Chapter Text
You were the first.
The first born into the Dreaming, sculpted by the hands of an Endless, reverent and manic in the way only a creator is. Hours, decades, spent on your creation. The first needed to be perfect.
And you were.
Neither dream, nor nightmare – instead, lying somewhere in the between: the first.
When you opened your eyes, the room surrounding you was grey, stone stretching high and wide, almost lit from within, and it reminded you of the stars. What were stars?
‘Face me, creation.’
You turned, and oh, that’s what stars are.
A figure, before you. Beauty personified, dark eyes, pin pricks of light that were far too easy to get lost in. Voice like silk, wrapping around bare limbs, so deep and gravelly it echoed through the grandeur and straight to your soul, reverberating to your very bones. Darkness and beauty personified, draped in the night sky hanging loose over shoulders, slender shadows across cheekbones high, stock still, unmoving. Only eyes, observing your figure. Scanning, as yours did. He was physically flawless – sharp jaw, strong nose, full pink lips, hair spiking away and across his forehead, the light illuminating his figure from behind creating a soft halo to surround his head, and you suddenly understood how people fear and pray to beauty.
Something burns as you look at him, and he looks at you, eyes seeing you.
Through you.
Then something burns. Really burns. Not metaphorically, no flowery divine language. Something hurts.
You gasp, falling forward onto your hands and knees, fingernails scrabbling against stone and sternum, sinking into something soft and hard with each. Your first breath hurts, frigid air swirling into lungs, burning as you hungrily swallow it down, piercing straight to the abdomen. Something felt right, grovelling at the feet of this Great Creator, of a God in personable form.
You weren’t entirely sure if you were thanking it for life or begging for mercy. They taste the same, you decide.
There was no noise beside hungry gasps and groans, eyebrows pinching in the agony of being alive.
Will it always hurt this much?
‘Creation,’ the voice, again. The rumble closer, vibrating through the hand on stone. And then, He’s there – a pale shock of hand reaching, reaching for you, and creator, you’ll never feel worthy – and it’s there, his hand on your body, on your cheek, raising your gaze to meet his. Another on your back, moving to grasp your arm. He has lowered himself to your depths, you realize. And he still looks like divinity personified. ‘Oh… my Creation. You are alive.’
Something inside you sang at being called his, to belong to something so holy. Everything felt so overwhelming, tears burning in your eyes and pain in your chest. The searing pain that could only be divinity where his fingers trailed from cheek to eye socket, down the slope of your nose and across the cupids bow of your lips. Your breath on his fingers, his eyes on yours, and you wonder if your expression mirrors his – relief, adoration in every cell. His eyelids flickered, eyes filling with tears as his lips parted in a breathless smile. The grip on your arm moved to cradle the back of your head, and he dropped his forehead to yours.
A breathless laugh filled the air, fanning across your jaw, and it was your first sensation that filled your body with warmth, from the hair on your head down to the very tips of your toes. It lit you from face, his burning gaze and touch – a holy fire – you wanted to bathe in this sensation for the rest of eternity. Body feverish, with Him as the cause and single cure.
You don’t ever want to be cured.
The fire trails behind his hands, moving to arms as he aids you in standing, feet unsteady as you support your own weight.
…You have weight, you are no longer a thought in the great Darkness.
You are.
‘Alive?’
That was… you. Coarse, dry, not yet quite sure how to talk, to give voice to your thoughts, swirling and frantic, without sense. Unworthy, compared to the siren song of Him.
His eyes softened, even as his face crumpled. ‘I created you. From the sand you were brought forth, by the power vested in me as my Creators saw fit,’ His hand, still holding your form, moved again to your jaw so gently, tilting your head in such a way as to expose you to the light, examining you carefully. ‘You will be the first in this realm. I spent time enough, and you will be my greatest Creation.’
You watched his lips move, and wondered how you could express the sensation in your chest. The things you are… feeling. You do not yet have the knowledge to wax lyrical or spout divine poetry, but you need to say something. Something to express the intensity of the pain in your chest, how good it feels even as the agony sets into your bones.
‘Thank… you.’
He smirks, like he knows something you do not, and of course he does – the only thing you know is Him, right now, and it’s all you ever want to. All you ever need to. This celestial being, high above you, granting you the divine honour to look upon His form, gaze upon His body. Dust swirls around the two of you as stars, a nebula in the air as he continued looking with those supernova eyes.
‘Welcome,’ His voice rolled. ‘To the Dreaming, Creation.’
