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breannasfluff · 7 months

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Delirious Fantasy

Whump Rating: 3/5

“Why’d you leave me?”

Warriors throws a frantic glance at the others, but Hyrule just shakes his head. They’ve done everything they can. The captain turns back to Wild and carefully smooths back his hair. “Shh, it’s okay. No one left, we’re still here.”

“No. No, you left.”

“Wild, it’s Wars. Look at me.” He cups the kid’s face, but his eyes skate past his, lost to the haze of fever and infection. “We’re here. I promise.”

Warriors dips a rag in the bowl of water at his side and wrings it out before wiping the sweat from the champion’s forehead.

“Lost you,” Wild whispers to the air. “Lose everyone. Ledge’s right; living’s shit.”

Warriors squints but turns back to wet the cloth again. “Well Cook, I’m afraid you are stuck with us.”

He giggles and bats away the cloth. His arm shakes. “That’s right. Ghosts. I always get the ghosts. Do you…visit each other? Must be lonely, being ghosts.” His eyes catch on Warriors and sharpen. “Are you lonely?”

He doesn’t let his face betray how the question cuts. “You need to rest, Wild.”

“I’m lonely.” His eyes slip away and dim, focus gone. “Friends, family; it doesn’t matter. Everyone dies. I just get the ghosts.”

“Hyrule!” The captain’s voice is harsh when he calls, but memories of the battlefield cloud his instincts. The healer, gaunt and overdrawn, still comes over. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

Hyrule pulls back the blanket and lifts the bandages. The wound weeps pus and rotting flesh; infection too far gone for their meager supplies and location. He meets Warriors’ eyes and slowly shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t…I don’t have any more magic to give.”

It’s true, but the captain resents it anyway.

“Hey…ghost. Ghosts.” They turn their attention back to Wild. “When I’m a ghost, will you be there?”

“You aren’t going to die,” Hyrule says, firmer than anyone believes.

Wild ignores this or doesn’t process the words. “I don’t want to be alone again.”

The captain takes Wild’s hand, lifting it to press a gentle kiss to the back. “You won’t be alone,” he whispers.

“Good…good.” His eyes are hazing over, slipping further into the fever. “It’s nice to have…family.”

Hyrule doesn’t comment on the tears on Warriors’ cheeks, and he doesn’t mention how the healer sobs. Wild is the priority right now. Whatever happens, they won’t leave him alone.

The kid gets worse, not better. Warriors lifts the bandage and gags at the smell. “Hyrule, this is bad. What do we do?”

Silence. He turns to look at the healer and frowns. Hyrule is slumped over by the fire. He was trying to make a healing potion, never mind that they didn’t have the ingredients.

“Hyrule?” It takes a few shakes of his shoulder to get the traveler to blink at him. His eyes are puffy. “Hey, I know you’re tired, but we need your help.”

“I don’t…was just resting my eyes.” He turns slowly back to the potion, which is going nowhere. “Wild?”

“It’s doing worse. A lot worse. I don’t…it’s rotting.” Wounds like this kill. But they can't lose Wild. They will switch, or find the others. Something. Anything. This couldn’t be the end.

The traveler drags himself over. Shadows hollow his cheeks and his limbs tremble slightly. He’s pushed himself too far. Yet even with this knowledge, Warriors asks for more. Hyrule looks at the wound and frowns, then pulls the bandage off all the way. “Let’s let it breathe.”

“Can you heal it any more?”

He holds a hand over the skin and pink sparks sizzle and die. “I’m out.”

“Still?”

“If I draw anymore, I’ll pull from my lifeforce. It’s not regenerating fast enough; not in these conditions.”

The captain nods. This can’t be a choice between the two of them. He won’t trade one life for another. Even if that’s what he’s done during the war; over and over. How many times did he decide for the greater good?

And now…the greater good is that Hyrule, with his healing, needs to live. Wild is bright and energetic; their crazy cook. But in the grand scheme; he’s expendable. Warriors is expendable. He’d give anything to trade places, but there’s nothing to be done. Just move forward with the terrible hand they’ve been dealt.

Wild’s chatting to the air when Warriors pulls his head off his arms. Hyrule is asleep rather than watching over the champion; it’s not his fault; they are both tired.

“Mipha! You wouldn’t believe how much Sidon’s grown! Or maybe you would, given the size of your dad. Revali, you’d be proud of how the rito revere your skills. I mean, you’re still an ass, but I think you’d like it.”

The captain recognizes the names of the champions, but there’s no one there, of course. Wild’s too far gone to fever to recognize his surroundings.

“Oh, I need to tell you about the group I met! Oh, Urbosa, their leader reminds me of you. I think you’d get along. And Daruk! Wind would love you. I…I had a great time with them. It was nice to be part of—a family again, you know?”

