest at night, and he could not sleep.
And he knew what he needed to do.
At the same table where Dream had confessed not three days ago, Hob sat himself heavily on the bench.
Dream stared back wanly. He’d spent most of the morning vomiting copiously, which perhaps made this timing even worse, but Hob knew if he did not say it now he might never say it at all.
“Dream,” Hob said carefully. The words stuck in his throat like glass, and they tore him open one by one as he forced them out. “There’s. The other day, when you told me about the bargain you made. I—there’s something that I should. Something I should have told you, before—something. Something.” He swallowed. “Something I. Something.” His nails dug into his palms. His heart was pounding in his ears. “Something—”
“Hob.”
Dream’s hand splayed across his chest is like ice on fire. Hob sucked in a breath, and relished the burn.
He seized Dream’s hand in his own. Looked Dream in the eyes. Prepared to pull this one last thread of sanity for the person he loved more than anything in this world.
“Something,” Hob said unevenly, holding onto Dream like a lifeline, “that I should have told you a long time ago. About. About Eskham.”
Dream tilted his head, brows drawing together. “Eskham?”
Hob nodded.
“What about it?” Dream asked.
He had no idea. He had no clue.
“That day,” Hob said, and he was gripping Dream’s hand hard as if he could prevent the inevitable withdrawal. “When they came for me.”
And Dream nodded. He reached out with his other hand to rest it on Hob’s forearm—a gesture meant as supportive that only served to make Hob’s stomach drop to new depths.
But this was not about him. This was not even about Dream. It was about their child, carried one day into a town square with pitchforks at its throat and devil spawn in its ears. It was about deserved truths.
“That day,” Hob said again. He swallowed against a dry tongue. Against the heart that was trying to escape through his throat. “That day. The mob. They weren’t looking for me.”
Dream stared.
Hob’s heart was pounding so hard he thought he might be sick.
He watched, as Dream’s face went from confusion, to realization, to—
Bloodless.
Grey. Dead eyes and parted lips. Staring, but not seeing.
“I—defended you,” Hob made himself say. “I wouldn’t tell them. Where you were. I told them that I loved you, that you were just as natural as any other creature in this realm and that I would rather die before I let any of them hurt you, and—”
Dream yanked his hands back.
Hob tried to hold on, but he wasn’t quick enough. Not strong enough.
“You,” Dream whispered.
“I don’t regret it,” Hob said frantically, almost angrily. He was losing control, the tidal wave of panic and horror sweeping him out to a roiling sea he could not swim in, and he barely knew which words would leave his mouth when he opened it again. “I haven’t regretted it for a single second, Dream, not once, not ever, I’d have burned on that stake a thousand times over before I let them touch you, I’d—”
And Dream bolted.
Hob leapt to his feet to follow—but his calf muscle seized, and he careened to the side and just barely managed to grab the table at the last second. Stood there, panting, gripping the table as his calf cramped hard enough to render the entire leg useless. Staring at the empty doorway.
He deserved this, he supposed.
It didn’t make it hurt any less.
The summer air was thick and sweet beneath the canopy of the forest. The trees mostly blocked the breeze, but so also the warmth of the sun, which made it about as pleasant as any place was during the midday heat. They were sat at the base of an ancient yew tree that Dream favored, not far from the cottage, and had been for some time. Ravens chattered and rustled softly overhead. A large halo of bird shit was slowly accumulating around them.
Dream inhaled as if to speak, for the third time in about as many minutes. This time, though, the words came.
“I do not want. Our child. To be hunted.”
Hob closed his eyes. “I know.”
“We do not know what powers it will be born to. What features it will be born to.”
Unspoken—the slimmest chance, the highest hope, that it would somehow be born wholly mortal.
A mortal body. A mortal magic. A mortal lifespan.
“We’ll do whatever we have to, to protect them. Whatever it takes. You know we will,” Hob said, and even as anxiety turned his stomach over, rage flared through him hot and fast. “Anyone that tries to lay a finger on our child, I’ll—I’ll kill ‘em. I would. Anyone. Everyone. And if they think I’m terrifying just wait until they meet the thirty-foot forest nightmare right behind me that can summon hail and rent the earth.”
Dream swallowed. “Hail and earth. Did not save you.”
Hob tightened his grip around Dream’s waist. “Yes it did.”
“You—”
“Yes it bloody well did. You saved my life that day, you fought, and if you hadn’t been there I—”
“If I had not been there,” Dream interrupted darkly. He barked one harsh, bitter laugh. “If I had never inflicted myself upon you in the first place, then no mob would have ever come for you at all. You would be—”
“Lonely,” Hob said. He tried desperately to keep the frustration from rising. “I told you. I would have been lonely, and bored, Dream, and I would have died in that house feeling as if I’d never truly lived at all. You are the best thing to ever happen to me.”
