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Delirium was falling.
No. Wait. Not falling. Flying? F- f- f-
Fishing. That was it. She was fishing. Was she a she? Sometimes it was hard to remember.
“How much longer do you want to do this Del? I don’t think the fish like me much.”
Her brother’s voice snapped her back to reality, or not, because what was reality anyway? Fish. He’d mentioned fish.
“Dunno. I was thinking about other F things. Do you want a fish? I can give you a fish.”
As she waved her rod back and forth (was it a rod? Or a branch? Was she a tree?) little fishes emerged from underneath, sparkling every colour of the rainbow and more that no one had ever seen.
Most swam away into the sky, blinking out into oblivion, but some went to the water, and one circled around Dream’s head. He stared resolutely ahead, but she knew he was smiling on the inside. Did people smile on the inside? She should find out.
“May I suggest we cut this excursion short? Some of us have genuine responsibilities.”
“I have responsibil- response- thingies.” She protested, her mismatched eyes flashing with opal flames. “You’re the boring one.”
“Hmm. That may be so, sister, but you must have to tend to your realm also.”
“Oh, it gets on fine without me. I think- ooh, another fishie!- people, or whatever you call people when they aren’t people- they… what was i saying?”
“Truly I have no idea.” Dream stood, his fishing rod/pole/branch falling in on itself until it ceased to exist, and extended a hand for Delirium to take. At least, maybe that was what he intended. But she licked it, because what else was there to do? “Lovely.”
“My doggy does that sometimes, and you like the doggy!” That… made sense. Didn’t it? Oh, had she messed up again? Maybe she should stop doing things other people did. But doggy wasn’t a people.
“Yes… but you are not a dog, are you?”
“Depends.” As she spoke, her front teeth morphed into pointed canines, and she waved her tail behind her. “Woof. I like doggies.”
Morpheus rubbed the bridge of his nose and held back a smile. But it was there, the smile from issue fighting its way to the surface. Sometimes you had to fight to smile. She knew that really well.
“Naturally. Come, sister. I think we should return to the dreaming. I get… worried.”
“Is that because when you were being a fishie all the fishies swam away from your big castle and you felt sad-angry-small-useless-scared?”
“Yes. I suppose it is.”
Was he telling the truth? But the truth didn’t exist anyway, she knew that, it was just whatever you wanted to make it. The truth was that they were by a river anymore, they were in front of a really big castle thing and there was a dragon! She liked dragons.
“Dragon!”
“I guess you could call it that. Greetings, gatekeeper. Delirium has returned to the dreaming for a visit.”
“Charmed to see you again, milday.” The dragon (dragon!) bent its head low in respect and the gates creaked open. Delirium patted its snout, giggling when all of the fiery smokey stuff came out of its nose. That was fun. She could do that too.
“Are you quite done?”
Her brother’s voice reminded her the rest of reality existed, and she stopped making rainbow smoke with the gate-dragon.
“Maybe. Endings are hard. Starting things are lots easier.”
“Very true.”
Sometimes her brother seemed so different to her, and sometimes practically the same. The many pathways he lead them through, all wriggling around in the belly of his castle, definitely seemed like something she could understand. And she did.
He told her not to get lost, she said she wouldn’t be able to (lost squared doesn’t exist). He told her to be careful, she asked what there was to fear (everything real).
Then they were in the throne room (too fast) (too slow) and he sat in his big chair but she didn’t mind because she preferred to stand anyway.
“I feel, sister, the time has come to discuss why you came to me.”
Oh yes. She was here first. But she was also the last… always the last. Last to notice things. Last to arrive. How could you be late to eternity?
“Mhm. I’m not sure. Weren’t you here first?”
“Sister… if you merely wished to see me, may we consider this matter closed?”
A little thought-fish swam through her brain, one she’d seen before, and she grabbed at it.
“No, I- hold on i need to read the fish. Oh yes. I was… that word when you’re not quite sure you know what real is anymore?”
“Skeptical? Surreal? Why was this such a matter of note, reality is… curiously undefined in your realm as it is.” Dream sighed and seemed to be losing interest in her. People normally did.
“Do you want me to go to another place that isn’t here or near here?”
“If you have nothing of note to attend to.”
Her worries flew away on a cloud of golden silk and puppies.