Warriors scoots closer and lays a hand on Wild’s shoulder. He doesn’t notice, just chats to the empty air.

“We went through so much together. And I saved the captain in the end. I mean sure, I would have loved to stay with them, but I don’t matter, you know? He does. They both do.”

Despite knowing it’s pointless, Warriors gives the champion’s shoulder a shake. “Wild. Wild, hey.”

No response to his surroundings. “I’d do it again. Just like Zelda. I’m expendable. I should have died so many times. So, if I can do one good thing with my life?” His voice trails off to a raspy whisper. “I’ll save them every time.”

“Wild! Hey, listen to me, you hear? You’re good just as you are! You shouldn’t give yourself up for me!” Warriors is crying, but he continues to shake the limp hero. “I’m just a stupid guy with too much pride. Please, Wild…please!”

The champion giggles, too high and stuttering. It breaks down into a cough and the putrid skin weeps harder with the motion.

“Please…kid, I can’t lose you.” Warriors hold’s the limp hand closest to him, bowing over his knees. “What’s the point of being a hero if I can’t save you?”

Wild doesn’t answer, just stares at the ghosts only he can see.

#delerium #injury tw #whumptober2023 #linked universe #linkeduniverse #lu whumptober #breannasfluff #mywriting #lu wild #lu warriors #lu hyrule

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99point9percentwhump · 5 months

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Whumpcember 2023 Day 2 - Sickness

#whumpcemeber 2023 #day 2 sickness #hercules the legendary journeys #sick #fever #poisoned #bridal carry #delerium #shot with an arrow #sweaty

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geekynerfherder · 1 year

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'The Sandman: Delerium Of The Endless' by Arantza Sestayo.

#Art Of The Day #Art #AOTD #Arantza Sestayo #The Sandman #Delerium #Delerium Of The Endless #Female #Feminine #Fantastical Art #Imaginative Realism #The Endless #Pinup

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lizajane2 · 2 years

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🤣🤣🤣 I fucking died!!

#the sandman #sandman #lord morpheus #dream of the endless #desire #death #despair #destruction #delerium

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mikemaihack · 2 years

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Delirium sketch for a patron

#delerium #sandman fan art #dc comics #watercolor #sketch #the endless

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hurtmyfavsthanks · 1 year

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Whumpril day 10

(Shiver/breathless/”I’m scared”)

“Let me go! Let me go let me go please—!”

Caretaker held Whumpee firmly from behind, holding their flailing arms as still as possible. It did nothing to stop Whumpee from pushing their feet against the passenger seat, desperately trying to gain leverage and escape. “Whumpee, please! You have to calm down!” they shouted, trying to bite down their own panic.

This wasn't the reunion they'd hoped for. They'd been looking for Whumpee for weeks, searching tirelessly since Whumper had taken them. Caretaker had expected them to be hurt and exhausted, but they'd never expected them to be terrified to see them.

Caretaker felt their heart break as Whumpee let out a low, frightened whine. It hurt to see Whumpee was disoriented, so confused that they couldn't recognize they were being rescued. It hurt to see Whumpee stare through them without a hint of recognition.

“We’ve got about twenty minutes before we reach the hospital," Leader said from the driver's seat.

Shit. They didn't know if Whumpee could wait that long. They didn't know what was wrong, if this delirium was from a drug or brain injury. The thought of Whumpee dying confused and terrified nearly sent Caretaker into their own panic.

But there was nothing they could do. "You're going to be alright, okay?" They whispered instead. They could feel Whumpee's heart pounding, feel their body going limp as they struggled to catch their breath.

"I'm scared-!" Whumpee panted, breathless and pitiful, their head falling back to slump onto Caretaker's shoulder.

Caretaker planted a kiss into Whumpee's matted hair. "I know. I've got you.

Caretaker held them close, refusing to let go.

#whumpee #caretaker #delerium #delirious whumpee #whumpril 2023 #whumpril day 10 #out of it #my stuff

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rookdaw · 1 year

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First day as a second-century warlord

#my art #haru #sho #ocs #delerium

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thedepressedpelican · 2 months

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#delerium #sarah mclachlan #silence #Spotify

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yuristarwars · 7 months

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Stay With Me (just a little longer)

Summary: Vel, Cinta, Cassian, and Melshi are sent on mission to infiltrate an Imperial TIE Fighter factory by Luthen. The boys are working with some Union workers to sabotage and slow down security forces while Vel and Cinta plant the bombs

Stay on track, stay on track, stay on track.

Vel wore her green Imperial uniform well, her blonde hair tied back into a bun, black boots stepping on the catwalk.