“I nearly killed you,” Dream said.
“You saved—”
“And now,” Dream continued, staring into the depths of the forest, “I have attempted to thrust a child upon you, without your consent. I have tried to sentence you to spending the rest of your meager years consumed in the care of a creature that will only suffer as a result of my own hubris—my own selfishness—and it will resent us. It will hate us. It will hate me, and it will be right to do so for—”
“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,” Hob said, scrambling around in front of Dream, and cupping his face.
Dream stared determinedly to the side, with eyes that were red-rimmed and shiny. His breaths came uneven and jagged.
“You and I both know that you didn’t get pregnant on purpose,” Hob said fiercely. “You didn’t know better. I didn’t know better. Right?”
“Hob—”
“This isn’t something that you’ve done to me. To us. Neither one of us is to blame here. Not one little bit. And it wouldn’t matter anyway if it was, because whatever happens, you know that we’re in this together. We’re going to do what we always do, and make it work. Figure it out. Pregnancy, childbirth, parenthood, all of it. Together. Yeah?”
Dream set his jaw, and at last met Hob’s eyes. Slowly, he reached up, and pulled Hob’s hands away from his face.
“You argue. That we are absolved of any guilt, for what strife our child may face in life. Because we held no intention of conception, in our couplings,” Dream said.
“...Yes?” Hob said, eyebrows raising. “I don’t think we can be blamed for bringing a child into the world when we didn’t know it was possible in the first place.”
“Incorrect,” Dream disagreed.
Hob opened his mouth, but Dream continued too quickly.
“Ignorance acquits us from blame in the conception of this child, yes.” Dream’s hand moved, in the periphery of Hob’s vision, delving into the folds of his robe. “But we are not without agency, in these early months of pregnancy.”
Dread swung sudden and hard into Hob’s chest, like a fist.
“...What do you mean?”
Dream held out his hand between them, and uncurled his fingers. A cluster of flowers rested there.
Tansy.
“It sings to me of… release,” Dream said. His thumb brushed over golden petals like spikes. “Of choice. Liberty. Of the harmonization of poison and medicine, as one.”
Hob took in a deep breath, because he was, for the first time in days, hopeful.
Hob was also terrified.
Hob was sick, sick, sick, sick.
“I believe,” Dream whispered, eyes boring in Hob’s, “that it would be enough. To—take care of it.”
There was a cup of water on the table, steaming and yellow with tansy.
Choice, Dream said it sang. Release. Liberty. The harmonization of poison and medicine, as one.
But to Hob, it was silent as a grave.
Dream was holding the cup so tightly his knuckles had gone white. The steam had long disappeared from the cup, leaving only a stagnant yellow tonic. Hob had offered to leave the cottage twice and allow Dream some privacy, and on the second time Dream had grabbed his hand, hard, and he hadn’t let go since.
Hob’s fingers ached where they were threaded through Dream’s, but he did not complain.
He sat in silence, and watched Dream raise the cup to his mouth.
Watched him inhale.
Watched him close his eyes.
Watched him press the rim of the cup to his lips.
Watched as Dream froze, and was perfectly still for an eternity save for the tremble of the cup in his grasp—
And the cup slammed down onto the table, sloshing poison everywhere, and Dream gasped, “I cannot. I cannot, forgive me, Hob, I—”
Hob grabbed him and pulled him in hard. “It’s okay—”
“—I cannot do it, I cannot—”
“—you don’t have to—”
“I should,” Dream snarled, gripping the fabric of Hob’s tunic and pushing back. There were tears streaming down his face. “I should end it, I should be rid of it. It is. It is the only humane option, the only option that guarantees that—that—”
“I know, love,” Hob said miserably, his own throat going tight and hot. “I know that. But—”
“Hob,” Dream choked out. He tried to inhale, but could not. “Hob, I can—hear it.”
Hob’s heart skipped a beat, and his mouth went numb. “Y-you—”
“I can—” Dream slapped his hands over his mouth. He stared at Hob in horror.
Dream, who could hear the songs of river stones and the herbs in the garden. Who communed with foxes and ancient oak trees alike. Who had come to Hob with news of this pregnancy but without explanation as to how he knew.
“You can hear it,” Hob repeated blankly.
“I should not have told you,” Dream said, shaking his head. His eyes were blank and unseeing and wet with tears. “I. I should not have told you, I told myself I would not, I—it should not matter. It does not matter.”
“What does it sound like?” Hob asked.
Dream looked up at him. His mouth opened, but no words came out.
“Dream, what does it sound like?”
He shouldn’t ask.
He couldn’t not know.
“Like. A songbird,” Dream whispered.
A songbird.