“Thank you Dream! I needed you to be all meanie to me so I knew you were for sure you!” She clapped in delight (Delight) and began skipping off to return to her realm, satisfied with their little conversation-argument-reassurance thing.
But the door wasn’t where it had been earlier, which wouldn’t normally have been a problem, except for the fact it was one of those annoying kinds of doors she couldn’t get through. Keys. She hadn’t quite managed keys yet. But she was close.
“Delirium… why would you have doubted I was myself?”
Her brother’s voice echoed in the room, once, twice, and quieter but still there, just like everything was, faint traces of it all around her.
Twirling back over to his throne, she leaned on the arm of it and booped his nose.
“Because if you’re real then you would tell me if I was real, silly.”
Dream reached out to her face, but his hand phased through it. She wasn’t sure she could be touched right now. Everything was so loud, so bright, and she didn’t know if it was in her head or everywhere or one of those weird in between things that happened sometimes probably to some people.
“Del… what’s happened to you?”
She laughed with the glitching cadences of screaming children and rooms full of dead eyes.
“Everything, Dreamie. It’s all around me. It’s- it’s in me. It hurtsing.”
The floor was cold. Dream’s hands were too. She couldn’t feel them. He couldn’t feel her. She was too far away. But right here. Funny how that worked (funny, funny like not right, like she wasn’t right)
“Listen to me Del, you are real. I am real. You’re here, in the Dreaming, and you are real.”
The words were a rope ladder, thrown out into a sky of tropical birds and ice cream, but she was being washed in the other direction, every wave knocking her backwards.
“The birds are taking me away…”
(Noises everywhere but inside her head it was silent because she was inside her head so deep inside how had she even got here)
(Someone trying to touch her but you couldn’t touch what you couldn’t find and she couldn’t even find herself)
(She wasn’t coming back this time)
(A fish)
Hey.
A fish.
Flitting in front of her.
The fish was her friend. It wanted to help her. It was jet black, and maybe a bit blue, that kind of blue that you see at the very bottom of the ocean only you can’t see it.
She liked the fish.
“Del? Del, wake up! Fuck- I need to…”
Huh. The fish did the talking thing. Did she do the talking thing? She felt like she did it badly (like everything) people didn’t understand her very much.
She was still falling, not fishing (falling upwards? Could she do that now?) and she was getting closer to something, and it was cold, but so warm, closer, and closer, and-
“Oh.”
“God, Del are you ok? Sorry, you- scared me.”
She opened her eyes, and met the swirling void that was what her brother saw through, and grinned.
“I’m fine, I promises. The fish helped me.”
Dream backed off, and she sat up, delighted to see she was still in the same place. That didn’t happen often.
“What just happened to you?” Already, he was back to being all serious, the little shining stars blinking out in his not-eyes.
“I- I think what had already happened. Order right the in happen always don’t things. I needed to see you but you weren’t who i needed to see.”
“Are you better now?”
“Probably nots.”
Hesitantly, that meant all slow and jerkily, Dream bent down and reached out to youth her shoulder.
They connected with a slight haze and a flash of sparks, but he touched her, and she could feel him, and she beamed. He didn’t change his face at all.
“Do you want to stay here for a while to recuperate?”
Recuperate. Fun words. Re-coup-err-ate. Errrrr. Rrrrrrrrrrrr.
“…rrrrrrrr. Not rrrrrrrrreally.”
“I shall rephrase it then. Which room do you wish to stay in for a while?”
The words didn’t have choices in them. She didn’t have choices. Destiny had lots of choices. Paths and paths and paths and maybe she’d taken the wrong one in this universe, and she’d never know, never ever ever until the day she died.
“Nooo….. I’m okaysies. I promiseseseses.”
“You do not sound ‘okaysies’.”
“How did you do the,” she mimed speech marks, small pops emerging when she moved her fingers down. “Thingie?”
Dream didn’t seem inclined to respond (no one listened to her) and instead repeated his question in the way people did when they didn’t want you to know they were repeating it.
“What have you been feeling recently sister?”
He began leading her out of the throne room and into the bigger bit of the Dreaming, this bit that was less him but more him at the same time. She pretended not to notice.
“Lots of thingies. I’ve been feeling like snow the colour of autumn leaves and melted pistachio ice cream and that bit of darkness where all the colour goes away from the world.”
They were walking faster now, or perhaps the world that wasn’t a world was moving faster around them.
“And do you feel like you?”