The Imperial TIE-Fighter factory was much larger than any of their previous missions. The Aldhani Imperial Base was about one third the size of this place, with some single rooms hosting about two dozen TIEs, just waiting to be shipped out.

Her partner walked behind her, wearing the same sort of green outfit. They had just gotten changed the night before and them being able to see each others' bodies bare and naked, for what could be the last time, was the highlight of that night.

Neither had heard word from Andor or Melshi in the past few minutes and were starting to get anxious. They needed word that the security forces had been routed so that they could plant the bombs in the generator room

Vel held her comlink to her mouth and whispered into it. "Cassian," she said, "Cass, can you hear me. Cinta and I are almost in position, I repeat, Cinta and I are almost in position."

Silence came from the other end and she looked at Cinta with fear before they both snapped their heads forward while a couple KX Droids passed them.

They kept walking until they got to the main factory room where they could see that the working of TIE Fighters had slowed down quite a bit. There were only a few people working while KX Droids guarded every corner.

Cinta pointed at a level across from them and saw an Imperial Army Trooper run out of a corridor onto the platform, only to be shot down from behind and fall onto the floor 20 feet below him.

Running onto the platform where he fell from, was Cassian and Ruescott, along with about a dozen workers. They were all shouting and running at the KX Droids and IAT's trying to stop them.

Cassian looked over at the two women and yelled: "Go!"

The two immediately did as he said and ran to the giant generator room, which was being empties as Security Forces ran past them to contain the riot in the main factory room.

"Here," Vel panted, giving Cinta a pack of bombs for her to go set up on the other side of the nearly half a mile long room, the side farthest from any door.

As they were getting it all set up, the vents suddenly closed and the lights turned to red. Cinta stared at Vel and Vel stared back in horror.

Then, gas started pouring into the room from the ceiling, a thick yellow smoke that started filling up the entire room.

Cinta screamed across the room to Vel as the door began to shut. "Go!"

"No, I'm not leaving you-" she screamed back, but she was starting to cough. The gas was getting to her.

Against every part of her heart screaming at her to stay with her girlfriend, Vel had to listen to her lungs and run out the door just as it, dooming her partner to an unceremonious death...

Then she heard footsteps come from behind her and she pulled her blaster out of her holster. To her surprise and delight, it was her friend Cassian, along with a few dozen other Rebels in masks.

He handed one to her and she took a deep breath. She was thankful for the new air in her lungs, but part of her was still suffocating.

"I have to go back for her," she said, turning towards the generator room.

Cassian grabbed her wrist. "Leave her! We need to get out of here!"

She yanked it away from him. "Not without her."

She opened the door back up and ran across the catwalk through the thick yellow gas. She looked on every platform, desperately trying to find her girlfriend.

Finally, Vel saw a body lying on the floor, completely unconscious. She picked Cinta up, the dead weight making her move more slowly.

Nonetheless, the blonde-haired Rebel march forward, gas all around them fire and explosions going of as her friends assaulted the reinforcement security forces, covering for her.

As they made it out of the factory, Melshi helped Cinta carry her to the U-Wing while Cassian got it started. Vel pulled out the detonator once they all got inside with the other workers, and pulled the switch.

The factory went up in a blaze of fire and iron as the U-Wing pulled out of the atmosphere. In a strange sense, it was beautiful. A good, solid hit on Imperial infrastructure, but Vel could not stop thinking about her partner in the bed behind her.

She turned around and the ship's doors closed. Vel knelt down next to Cinta and held her hand, putting her head to her chest while Melshi put a mask on Cinta so she could breathe more easily.

So they traveled through hyperspace for hours, the workers sitting against the wall and sleeping while Vel stayed awake with Vel, waiting, waiting, for her to wake up.

Suddenly, she felt Cinta stir. Vel stood up and smiled. "Cinta, Cinta can you hear me?"

Cinta stayed silent for a few seconds more with only a couple groans. The she finally spoke. "Isa?"

Vel's face fell. "No," she said, "no its- its me. Its Vel, don't you remember me?"

The dark-haired Rebel lifted her hand and lightly grabbed Vel's arm. "Isa, Isa I'm scared," she said, tears running down her cheek, "they're taking mommy away."

Things suddenly clicked. CInta had told Vel about her sister back on Fest, but never said anything much about her. Vel knew that her sister dissapeard a little bit after her parents died, but there was no conclusion for her like there was for her parents. Cinta must've been hallucinating because of the gas, thinking back to when her mom and dad were first executed.

"I'm scared," Cinta whimpered, holding her head to Vel's wrist, "they're not gonna take you away, are they?"

A single tear ran down her. "No one's gonna take me away," she whispered, patting her girlfriend's black hair, "I promise."