--
The first millennia was yours. The First.
Even most of the Dreaming came After. For a millennia, it was just you, the Creator, and the bare bones of his palace. Hardly even a palace - a throne room, rest chambers and the gates to the Dreaming.
‘My name,’ He rasps, and you’re suddenly sure you could reach Elysium at the feeling of it roiling over your skin, through your bones. ‘Is Dream of the Endless. I am your Creator. Neither Dream nor Nightmare, you will be both and neither as you are needed.’
There is no other way to explain how he is in your presence other than soft. He had used his two hands and spent time and time again on your creation, before your First Breath and even after. Time in the Dreaming is complicated, but the days were for his Kingdom and the nights were for you.
Every night, you were remade by His hands, bruises on hip bones and red scores down your chest. His lips on yours, on your cheeks, on your brow, on your throat, His hands on your throat. Deceptively strong arms wrapped around waist, around torso as he pulls you to Him every night, yours thrown over his shoulders, fingers curled into stone, into grass, into clouds, into Him. Raking nails across his back in a vain attempt to begin to ruin Him as he has ruined you. His voice is a constant in your ear during these nights, ideas of grandeur, hopes for this kingdom, for the future, for your future (Valhalla, your future together?) in such a way that these whisperings felt secret, only to be uttered in the safety of the cloak of Night. With his voice in your ear like this, you would do anything He asked of you. There was something about his weight pressing you into the sand, his lips wet against the strong muscle of your throat, which felt sacred yet blasphemous, the same way his voice soothed you yet sparked you like lightning, the same way his touch alone makes your skin feverish yet your breath fogs in the air.
You could have an eternity of this, and you would never have enough.
The mornings were the hardest. When he would pull away, the inches feeling like deserts between you, his touches turning your body to ice where they lingered. He would turn away, eyes no longer meeting yours, like he couldn’t even look at you. There was a part of you, much bigger than you would like, that was desperate for him not to be disappointed in you, you could do better, you will do better you will be better you will bebetterYOUWILLBEBETTER-
And then he’s back, the sun painting the sky at dusk like he paints your skin with His love, his touch. Is it any wonder his name is carved into your bones? The nights were sacred, you knew you had him as he had you and nothing would tear you apart. His eyes swirling as he took in your form, hushed whispers of perfection and beautiful and deity and the stars themselves cannot keep us apart-
A millennia doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things if you never had the opportunity for growth. Being remade every night, changing yet remaining the same, perfect creature you were at the First, in the beginning, didn’t matter much in the end.
You were still naïve. All things come to an end. Even the beautiful ones. Nothing is ever poetic when it’s happening – it ends, and it gets turned into poetry.
By Eden, your relationship was more beautiful than any sonnet you have ever heard.
--
He made another.
‘Company,’ He had said, voice belaying distraction but sounding amused as he sculpted and formed from clay and sand, fingers slow and deliberate. ‘It will not do for you to be on your own. The Kingdom is expanding, and you cannot take on every role, as eager as you are.’
His voice is chiding and still amused, like he has just said something funny, and you’re not really sure why. Why couldn’t you take on the roles needed? It could just be the two of you until the end of the universe. His Lordship and his loyal devotee.
You shifted quietly, robes dragging across the stone as you adjusted your head on your arms, knees pulled up toward your chest. Self-soothing. ‘What will you name him?’
Words came easier now, sentences and prayers slipping from your lips like water from a brook. The humans were developing faster and faster, creating a thousand words for a desert or for snow, each tribe having their own terms for the same object. It was interesting to be able to know a thousand different ways to express your love and devotion to Dream, Creator, God, Endless, Habibi, Caro mio, Kallos. None of them were ever quite right in the way you needed to express your feelings toward Him and His beauty.
The Creation before you begins to take shape. His fingers are working on its visage now, barely a breath away. Leaning forward and resting your weight on your feet, you couldn’t help but notice how the creation is entirely the antithesis of Dream in its form. Light hair leading to sun-blemished freckles, strong arms and broad shouldered, standing tall and righteous. It was beautiful. You pause in your thoughts as you capture a glimpse of its face, disguised by the flurry of the Creator’s hands. Instead of eyes, Dream had seen fit to gift two mouths in the sockets, a thumb trailing over the cupid’s bow again and again and again, reverent and patient, until He deemed it just right.
Dream stepped back, circling his creation like a predator to prey, examining for flaws from the base of the creation’s feet to the sand of the hair on the top of its head. Coming to a stop in front of the statue still physique, he fixed his gaze.