They had gone too far from where she wanted them to be, so she turned and planted her feet in the floor, accidentally slipping a few inches too deep into the surface.
“Stop this Dreamie. I want to go home, and I want to go home now!”
With her final word, the walls shook with her yell, and a flock of nesting manatees flew sadly away from the chimney above them.
Dream looked as surprised as he ever would, shown in a slight raising of his eyebrows and a faint relaxation of his posture. No one else noticed those things. Only her. It was always only her.
“I won’t keep you here sister. But if I may suggest, isolation is not the answer to your problems.”
She didn’t have problems. (She was the problem)
“I’m not a problem.”
Crossing her arms, she stood her ground, rising a few inches this time.
“And I never said you were. I merely suggest you spend some time with me, or our older sister if she’s not too busy. Or destiny. We are here for you, if ever you need us.”
“I. Don’t. Needs. You.”
She’d figured out how to punctuate inside her words. It was fun.
“Really?”
(Nothing was real) (nothing was real and she was falling out of reality, swallowed up by the void outside worlds) (nothing)
“Real.”
The disconnection was growing, like she was being pulled out of this body, bit by agonising bit.
“Sister, what are you doing?”
“Real.”
The Dreaming wasn’t a world, she knew that because there was no outside, there was only it, but there was an out, out of this form, out of here.
“What’s happening to you?”
“Real.”
It was all fake it was all fake it was all fake just like her
“Delirium!”
“Real.”
Her name scattered into stars, just like her as her vision dissolved into a swirling storm of leaves and boiled sweets.
Someone was trying to touch her. Someone was trying to touch her and they were failing, not because she didn’t want them to be but because it was impossible, she couldn’t touch herself, it was all
Falling
Apart
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•–• / • / •– / •–•• / •• / – / –•––
To her surprise, she woke up.
No. Wait.
–• / ––– / – / •••• / •• / –• / ––•
“Come back to us, please.”
She didn’t.
••• / •– / –• / •
Because you couldn’t wake when your life was a dream
••• / •– / ••–• / •
“Where is she?”
Everywhere. In the flashing lights (of parties) in the back alleys (of hopelessness) in the laughs (of victory) in the exhaustion (of stress) in the pain (of illness) in the happinesses and the sadnesses and the esssesessesssssssssss
B –•••
R •—•
O –––
K –•–
E •
N –•
Ħęłp ħëř ħįm
Ð-
•–– / •– / –•– / •• / –• / ––•
It is a curious fact of the endless, their realms proximity to each other.
Desire and despair intertwine, just like how they work in harmony, one feeding the other
Death is far removed from everyone, her home her own domain entirely (for it truly is so hard to own something entirely)
Destiny exists everywhere
Destruction’s was lost many eons ago
Delirium and dream and both within reach of the mortal realm, and therefore, extremely close by perspective to the rest of their family (aside from the twins).
It is remarkably easy to fall into one whilst expecting the other.
••–• / •–•• / –•––
Delirium woke opened her eyes somewhere she hadn’t been before. A human person was sat beside her, with two eyebrows and a soul that had seen too much but was ready for more.
“Good dream?”
That wasn’t right. People asked ‘bad dreams?’ But none of the dreams were bad, so maybe the person was right after all.
“Ye-e-es…. No. Maybe? Do you like being alive?”
The person blinked two eyes (two, always two) and smiled (that meant happy)
“Like brother like sister. Yes, I really do. I wouldn’t give it up for the world.”
“Oh. Okies. I guess I should give up the world then?”
Laugh. It grated on her ears, but she liked it anyway.
“You are a strange one. I’ll be going now, you can leave whenever you want. Tell your brother he can thank me by the way, I was the one who went and found you.”
“I was unfound- unfounded- losted?”
The person was getting taller now (standing up) and she knew she wouldn’t see the smile again for a while.
“Sure were. But hey, aren’t we all a little lost sometimes?”
“We are?”
We (I and others, pronoun) (others). We.
“I know I am. Safe travels!”
The door to the room she hadn’t noticed she was in closed, but that didn’t matter, because doors were subjective anyway.
“…doggy?”
No doggy appeared. Fair enough, she didn’t want him anyway. But she did. (She didn’t know what she wanted)
Travel. Travels. Travelling.
She needed to go somewhere.
Delirium tumbled out of her bed, and fell back into her realm.
Change.