Two Dreamers

Time passes differently in the dreamscape. For creatures like Starlit, who have never quite known anything else, the way that the sands of time slip through their fingers is as natural as breathing. Sometimes, a moment is a second. Other times, it is years. All this is normal.

Ozone is not normal. He’s so other that Starlit allows themselves to be enamoured with him, sucked into his deep, dark eyes like they’re falling in and there’s nowhere else to go. When he comes to them with gentle but forceful touches and kind words, they crumble as easily as those sandcastles he tells them about, out on the surface. Starlit has never seen the sea wash away the foundations of a fortress, but they suspect it would be a little bit like what Ozone does to them. He is a single minded force of nature battering at their walls, watching them fall one by one, and there’s something a little inevitable about him.

About them.

Starlit isn’t expecting their steps to fall into soft, cushioned grass. They aren’t expecting the world around them to shift slightly on its axis, the edges blurred by chromatic aberration as the picture of a garden clicks into place, as beautiful as it is surprising. Then again, Starlit shouldn’t be surprised by these things anymore. The dreamscape acts as it wishes — or perhaps as its denizens wish. They don’t know what they could have possibly thought about to bring them to this place, but they find themselves content to stay for a while.

The dreamscape never runs out of new things to show them. If it is a cage, it is certainly the most beautiful cage they could ever imagine. Just as the thought enters their mind, a golden rose blooms beneath their fingertips.

“One of my finer creations,” a deep voice rumbles from just behind them, the warm breath stirring the fur at their neck. Starlit startles, cutting their fingertip on the thorn of the rose. They do not bleed, just come apart at the seams a little like a deflated doll.

The man before them is visibly mature, but appearances do not necessarily reflect age. Still, if he is old, he has aged finely; his horns arch towards his face regally, his hair perfectly trimmed and in place. His brows are thick and as well groomed as his tidy beard. And those eyes — golden tiger’s eyes, peering at Starlit intensely — are like molten gold, ever shifting and ever warm. He’s dressed like a gentleman, fangs poking out from between his lips like a shared secret. He is, in short, the perfect stranger.

He cradles Starlit’s injured hand in both of his own, examining it carefully. “You’re not a dreamer. You’re a Dreamer.” It’s not clear how this stranger feels about this information, but he runs one light fingertip over the wound nonetheless, smudging their edges together as if Starlit was never injured.

The man’s touch lingers for a moment before he pulls away as if reluctant.

“I haven’t seen another Dreamer in a long time,” he says, and the way he smiles reveals two rows of sharp, sharp teeth.

“Neither have I.” They’re not sure what prompted them to respond, but now that they’ve spoken one word, it’s like they can’t stop the flood from seeping out of every pore in their body. That urge to talk, to combat the eternal loneliness that permeates every fibre of their being between Ozone’s visits. “I’m—” They hesitate. To give their nickname would be too much; it feels like something personal, just for them and Ozone to share. “Aster.”

“Well, Aster,” and he says their name like it’s something delicious, something to be eaten and savoured, “you may call me Mammon for as long as you spend in my gardens.” A light brush of lips on the back of Starlit’s hand is the only touch Mammon initiates before retreating to an appropriate distance.

Privately, Starlit thinks that they’re in no real danger, but it doesn’t stop their heart — or whatever phantom dreamthing that lies in their chest — from stuttering uncertainly at the proclamation.

“It’s nice to make your acquaintance, Mammon.”