#star wars #andor #cassian andor #andor series #vel sartha #cinta kaz #velcinta #whumptober 2023 #delerium #star wars fanfiction #fanfic

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scifrey · 1 year

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Cling Fast: Chapter Six

By Losyark The Sandman (Netflix with some sprinkling of comics canon, and Gaiman Cinematic-Literary Universe canon) Dreamling (Hob Gadling x Dream of the Endless | Morpheus) Unfinished (tentatively 10 chapters) PG-13 (for now) Unbeta’d

The house doesn't smell right and Hob hates it immediately.

Okay, well, hate is such a strong word. But after the joy of yesterday's homecoming, pushing open the front door to take in the entry hall (a shot Celia devised to echo yesterday's 'first look'; Hob hasn't yet been let into the house through the servant's entrance like the rest of the cast and crew), this is just egregiously disappointing.

The front door is metal, the wrong texture entirely under his hand, with the doorknob on the other side. It's strangely irritating and it makes him feel like he's accidentally slipped into Wonderland through the looking glass. Or the Dreaming. He even closes his eyes to check to see if he can lucid dream, but no luck. This is the Waking world, and the door is wrong.

"Ready Doc Bob?" Celia calls from the other side of the door, and when he shouts back that he is, calls "Action!"

Hob schools his face, and pushes open the door slowly to find Melina on the other side, walking backwards with the steady cam. He doesn't want to smack her, so he waits until she's far enough out of the way to step inside and let the door swing shut behind him, using the time to run his gaze over the walls and floor.

It reeks of industrial chemicals and faux scents. It smells revoltingly clean, which is a terrible and weird thing to realize, and he catches himself wrinkling his nose. It's not that his house was dirty and gross before—it's a terrible myth that Elizabethan people were smelly and lived like pigs. The bedclothes and under-linens were laundered frequently, kitchens were hygienic and scrubbed with salt and vinegar, Hob had washed his skin and hair frequently (though more frequently than some because he'd known it was absolute bunk that bathing opened the pores to let in deadly miasmas. He'd spend time in Turkey and Japan by then, reveling in the bathing cultures of both societies.)

No, Hob's house used to smell of—of flowers from the garden, and good clean horse sweat from his rides, and El's sweet perfumes, and the waft of fresh bread or sugar-and-rosewater from the kitchens, and the fatty funk of tallow candles burning, and whatever Robyn was into lately, mudpies or oil paints, and the polishing oils the servants used on the wood and boots, and the gentle fragrance of whiskey and porto after dinner, and…

And now it just smells like aggressively, astringently nothing.

Like a museum.

The disappointment must show on his face, because Celia calls cut, and makes him go back outside and do it again.

"But this time, actually look like you're happy to be here, Doc Bob, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Hob says, clearing his throat and backing out of the door. He closes it before him, and rests his head on the sun-warmed metal, and tries to get his feelings under control.

Yesterday's enthusiastic excitement has given way to a weird tangle of spikey ups and loopy downs, and he doesn't know how to sort it out. He doesn't have time to, anyway, because Celia calls "action!" and he has to walk inside again. He's got a fake look of wonder and delight plastered on his face that makes him feel like he's slipping into a crazy nightmare.

This time he makes it all the way in, walking slowly to his mark. The crew has taped off a little bright green T on the floor where he's meant to stop before delivering his first line. It'd taken a few tries during rehearsal to make it look natural, but he thinks he does okay because Celia doesn't interrupt.

He gets to his mark, and as they practiced, looks at the walls, the double-story ceiling, takes in the whole grand majesty of the entry hall, and then turns to face the camera.

"The entry hall of an Elizabethan Manor was all about two things," Hob says, using his smoothest professor voice. "One, intimidating splendor. And two, making sure that everyone who walks through that front door knows exactly whose house they're in."

Hob points up at the heraldic badges carved into the lintels, then over at the fanciful entwined initials R and E on the posts. At least the family who lived here after Hob had left those alone. El had designed their combined monogram herself. Melina's camera stays trained on his face, but a second one follows his gesture to the ceiling. He waits for the second operator to swing back to him before going on.

"And with just a quick look around, there's no mistaking that Gadlen House was built by the newly knighted son of a wealthy shipwright, Sir Robert Gadlen the First. Hi. I'm Doctor Robert Gadlen the Sixth," he pauses for a tight smirk that is also rehearsed, and also feels fake, "and while my ancestors built Gadlen House, this fascinating and historic building is now in the care of the National Trust. But for the next few months, they're letting me back into the family pile. Along with Doctor Harriet Butler and Doctor Glenn Davies, I'll be eating, sleeping, hunting, riding, dancing, and wooing like my ancestors, the first three Robs. Welcome to Elizabethan Manor. Let me show you around," Hob finishes with a cheeky flourish and a come along gesture.