Your skin prickled at the electric feeling of the air.
‘Wake, Creation.’
You stood, then, knees groaning in protest. You must have sat there for years on end. Time didn’t quite work the same in the Dreaming as it did in the Waking – you could while away decades and centuries in a single Waking night, or spend only a night in the Dreaming and have it be months in the Waking.
Watching, fascinated as the statue began to change before your eyes, clay and marble and sand giving way to flesh, soft and supple, fingers twitching, and you could see the tendons beneath the skin flex and jump. It gave one, full-bodied shudder before unclenching its jaw and taking its first gasping, choking breath of the universe. You could see as the ocular mouths twitched and moved, tongues darting out and hissing at the taste of the air, of dust and cosmic ichor, and you realized that the creation could see. It stumbled to its knees hand clawing at its chest and stomach caving in as it took desperate gasping breaths and oh-
Oh.
You’ve never seen something more beautiful.
This is why the humans care for one another.
You move forward quickly, hands soft but strong as you help it him sit back on his haunches, naked and beautiful, and you try not to become distracted by how devoted and reverent he looks on his knees. Carding fingers through his hair as you encourage him to breathe, that you know it hurts but the pain will pass, this is your birth, you are here for a purpose, I am here and you are not alone.
You are not alone.
He tilts his head back, strong muscles on his throat jumping as his jaw moves, lips trying to form words without the knowledge of what words were. Mouths instead of eyes meet yours and he stops, goes so completely and utterly still that for a moment you are afraid Dream has decided to unmake him, to turn him back to clay and sand, to stone and dust. His ocular teeth snap shut and he groans, low and deep as he learns to breathe, learns to live. It’s just the two of you, bodies intertwined, barely a breath apart and God, he is monstrous. He is beautiful.
‘Welcome to the Dreaming, Nightmare. You are the second in this realm, the first of your kind, and you will serve your purpose admirably. I deem you…’ You catch the amused, self-satisfying grin as He paused.
‘Corinthian.’
Riding on the undeniable high of a new creation, your nights were even longer and with newer company, the minutes stretching out into days, Dream remaking him over and over as he did you, as he does you, every night. The Corinthian took to new life with a passion you had never before seen, eager for everything you wished to give. You were the sun and he was the flower petal unto which you gifted, opening up so beautifully beneath you, longing and yearning for your light, your touch, your presence. He was an interesting study into the idea of contradictions and into the idea of growth – he could change from submissive to domineering faster than you could draw a breath, and you could see as his confidence grew and moulded him into the person he is now: a pure force of reckoning, one who could be under you and at your mercy and still be holding all the power, ready to pull the rug out from under you when you least expected. He submitted most easily for Dream, the same way you did. He was your creator, all-consuming and soul-crushing, breaking you apart every single night and hoping he would be gracious enough to put you back together come the breaking of the dawn, but secretly not minding if he left your bodies splintered and overwhelmed in the new light.
With the introduction of your newest companion, Dream found it easier to be rougher, nails sinking into hipbones and thighs, teeth biting into shoulders and chest and the curve of necks, fingers knotted in hair and pulled tight, and it felt so delightfully possessive and religious that you could do nothing but moan. Come morning light when Dream dressed and left the chambers, you would curl into and around the Corinthian as he did to you, finding beauty and pleasure in the suffering of pain bestowed upon you by the Creation greater than God himself.
In the blush light of the new morning, Corinthian would lay you back and push into you, kissing and pressing into the developing bruises on your flesh, soft in his movements but rough in his worshipping, and it’s such a delightful contradiction that it stole your breath away, just before his lips tried to do the same. The sun rises over the horizon as you both reach your peak, bathed in light.
Being with both your lovers was so different that it struck you somewhere deep in your chest, fist clasped tight and squeezing your heart. Dream was something so Other that he always felt out of reach, that no matter how hard you tried it was like trying to capture smoke in your fists – but on the occasions he deigned to lower himself to your stead it felt like you could put your hands on something so holy it burned. Beauty is terror, you thought, recalling a tender morning moment between yourself and the Corinthian. The things that are beautiful are things you cower before, beneath their greatness. Only creatures above gods and monsters are truly beautiful – everything else is a poor mockery.
‘Do you think we’re beautiful?’
‘I think you are, Corinthian.’