“The most beautiful—” Dream choked on a sob. “The most beautiful songbird, Hob, the most wonderful songbird in the world.”
And Hob. Hob, quite abruptly, could not imagine a world where he did not one day get to hear that song. He could not imagine a world in which he did not get to hold their child in his arms this winter and instantly fall in love with whatever features the world had seen fit to give them, mortal or fae or some splendid combination of both.
He could not imagine what it would be like, for Dream to sit at this table and drink down poison and then listen to the song of their child go silent.
Dream sobbed in his arms. He begged for forgiveness—from Hob. Their future child. The universe. I have failed, he said, over and over again. Selfish, and weak, and worthless, he named himself, and he would not be consoled with any combination or repetition of words Hob had to offer.
at least two miracles
part 11 of the cottagecore series (complete)
Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling || 15k || Complete
Alternate Universe - Medieval, Established Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Physical Disability, Mpreg, Kid Fic, Fae!Dream of the Endless, Hedgewitch!Hob, The Long-Awaited Happy Ending
Hob is a hedgewitch. Dream is fae.
And Orpheus is the best of them both.
The conception of Orpheus had been a surprise for the both of them, though it must be said, for entirely different reasons.
“Why would my gender be of consequence?” Dream asked, with appallingly genuine confusion.
“Because,” Hob started, and then could not continue past this. Gender was—this was the whole point of gender, the cause for all the shapes and sizes, the reason for the holes that had been delved for columns and the columns that had been shaped for holes—and if gender did not matter then what else was a lie. The seasons? The gods? Did the sun not revolve around the earth?
“Just because your species has chosen to limit childbearing to half its population does not mean the rest of us are so primitive,” Dream sniffed. “You are aware that mortal women die in childbirth at a rate far higher than any other species in this realm?”
“Wha—no, I did not know that, why would I know anything about childbirth, I didn't—I didn’t marry a woman, I didn’t think anyone would be birthing anything!”
He’d just said the word birthing.
Dream would be birthing.
A baby.
Hob felt lightheaded.
“Yes. Well.” Dream lifted his nose in the air. “Neither did I.”
“But—but you knew,” Hob floundered. “You knew that you could—that I could—”
“Incorrect,” Dream disagreed.
Hob let his expression fully convey his thoughts on this.
“I knew that I could,” Dream clarified, and then tilted his head. “I was unaware that you could.”
“You—” Hob’s mouth worked for several seconds. “What did you think was coming out of my dick?”
Got tagged a hot minute ago by @kydrogendragon in the Last Line Tag Game, and finally getting around to responding to it. Thanks for the tag! I've been chipping away are some more cottagecore stuff, as per usual - enjoy a little snippet!
“Cut. Your hair,” Dream repeats.
“Yeah,” Hob says. Then, “Please.”
Dream’s eyes dart to Hob’s hair—just past his shoulders, now, usually secured back with a strip of leather but hanging loose at this particular moment.
“Why,” says Dream, blankly.
“S’that time of year, innit?” Hob replies, shrugging. “Summer’s coming, so the hair’s got to go. Usually have one of my mates do it, but last year Henry left me with a great ruddy rat-tail in the back to be funny and it was weeks before Widow Bones took pity on me and let me know why everyone was laughing when I went ‘round to the pub. Usually you’d have your wife or your sister take care of it, but you know I haven’t got either one of those, so…”
“But,” Dream says, brows drawing together, “I like your hair. As it is.”
Hob grins. “I know. Makes me look all lordly, doesn’t it?”
Tagging @dsudis, @tharkuun, and @cuubism, if you want to play!
aftershocks
part 8 of the cottagecore series
Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling || T || 7k || Complete
Alternate Universe - Medieval, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Dream of the Endless has PTSD, Traumatized Dream of the Endless, Protective Hob Gadling, Cuddling & Snuggling, Starvation, Fae!Dream of the Endless, Hedgewitch!Hob Gadling
The issue is that Dream is a bit like a cat—which is to say, that he will complain loudly at minor inconveniences like being denied cuddles or having the wrong blanket set out, but at the same time will hide a broken leg until it literally gives out and kills him.
Hob works his way through nearly an entire basket of pine cones before the standoff is broken.
Cat hisses.
Dream bares his teeth, and unleashes a series of clicking noises.
Cat arches her back and puffs to twice her size.
Dream clicks.
Cat hisses again, and then at last—she dashes away.
Hob shells out the last of the pine nuts from this particular cone, and sets it to the side. He waits, as Dream rises to his feet.
“She refuses to agree. We will need the nettle,” Dream pronounces.
“I had a feeling,” Hob says.