He waits for a beat, then turns and walks toward the side door that should, if things haven't been altered too much, lead to the public withdrawing room. Melina follows him. His bootheels echo strangely, the ambience of the entry hall hollowly. Celia calls cut, and Hob deflates.

"Take five," Celia says. "The tent city feed has gone wobbly, I just need to confer with Harinder. Don't go anywhere, people!"

The smile flakes off Hob's face like cheap paint.

Oh my god, did they leave anything alone? This is so cold, Hob whines to himself.

He takes off his hat, and does his best not to crush the velvet as he takes the time to really inspect the changes. It's too early in the day to feel so heartsore, but that's what this is. The grand staircase along the sidewall is gone, removed to accommodate an Edwardian telephone alcove. This would have been one of the last updates that the family who'd called Gadlen House their home (shit, it had been in their family longer than it had been in mine, Hob realizes with a frisson up his spine), before the expenses of the lifestyle and the wars had forced them to sell off the farmland to city developers, and donate the house and park to the Trust.

The floors are the same, at least, but Hob supposes that a black-and-white checkerboard of imported marble will always look impressive in any era. It's lost under the spread of the carpets the film crew has had to put down to protect the finish, but a thin band of gold outlines an eight-by-eight section of the floor. Hob had the board marked out so he and Robyn could battle at chess in the evenings. They used playing pieces half as tall as they were, all carved by Hob himself with his old shipwrights tools.

He doesn't have to wonder what happened to them in the intervening centuries.

He hacked them to pieces with his own sword in his grief. One of the kitchen maids had used the resulting kindling to fire the bread ovens for weeks.

That was in the first few months of Robyn's loss. Back when he still had a few members of staff left, when they hadn't all fled from his mad rages and sorrows, when the steward was still paying them. This was before the steward too finally fled with chests of coins, rings of keys and permit papers, with whatever he could carry that he thought might be valuable. Everything he stole eventually became the Gadlen Fell Crate Papers, so Hob can't be angry at the man for robbing him blind while his master was passed out in a pool of his own puke.

The walls are bare wood now, though made up of darkly-stained and beautifully designed Victorian-era paneling. The incredibly expensive tapestries that Hob had commissioned to tell the story of Hades and Persephone are nowhere to be seen. They'd originally hung in the entry hall to cut down on the drafts and insulate the rest of the house from the front door. They'd also been an overt and in retrospect, somewhat tacky display of wealth, what with all the silver and gold thread.

And now that Hob knows himself better, with hindsight he can see how blatantly he'd bared his soul, too. It's a good thing Morpheus had never visited him here. One look at the woven depiction of a dark and brooding stranger seizing on an unsuspecting goddess of innocence and life, and Morpheus would have fled the house with furious indignance.

It's a somewhat startling truth to realize, but maybe he'd wanted Morpheus to drag him away, even then.

But then there'd been Eleanor.

What slight spark attraction Hob might have been harboring for anyone, let alone his Stranger, had been dampened with the greyness of starvation and poverty. Even when he was back on his feet, Hob didn't think about his Stranger like that at all until 1789, when Morpheus had strolled into the White Horse in that outfit, which bellowed the limpid fire into a full blaze. He'd not been able to act on it, not with the smashing of teacups against would-be kidnappers' skulls, and by 1889 it had burned down to nothing more than a few cherry-red embers. Yes, he'd have liked to engage in bedsport with his Stranger, but more than that he'd wanted an end to his century-long loneliness. He'd wanted a friend more than a lover.

The attraction had been nothing more than a pile of cold ash in 1989, and if Hob is going to keep running with this squirrely metaphor, then it was a clean-swept and totally scrubbed hearth in 2022. Hob had put his lighter away, and left the kindling to collect dust.

And then Morpheus had held his hand. He had allowed Hob to comfort and care for him, had taken Hob's confession and offered his own in return. Suddenly the flint struck steel and here he was again, lost in a conflagration of admiration and attraction that he fought hard to simply take warmth by, and not allow to burn him up.

Morpheus, afterall, was a god of the cool night, the chilled side of the pillow, the silver whisper of starlight.

He didn't need a mortal's fire to keep warm.

Shaking himself from his melancholy, Hob finishes his inspection of the changes with a glance to the ceiling—that's the same, too, heavy carved wood with the heraldic badges and monograms that he spent too many nights after Robyn's death laying on his back, staring at with ever shifting resentment and possessiveness. He hen begins a slow circuit around the room to inspect the art.

Paintings that used to hang in the private parts of the house, and Hob had mostly purchased just because they looked expensive, were now hung out here, turning the entry hall into a sort of gallery. Little explainer plaques about which ancestor had collected them, and why that particular painting, were mounted beside each ornate frame.