Dream was both above the inadequacy of Gods and a terrible monster – he is of the Endless, a Divine Creator, King of the Dreaming, but also the King of Nightmares, the reason why mortals fear the darkness, why they fear what lurks in the corner of their eye. He is both inspiration and madness, creation and self-destruction and he is still so beautiful.
The Corinthian was as beautiful as he was monstrous, a tale in two parts that you would read over and over and over, obsession pouring from your frame. He was designed to be attractive, to inspire awe, to inspire the humans to act in accordance with their wants and filthy desires in their dreams, to then take control and lift the curtain to reveal their dream is a Nightmare and a mere mortal does not puppeteer the strings. And yet-
And yet.
When his hair catches the morning light and casts a golden halo, you understand why Lucifer misses the shining Silver City so. You understand why the mortals bind themselves by confusing and contradictory rules (thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall thee garb body in garment mingled of linen and woollen) for the merest chance of catching a glimpse of heaven. You would obey any rule set forth if it meant you could continue to spend your nights in the presence of torches of holy fire, form barely disguising his unbridled power, and your mornings in the arms of an angel, rough but tender.
When Dream takes you to bed, it feels almost like he is granting you a favour – he’s always passionate and caring, but there is always the power imbalance because he is so Other, something beyond your mere reach, higher than God in every way. Water is wet, the sky is blue, and you and He will never be close to equals. You were a mere servant, and he is untouchable. He makes you feel holy, because when the three of you are in his chambers you are together and he wants you so badly, desperate, passionate, and hungry and everything you could have dreamed of - then he slinks away in the morning and all the holy fire he bathed you in is washed away, limbs scrubbed clean of his touch as the dawn graces His body. You miss the way it used to be, before his days were filled with other creations and the expansion of his kingdom; back when it was just the three of you.
Back when he loved you.
Being with the Corinthian is different in ways it’s hard to put words to. He is rougher, harsher, more volatile in the way he loves you, passionate, tender when needed but not desperate or forced like it sometimes feels with Dream. He and you are equals in this, the give and take able to be matched by the other in ways it cannot be with your Creator. The Corinthian worships you like a mortal God, like he had seen the gates of Heaven themselves when you reach the edge and one taste isn’t enough, he needs to see them over and over again. He can hurt you, but you can hurt him, and it is painful and delicious to be worshipped and destroyed at the same time. It feels almost sacrilegious.
Beauty and monstrosity really do go hand in hand, hm.
--
Time moves on, humanity copulating and progenating like rabbits, spreading out across the planet like a disease.
Dream become Kai’ckul, and with that name comes his first human lover. Nada. While you did not envy her fate, jealousy and other disgusting human emotions swarmed you, settling like poison in your blood and low in your stomach. You knew the Corinthian felt the same, but he lashed out at others while you internalized your agony. In the wake that Nada left, things began to change. Dream pulled away even further, seeking your bed and company with decreasing frequency and it felt like the tighter you tried to hold on to him, the further he fell away. He busied himself with more and more creations, Gault, Fiddlers Green, Lucienne, a raven companion, staff for the palace which had grown in grandeur in the blink of an eye.
You gave up trying to convince Dream to visit you both, letting him become an open sore in your heart. The Corinthian had more determination than you, but even then, he gave up after months of only catching glimpses from a distance. You wanted to scream at him, prostrate yourself at his feet, beg him to change you, to make you better, you could be better you could be so much better, please please please change me, remake me to be perfect once more, I can be everything you need, make me whole again, why do you need more dreams, why do you need more nightmares, why am I not enough whyaminotENOUGH WHYAMINOTEVERENOUGH –
Time moves on.
Kai’ckul become Oneiros, becomes Morpheus, and with Oneiros come Calliope. The mere mention tastes bitter in your mouth. Even worse than Nada, Dream loved her. Truly loved her. She could give him things that you and the Corinthian couldn’t, she could give him children, she could be someone who could be his equal. She walked around with such grace, like the world itself didn’t press down on her shoulders. Her smiles were effortless, treating all Dreams with kindness. She had tried with you.
You turned away with a grimace.
She was born to rule, the child of immortal human gods. The muse of eloquence and epic poetry.
You wondered if she sounded as sweet as the Corinthian did when begging for Dream’s fiery touch.
Why had Dream created you this way? You remembered the reverence in which he called you perfect, his greatest creation, and if you were so perfect and so great why did he need others? Is perfection not enough? Why had he made you to feel so much all the time, to feel the roiling pit of jealousy and hate, to feel inadequate in the face of your peers, to feel lesser than his newest creations, to feel abandoned.
