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Hob was heading back towards the inn, fumbling his papers into his leather briefcase. Okay, it was more of a rugged leather messenger bag, but it had been something of a staple in his life for over a hundred years, and since it was sturdy, well broken in, and oiled so deeply as to be waterproof, he trusted it a helluva lot more than the modern bags that would fall apart after a year or two.
Maybe it didn’t have the support a modern bag would, which meant his papers didn’t always lie flat, but that was hardly a reason to stop using it.
Except for days like today, when he was trying to juggle a cup of coffee, an apple, a stack of tests to grade, and his wallet. It was the wallet that tumbled to the ground, and the papers followed a heartbeat later. Thankfully the park wasn’t terribly crowded, so there was minimal snickering - one young woman dressed in black helped pick up his papers, complimented him on the apple, and disappeared before he could ask her name.
When he glanced around to see where she’d gone off to, Hob paused. There was a figure on the benches nearby, clad in black boots, black britches, black shirt, and a black coat topping it off, pale skin under a shock of black hair, with a french roll in his hands. He would tear a piece of the bread, roll it in his fingers for a moment, then flick the bit out to where some pigeons were scuttling about.
Hob had to stare for a moment. His centennial stranger, whom he had only recently learned was the embodiment of dreaming, doing something as mundane as feeding the birds at the park.
Hob walked to the bench and sat down. Morpheus turned, at first his face incredulous that someone had so brazenly joined him, but then one of his rare smiles crossed his lips, and he flicked another bead of bread for the birds. “Hob.”
“Dream.” It was refreshing, delightful even, to put a name to the face. “Am I interrupting?”
Dream’s head tilted slightly, curiously. “Interrupting? No. I am merely feeding the birds.” His long fingers pulled at the bread, taking another bit and rolling it along the pads of his fingertips. After it was settled into a ball, he turned his wrist over and flicked it towards the gathered birds.
One, a fat pigeon, hopped closer, cooing.
“I have not,” Dream said.
Hob looked around, seeing no one, and glanced back at Dream. “Haven’t what?”
Dream glanced at him. “I’ve not been favoring the sparrows.”
Hob waited a beat, and when he realized Dream was not going to explain further, he furrowed his brow. “I didn’t think you had.”
“Not you,” Dream said, and nodded at the pigeon. “Him.”
The pigeon fluffed his feathers and cooed.
“Do not be rude,” the Lord of Dreams said, looking down at the fat squab. “He is my friend.”
The furrow in Hob’s brow deepened. “You can talk to birds?”
Dream turned and looked at Hob, frowning. “I can speak to all beings that sleep and dream.”
Well, on one hand, that made sense. On the other hand… “But, birds? Pigeons?”
In the same tone and inflection, Dream chided him now. “Do not be rude, Hob.” He looked between bird and man, and neither was certain which was being spoken to. “Their reasoning is different from yours, but it is still reason.”
The pigeon ruffled his feathers, indignantly.
“I will not tell him that,” Morpheus said.
“What?” Hob glanced at the pigeon. “Did he say something about me? What did he say?”
Morpheus looked exasperated. “I have just said I will not say. If you two cannot find peace within one another’s presence, I shall take my leave of both of you.”
The pigeon looked away and pecked at the ground. Hob took the moment to adjust the papers he’d so hastily shoved back into his back, but he wasn’t embarrassed. It was a pigeon.
Dream resumed feeding the birds. Hob found a second apple in his bag and puzzled over it before deciding he’d probably grabbed one, then grabbed another after forgetting he’d grabbed the first. He offered one to Dream, casual as breathing, as he settled his bag on the bench beside him and reclaimed his coffee.
He shined the apple on his shirt and had just taken a bite when he noticed that Dream was holding the apple, and looking expectantly at Hob. Hob tongued the mouthful to the side of his cheek and said, “What?”
“Are you not going to take back your apple?”
He hurriedly chewed and swallowed the chunk of fruit in his mouth. “Why, you don’t want it?” Hob took another bite. “They’re good.”
Dream once again looked exasperated. “I… will perhaps save it for later.” He put it inside his coat where, Hob assumed, there was an inside pocket. He went back to his slow and methodical way of feeding the birds. After a few minutes, a new bird approached, this one a large raven. The pigeons ruffled their feathers, gathering quickly to where Dream’s offerings had been landing, seemingly putting themselves between the raven and the food.
Hob pointed his chin at the raven. “I guess you can understand him, too, I suppose?”
Dream sighed, looking up at the skies for a moment. “All too well,” he said.
“I heard ravens are pretty intelligent,” Hob said, continuing to eat his apple. “They can make tools, and memorize patterns like rubbish pickups.”
The raven turned its head and looked right at Hob. “That’s a pretty low bar for intelligence, pal,” the bird said.
Hob’s jaw dropped open.
Dream sighed again. “Have you something to report, Matthew?”
The raven hopped closer. “No, not really. It was a nice day, so I thought…” Glossy black feathers ruffled. “I kinda miss days like this.”
Before Hob had a moment to wonder about that, the bird tilted his head, clearly indicating the human sitting gobsmacked beside the King of Dreams. “That’s your friend, then?”