"It had ships in it," Hob mutters to himself, reading the plaque under a surging, moody oil painting of a ship at sea. "I made my money in shipbuilding. I owned half the drydocks on the southbank. I don't see what's so hard to understand about that."

"Hot mic!" someone shouts from the tiny set up of monitors and computers in the corner, and Hob gasps and flicks the pac clipped to his waistband, under his doublet, to 'off'.

"Shit," he mutters. Dumbass, he scolds himself in a voice that sounds surprisingly like Matthew's. If he gets found out, he has no doubt it will because of his own stupid loose tongue giving away the game.

"Alright, folks, we're back up!" Celia calls from the middle of the room. "Looks like the take was clean, it's just the playback that's off. We're having fishy interference today, everything is swirly. Tech is on it. Harinder is happy by wants one more for safety, okay? Back to ones!"

Hob flicks his mic pack back on, and reluctantly resumes his place on the front steps behind the door.

The delight surges back, replacing the weird tangle of disappointment and irritation, when Hob is led into the dining room for the next block of shots. They film his first reaction again, and this time he feels his eyes widen as he lets out a giddy little giggle. Not only has nothing changed in here, but they've dressed it perfectly.

He's so relieved it makes his head spin.

The dark wood paneling in this room is the original, the ceiling lime-wash white with black beam, and a foot of bare white plaster at the top of the wall. The elaborately carved and lovingly polished mantleplace glows in the light of a small fire in the hearth, and the dozens of candles in the sconces around the room. Only the candles in the pewter holder on the long dining table are real. The rest are little flickering LEDs. The real candles give off the welcoming, nostalgic scent of beeswax.

The table is ringed with backless benches, and laid accurately enough at a quick glance. His tankard is missing, and of course, none of the original pewter, wooden, or pottery dishware still exists, but the props department has done a bang-up job of replicating it based on El's descriptions.

They're missing the damask white tablecloth, of course, probably to show off how massive and ridiculously detailed the carving on the heavy table itself is. The napkin they've laid on the trencher is too small, a square instead of a rectangle, but it'll do. Hob takes a minute before they film the "sitting down to eat" part of the scene to scoop up half the utensils and hand them back to props to put away. While Hob had been crassly showy with his wealth at the time, he was certainly not enough of a flamingly Italianate fop to eat with a fork.

When the table is rearranged to his liking, Hob seats himself in the ornate chair in the middle of the table. It's the only actual chair, a deliberate nod to a throne, and usually only the head of the households sat in them. This one is a replica, of course, with boxed-in sides like the throne the monarch uses for their coronation. Hob feels weird sitting in it, all the same. For all that it was the master's chair, he usually made sure El was in it, especially in the later months of her pregnancies when she needed the supportive back.

Because Harriet and Glenn will be joining him halfway through this scene, Harinder and the first shooting unit are in the room this time. Harinder walks Hob through the description quickly. This is going to be a scene used in episode two, a recreation of an actual feast they'd found the receipt for in His Lordship the Third's piles of invoices, so Hob's not supposed to act as if this is the first time he's seen Harriet and Glenn in their costumes and characters.

"Right," Hob says, and as soon as Harinder calls action, he flings his napkin over his shoulder and secures it with the pin, and looks down the center of the lens that Harinder had pointed out.

"The decadence and pageantry of the meal enjoyed that night by Sir Gadlen and his friends is hard to explain by modern standards," Hob says to the camera, and it feels much more exciting and real this time. "But imagine as if someone had boiled lobster in dom perignon, smothered it with wagyu beef and caviar, sprinkled the whole thing with flakes of twenty-four carat gold, then served it on a platter made of diamonds. We don't know the occasion this meal was ordered for, but make no mistake, it was definitely a celebration. But enough talking it up. Let's see what Harriet and Glenn have for the lord of the Elizabethan Manor."

Hob takes gleeful delight in ringing the little servant's bell by his elbow, mind dancing with possibilities at what he's about to experience. Because his idea for preserving his own genuine first reactions worked so well the day before, they've decided that they're not going to tell him what each meal for the episodes' M.O.D.E. is going to be. Both he and the camera get to be surprised at the same time.

The doors to the dining room are opened by extras dressed in a weirdly cheap-looking approximation of the servant's livery—likely borrowed from the cavernous BBC costume warehouse—and Glenn and Harriet burst onto the scene. Hob's overjoyed to see them, his heart soaring, and he didn't realize how strongly he'd come to value their company and friendship, if this is how he reacts.

Everything feels a bit extreme right now, though, and he's decided he's going to chalk that down to the day's intense emotional rollercoaster, and the candlesmoke. If he was less generous with the catering team, he'd say it felt like his morning tea had been spiked with some weird combination of ecstasy and LSD.