You were so tired.
With Calliope, Dream had no need to seek you nor the Corinthian out for anything other than your decreed duties, and it felt like you were no longer good enough.
Time moves on.
Dream is now Morpheus, the Sandman, Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares. He has made a friend in the Waking, you deduce, from his regular trips.
Robert Gadling.
Why aren’t I good enough why aren’t I good enough why aren’t I GOOD ENOUGH
1695.
Destruction has abandoned his duties to the Endless.
Dream is furious.
Good.
1801.
‘Remember your place, Creation. I will not hesitate to unmake you if you choose to disobey me.’
‘Why are we not good enough for you?’ You screamed in return, voice hoarse from crying. You had stormed into the throne room, angrier than ever. He had threatened to unmake the Corinthian for challenging him, to demand why he was putting so much strain on himself to expand the boundaries of the dreaming, to create more and more dreams and nightmares. You are going to destroy yourself if you do not proceed with caution. The Dreaming will no longer be able to sustain itself at this size, he had warned. Warned from a place of care, a place of love, and Morpheus had taken one look at that care and spat on it.
The very dust in the room stilled.
‘You dare,’ his voice rolled, echoing out and around every chamber in the expansive throne room. ‘You are a flawed creature. You will not speak to me like that again, or I will make good on my threat.’
Flawed.
Before, in the beginning, you would have shied away at the thinly veiled anger in his tone. Begged for forgiveness on your knees.
But now it wasn’t just you that was being threatened.
You sobbed. ‘You made us this way!’ An accusing finger. ‘You made us flawed and now you have made better creatures, you’re just going to destroy us, erase your mistakes – did we mean anything at all to you? All those nights we shared, together, with the Corinthian – and suddenly you are too busy to speak with us? To touch us? What is the point of all this? Are we so flawed that we cause you pain? Why can’t you just look at me? Look at me and see what you've done to us!’
‘ENOUGH.’
He did then, the stars you always admired turning to hellfire. With a shock, you realised you could no longer read his intentions as you could before. His brow crumpled and his jaw tightened.
‘I do see you, Creation.’
He hadn’t called you Creation in so long. He says it so reverently, a name he reserves only for you. He speaks softly too, a quiet contradiction to the fire in his eyes. You think there might be salvation in this.
‘But you are not enough.’ The words are cautious, careful, stepping onto a minefield. ‘You are complex, the pinnacle of Dream and Nightmare – you were made to do so much. I gave you feelings to understand the humans that you serve, steadfast in your duty, but you were also made to be flawed. You must be.’
Ice spread through your very veins, shocking you into stillness. Not enough. Flawed. You closed your eyes slowly, tear tracking down your cheek. A single, shuddering breath as you opened them once more. Dream’s jaw flexed. You might almost say he looked concerned as he watched you, but Dream does not care for anyone but himself and the mortals.
‘So we are to be punished for the way you made us so?’ your voice is quiet, trembling. Dream almost looks human.
‘This is not punishm- ‘
‘I have spent millennia on millennia guiding the mortals through their dreams, and I have seen every sick and twisted desire each has had, but, My Lord,’ you spat. ‘I have never once before seen someone so cruel.’
You turned on your heel, ignoring the tug deep in your chest of Dream’s power in you urging you to turn back. You kept going, picking up speed, trying desperately to reach the large doors. Throwing them open, you gasped at the air. Running, now, you sought the Corinthian.
You could barely stand the sight of your Creator, now; he was no longer a grand God standing far above you. Now, he was a sickly, vile creature spitting poison that belonged somewhere worse than Hell for his transgressions. He had spent so longer making you, reforming you every night, absolving you of your sins and now he calls you flawed. Unworthy.
‘First?’
Corinthian.
Eyes red, face raw, he looks concerned.
‘I am leaving, Corinthian.’
‘What?’
‘… I – I can’t stay here. Not anymore. Not with…’ You shook your head. ‘Come with me.’
You stayed still for a moment, arms wrapped around his form as he supported yours, eyes looking into yours, searching for answers. You would so easily beg on your knees for him to stay with you, fingers twisting into his jacket desperately like you could carve open your ribcage with blunt fingers and nestle him against your very heart, where he has always been since his first breath.
A tear drips down his cheek, and you dimly realize that this is the first you’ve seen him cry from anything other than pleasure.
‘Please.’
He sighed, tucking your head under his chin as he folded your body against his, arms banding around you like he could keep you safe from the cruelty of the world.
'Anywhere.'