Dream’s shoulders are not… slumped, exactly, but they are fractionally lower than usual.
a soft place to land
part 7 of the cottagecore series
Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling || G || 5k || Complete
Alternate Universe - Medieval, Domestic Fluff, Old Married Couple, Injury Recovery, Hedgewitch!Hob, Fae!Dream of the Endless, Warning: Hob Gadling's Dad Jokes
Dream and Hob, healing slowly, in their cottage in the woods.
[A series of hurt/comfort and fluffy vignettes about their life post-wolf heart. First up, a very important origin story for a very important member of the family.]
“But a part,” Dream says, “is not a measurement.”
“Well. No, it's not, that’s just—” Hob has never actually had to verbally direct the process of baking, let alone explain the maths behind it. “It means that if you use one cup of water, you use two cups of flour. That’s all.”
“Yes, I am aware of the concept of ratios, Hob,” Dream says impatiently. “My question is regarding quantities.”
Hob, personally, has never even heard the word ratio before, but he also doesn't care to invite a lecture about whatever higher mathematics had been included as a part of Dream's royal education. They have other priorities right now.
“I mean, a lot less than a cup?” Hob shifts a little in the bed, leaning past Dream to size up the sack of flour sitting on the table, amongst the other goods they had purchased from Lucienne earlier today. “It takes a week or two to get a starter going, and half of what you make will get dumped. No point in wasting ingredients. Start small.”
Dream holds up a fingertip questioningly.
“Not that small.”
Two fingertips.
Hob shakes his head. “No, you’ve got to have enough to actually use, in the end. Think, like, a handful.”
“A handful,” Dream repeats.
“Yeah, I don’t know.” Hob mimes grabbing a fistful of air. “Like this for the flour. Two of those. Then—” He cups his hands together. “—maybe one of these for the water?”
“Your confidence is most reassuring,” Dream informs him.
the beauty, the splendor, the wonder
part 4 of the cottagecore series
Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling || G || 2k || Complete
Alternate Universe - Medieval, Domestic Fluff, Interspecies Relationship(s), Fae!Dream of the Endless, Hedgewitch!Hob
“Surely," Dream says, "mortals are not so under-evolved as to rank below the common bear in survival skills.”
“You’re saying this—” Hob sounds oddly strangled. “You’re saying this because I haven’t grown a winter coat?”
“Five minutes, I was gone,” Hob complains.
Dream hums, smoothing a hand over Cat’s fur. She nudges her nose further under her paw, for all the world as if she’s been asleep on Dream’s lap for a good several hours.
“Spoiled,” Hob mutters, shaking his head as he crouches before the fire and carefully adds one, then two logs to the blaze.
Dream watches his form—a dark silhouette against the only light source in the house, bulky with furs and wools against the cold—the way Hob grasps for the iron poker without looking, sure of its place after a lifetime tending to the same hearth day in and day out. The way he pokes at random to gently topple and shift the wood about, making little humming noises as he assesses his work, until he is eventually satisfied though there is no measurable difference in amplitude of flame. The way the poker is secured on the rack once more, sight unseen, and the thumb that runs over its strange runes with casual surety of their obedience.
Dream remembers well the bite of cold iron against his hand, and the blisters that had swelled on his palm, yellow and pink and white. The subsequent weeks of exquisite pain. It has left the skin disfigured, and sensations not quite as they were before.
He dreams, sometimes, of an iron blade run through his belly. Pinned to the floor. Boiling and burning and dying from the inside out.
And yet here he sits, in a house with a mortal man, surrounded on all sides by deadly weapons and entirely unarmed.
illuminated manuscripts
>>> part five of the cottagecore verse
Hob Gadling/Dream of the Endless || G || 4k || Complete
Alternate Universe - Medieval, Established Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Old Married Couple
The thing is, Hob can read.
Mostly.
Sort of
Hob enjoys nearly a month of gratis storytelling before he's caught staring a little too intently at the page Dream is reading from—he'd been looking at the pictures thank you—when Dream suddenly pauses just as Culhwch is about to ask Ysbaddaden for his blessing and turns his glittering eyes to Hob.
“And?” Hob asks, impatient. “What does he say?”
“You are reading,” Dream accuses.
…Shit.
“Well that seems like a strange way for Culhwch to propose marriage?” Hob says weakly.
Dream's eyes narrow. “You told me you could not.”
“I can't.”
“You can.”
“I really can't,” Hob insists, and he can feel himself starting to flush. “I mean. Not like this, not like. Just what my dad taught me, which is—which is a lot for people like us, you know, and it gets the job done, but I can't. I can't read like you.”
And Hob had not known Dream long enough, at that point, to recognize the rush of starlight into his eyes that would have given him some warning for what he was about to suggest next, and indeed, the futility of protesting against it.
“I,” Dream says, his whole face aglow, “will teach you.”