Harriet and Glenn push a trolley between them, and luckily, all Hob has to do for this next bit is sit at the table and try not to drool as they lay platter after platter before him. It takes hours for them to show off and explain each of the dishes, so much so that a crew of food artists keep whisking things away to be kept warm in chafing dishes, or to stick them into blue plastic cooler chests filled with ice.

Hob's stomach is growling, and he's glad they're filing this before the break for lunch so he can stuff as much of it into his gob as Harinder will allow.

It's not until Harriet says—"The odd thing on the menu for this night is the venison pasties. They're really delicious, but they're a poorer man's food, the pasty is. Of course these ones are made with venison, which is terribly fancy considering only the nobility are allowed to shoot and eat deer at the time. But all the same, it makes us wonder if Robert the Third inherited some of his love for simpler, rougher foods from his grandfather"—that Hob suddenly understands what he's looking at.

They've recreated it. The feast. The one from the White Horse.

That's the bill they'd found. The bill the proprietor had sent to Gadlen House the next morning, after Hob had been abandoned for a playwright. After the lamb, he'd eaten his fill and arranged for a third of the leftovers to be delivered to break El and Rob's fast, and the remainder to be distributed to the poor. Then he'd slunk into the corner of the tavern and drunk himself stupid.

"I… I don't… excuse me," Hob blurts all of a sudden, ruining the take. He shoots to his feet, rips the napkin off his shoulder, and bolts for the door.

The crew leaps out of his way as he cuts through the entry hall, slams down the steps, and stumbles in the drive. He nearly goes face-first into the gravel, which would ruin his makeup, his stockings, and his pride, but someone grabs the back of his doublet and keeps him on his feet.

"Thank you," Hob says, and turns to find that one of the food artists, of all people, has followed him.

She's a fey little thing, but clearly stronger than she looks. She's also very obviously not one of the food artists who is being featured on camera because she is too much of a living embodiment of a rainbow to be even remotely period-accurate. Her hair, her makeup, even her nail polish are a bold array of cheery colors.

Hob gets himself righted, and put to sorts, and then stands there like a total knob.

"Thank you," he says at last, choking on each syllable. His vision swims, the edges of it filling with color and sparkles, like he's about to pass out. He jams the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, and silently apologizes to the makeup team who will have to redo his mascara. "That would have been very embarrassing. I think I've embarrassed myself enough already."

"Hot mic," the food artist says gently.

"Bollocks." Hob flips his pac off just as an ugly, horrible sound crawls out of his mouth. He's partially a laugh, and partially a sob, and absolutely hysterical.

"Wanna sit?" the food artist asks, and then without waiting for his answer, cartwheels over to the verge and plops herself down into the middle of a patch of wildflowers without any care for her chef whites. "I find that the flowers are very good at listening."

The way she says it sounds like every word is capitalized, lyrical and jumping. Her voice sounds like a cross between a Welsh accent, a sweet songbird, and Marilyn Monroe.

"More flowers," Hob chuckles, but trudges over to plop down beside her. He sits carefully on the grass though, making sure the gravel dust is far away from his breeches, and his cream-coloured hose won't get green stains on them.

"Do you see Flowers?" his companion asks him, the same way that kid says "I see dead people" in that film.

"Loads," he says truthfully. "And popping up where I least expect them, lately."

She nods as if this is both completely normal thing to say, and the most gravely serious confession he's ever spoken aloud. "They're very loud, flowers are. They scream. They don't have secrets." She laughs like broken glass tinkling across steel. "No pockets to keep them in."

Hob wonders if she's been partaking of whatever ecstasy-LSD concoction his head feels stuffed with, too. (Maybe it's from the cleaning chemicals the house smells like. Maybe someone spilled bleach and ammonia and he's slowly asphyxiating.)

God he could use a cigarette. He hasn't smoked since the 1980s, though. While he may not be able to die of lung cancer, he doesn't relish reviving the disgusting, rattling cough that he'd developed up in the '70s. Or maybe a joint. He wouldn't mind the soothing effects of weed right now.

"Flowers can't talk," he says curiously. Maybe she really is fey, because this close, he can see her eyes are different colors, which seem to shift, the longer he looks at them.

"Sure they can," the young woman says. "You're just not listening."

Hob decides it's probably best not to ask her name, just in case. Like with the Bookseller and the Snake, sometimes it's better for both parties not to share anything true. He's safe on that count, at least. Everyone on set has been calling him Doc Bob.

They sit like that for another few minutes, and Hob's head does clear up a bit in the fresh air.