Dream somehow made looking exasperated into an art, his wrist turning so the palm was upward, fingers delicately curled as he indicated first one, then the other. “Hob Gadling, Matthew. Yes, Hob is my friend. Matthew is my raven - a messenger and emissary of sorts.”
Hob then had the unique experience of seeing a raven lift his wings and bow to him. “Nice to meet ya,” Matthew said.
“Pleasure is all mine,” Hob responded automatically. He was not often glad his mouth was capable of operating independently of his brain, but this happened to be one of the times he was.
One of the pigeons cooed. Matthew’s head snapped towards it. “What? Who are you calling feather-brain? You disease-ridden piece of--”
“Matthew.”
The pigeon was fluffing up, wings flapping. The raven hopped closer. “I’m just talking to the boss,” he said, his voice raising, the tone close enough to a cawing that Hob felt others could simply dismiss it as such. He, on the other hand, was fascinated.
The pigeon didn’t back down. Wings raised, it began to sway back and forth, head bobbing.
“Oh, no, you did not,” Matthew squawked. “Wanna put your money where your mouth is?”
“Matthew.”
The pigeon made a new sound, one high and shrill, wings beating furiously.
“That’s it!” Matthew said, and raised his own wings.
“Matthew.”
The raven quieted immediately. Hob didn’t blame him. Even the pigeons looked cowed. Matthew turned back to Dream, and dipped his head in an approximation of a bow. “Sorry, boss.”
Morpheus was rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. “Go back to the Dreaming, Matthew. Fiddler’s Green will surely provide you with a fine day, minus the interruptions.”
Hob had never seen a bird look remorseful, but Matthew was doing a fair job of it. “Alright, boss,” he said, and his voice was so crestfallen that Hob had to intervene.
“Hey, Dream, that pigeon was clearly egging him on.” Hob gestured to the culprit. “Isn’t that the one who was being rude earlier?”
Morpheus looked at Hob from the corner of his eye. “Hob,” he said, somewhere between annoyance and fond resignation.
“You can’t blame someone for standing up for themselves.” Hob glanced at Matthew. “Or… flapping for themselves.”
“Hey!” came an indignant squawk from the raven.
Morpheus was looking at the three, one after the other. “I am the King of Nightmares, Prince of Stories, and absolute monarch of the Dreaming,” he said, in a voice that was clearly in abject defeat. “How am I now arbitrating a squabble between corvid, columbid, and sapien?”
Hob grinned. It was nice to see that Dream could get exasperated. He was about to needle in another comment when he heard a voice behind him say, “Uh, Professor?”
Shit. Hob turned and mentally dropped his face in his hands. “Hello, Abigail,” he said, smiling at the nosiest gossip in any of his classes. “Can I help you?”
She looked at him, then pointedly at Dream. Dream, who chose that exact moment to lean back on the bench, stretching his arm so that his fingertips - those long, elegant fingers - were a scant inch from Hob’s shoulder, his eyes narrowing at the interruption. It was an almost predatory display of ownership. His pink, full lips pulled into -- was that a pout? Oh, that wasn’t fair. That wasn’t fair at all.
A flush rose in Abigail’s cheeks. “Oh!” she said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize I was interrupting.”
“You’re not--” Hob began, only to be drowned out by Dream’s voice. “Apology accepted, Abigail Wilson. Fret not. You will have your instructor back in due time.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “Oh, s-sure,” she said, backing away. “I’ll uh, see you tomorrow, Professor.” Before Hob had a chance to speak, she had turned and hurried away. Hob could see her already pulling out her phone to start texting.
“Goddamnit,” Hob growled. He looked back at Dream, then chuckled. “You know, she’s about to tell everyone in my 9 am Comp Lit class that I’ve got a hot new boyfriend.”
Ah well, if the rumour caught and he could do what he always did, and dismiss it with an air of mystery. His students seemed to thrive on that.
Dream looked… amused. Vaguely intrigued. His fingertips flicked and tugged at the shoulder of Hob’s jacket. “...hot new boyfriend?” He made a sound in his throat, amused and satisfied, an expression on his face like the cat who got the cream. “I have been called worse.”
Before that could be explored, the damn pigeon fluttered its wings, clearly demanding more attention. Dream glanced at it, eyes shifting and darkening until they looked entirely black, with pinpoints of light deep within. He clasped the hand holding the bread, and it crumbled, all at once, into fine crumbs that he cast into the grass. “We are done. Unless you have a further complaint?”
The pigeon bowed its head once in a bobbing motion, and flapped over to the bread-strewn grass with haste. Matthew gave a snort of derision. “Yeah, you’d better--” The raven stopped short when Dream’s dark eyes fell upon him. “Um. Sorry, boss. I’ll… just head back to the Dreaming, yeah?”
“Very good, Matthew.” The raven didn’t wait any longer, taking to the skies and vanishing into a fold of air.
Then those eyes were turned on Hob. They weren’t exactly lights, they were stars, burning deep in Dream’s night-black eyes. An instant later, in the space it took to blink, they were as they had always been - stormy blue irises on white sclera; beautiful, but not otherworldly.
“Now, Hob Gadling,” Dream said, in that voice that could melt galaxies. “Let us discuss this… hot new boyfriend of yours.”