Hob's got to stop letting himself get blindsided like this. But short of breaking into the House in the middle of the night and picking every lock, getting into everything and likely destroying half of it in the process, cornering Harriet and forcing her to share the parts of the scripts with him he isn't privy to, and generally being a menace, he isn't sure how. It's not like he can predict how he's going to feel every time he's confronted with something he didn't realize he hadn't yet worked through.

That's why they're called 'triggers'.

"Okay, I'm ready," Hob says at length. He stands and brushes himself down, then offers a hand to his companion. "Time to go do it right, this time."

"Tonight, at least," the young woman says, and Hob doesn't know what that's supposed to mean. But it does give him an idea.

The living rainbow ignores his hand. She twirls up to her feet like a helium balloon, grins at him, and skips back toward the house.

Hob apologizes when he returns to set. He cites a sudden case of nerves, which no one questions based on what they all heard through his microphone, and throws himself back into things to make up for the lost time. The fey food artist shoots him thumbs ups and makes fish-faces at him between takes to keep his spirits up, and he appreciates it.

"God's wounds, all I can taste is nutmeg," Hob complains theatrically as he bites into one of the venison pasties for the camera. "I'm already sick to death of nutmeg."

It does taste strongly of nutmeg and port. It's also not at all like the ones they used to make at the White Horse. Thank God.

Hob arrives in the Dreaming and wills himself into Morpheus' dining hall.

It takes a bit of cross-eyed concentration, ruined by the way the floor keeps jerking out from under him and the walls won't stay still, but he manages to manifest a replica of the scene they shot today. He's giddy with delight, and booze, and overeating, and he feels like his head and his heart are each driving at mach speeds in different directions, then snapping back like a slingshot, and then immediately heading off in another direction just as fast.

"Hob, I felt you arrive," Morpheus says from the doorway. "Why are you in the—what is this?"

Hob, dressed in his silk pajamas and fizzing with warm, golden satisfaction, throws his arms wide and says "Issa do-over!"

He stumbles, and Morpheus flows across the wide hall and catches him before he hits the floor. How chivalrous. Morpheus pulls him upright, and Hob sighs in satisfaction, petting his shoulders and arms clumsily in thanks.

Up close, Hob can see Morpheus' eyebrows squiggling with confusion, like fuzzy black caterpillars, and he laughs at the thought. He reaches up to paw at Morpheus' face, pushing his fingers through his hair back so he can see his eyes better.

Beautiful eyes.

Expressive, glacial, robin's egg blue, delightful, beloved eyes.

Morpheus' lids flutter, like sleek black moths, and Hob wants to feel the lashes against his lips. Hob leans up, and Morpheus leans down and—

Morpheus pushes Hob back a pace to get a good look at him.

"You are not sober."

"Noooo…" Hob whines, scrambling to hold on, but Morpehus is too strong. He lets his fingers go lax so he doesn't accidentally yank out his friend's hair.

"What happened?" Morpheus thunders imperiously.

"Ah, fuck, there was real wine in that hypocras. I think I just passed out," Hob slurs. He sways into Morpheus' chest, and his friend wraps his arms around his shoulders.He smells like petrichor and ozone, and those are words that Hob's never had cause to forget, because they're Stranger-adjacent words. It's nice. "This is nice." Whoops, that was out loud. "And real mead in the mead. And real beer in the buttered beer, too. "

"Butterbeer?" Matthew asks. Hob smooshes his cheek into Morpheus' sternum to look blearily over at the table. He finds Matthew perched on the back of the chair that Morpheus is supposed to be sitting in. "Like in the wizarding—?"

"No, she didn't invent it, we drank it way before she stole it. And fuck she-who-must-not-be-named," Hob hiccoughs. "Anyway, eat, eat! Invite Loosh and Merv. No writers allowed though. Not this time! Ha!"

"Hobsie, I think you tied on one too many," Matthew chirrups, clearly amused.

"I didn't drink that much on set. I was fine in the transpo van, but it smashed me between the eyes as soon as I got home. Just the long hours and the—the—you know—the—" Hob makes a gesture like pulling out his own heart, then squishes it.

"The emotional turmoil?" Matthew suggests.

"Yesh! Yes!" Hob snaps and points at Matthew. "That. That, my fine feathered friend,my midnight buddy, my sharp-beaked and sharp-witted inky quilled bro."

"I am going to send you into a deeper sleep so you don't inadvertently nauseate yourself as the toxins disperse," Morpheus says. He sounds disappointed.

"'mfne," Hob slurs. "You don't have to."

"Dude, you're making the room literally spin," Matthew complains. "It's making me nauseous."

"I'm just drunk," Hob counters. "C'mon, let's eat. I still want you to try the venison pasties!"

"Not when you are touched by delirium," Morpheus says, and now he sounds miffed about it. "This dream is over."

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