fem dreamling my loves! this was originally inspired by @pies-in-the-skies gorgeous perfect art (check it out. admire it. adore it) but i got kind of sidetracked so i figured i'd post separately rather than appending so as not to derail the art.
10% engagement photos! and 90% rambling about dream's relationship with art, which is my greatest passion
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Convincing Dream to have engagement photos taken might just be Hob’s greatest coup. She’s still not sure how she quite managed it. Granted, she had asked between kisses, but Dream had still seemed amenable to it the following morning.
Photos. Of Dream. What a thought.
It’s proving a dangerous one, though. For Hob’s sanity. Seeing Dream in her elegant dress, under lights, hair spilling from its updo to trail over her shoulders. Hob was incapable of handling Dream on a normal day, never mind like this.
Earlier, she’d had Dream sprawled out below her, like an offering. Like the most beautiful thing Hob had ever seen. Hob had run her hands over her, just because she could, touched her fragile throat, the hard line of her collarbone, the hollow of her stomach as she breathed, the jut of her hips, the curve of her thigh, touched her everywhere. Dream had watched her, eyes half-lidded. Enjoying the attention as always.
Hob had run a finger over her brows, her temple, the sharp angle of her cheek, her nose, her lips, dipping into her mouth. During a private moment, slipping a hand under the neckline of her dress, tracing the curve of her breast. Thumbing over her nipple.
Dream had raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t say anything. Instead she took Hob’s hand, brought it to her lips, and nipped at her fingertips.
It had taken Hob a while to recover her composure and remember that this was not what photoshoots were for, actually.
Now, Hob is the one looking up at her, absolutely relishing in the view. Their photographer really did know how to pick a pose, this is glorious. Dream has a hand on her shoulder, pressing lightly, almost possessive. She looks carved of marble, dress draping over her bony frame, aristocratic face turned off to the distance.
“You’re so gorgeous in that,” Hob says. “So gorgeous. You look like a Roman goddess. One of those statues they have in museums.”
“I was a Roman goddess,” says Dream. “In a manner of speaking.”
“You’re my goddess,” Hob says, which is a sickening line but it gets a tiny, humored smirk out of Dream.
“Trite,” she says.
“Well, you’re the wordsmith between us. Princess of Stories. I only wish they could capture that on camera.”
“It has taken me some time to properly catch up on this art form,” says Dream. “When I… left, photography was not what it is now. But. I do believe the camera tells its own kind of tale.”
“Wise artist,” Hob says, and kisses the back of her hand, so full of fondness for her delicate, thoughtful fiancée – fiancée! – that she could burst.
She had been surprised by how easily Dream had taken to the rapid changes in art and stories over the century she’d been gone. It would be a lot for anyone to take in, especially a creature who could feel, hear, see, all of it, all at once. But Dream has taken it in stride, learning as she goes.
It’s been fascinating to watch the being who inspires these dreams learn of them from the outside. Hob has shown her so many films, and she seems enamored with each one. Cinema had, after all, still been in its infancy back in the 1910s. “Very dreamlike,” Dream had observed, after the first one they had watched, the echo of a memory in her eyes. “I recall meeting Méliès in Paris. A singular and whimsical soul. I’m glad to see they have taken up his torch.”
God, she really did just know every artist, didn’t she?
She’s missed a lot of them, though. She’s missed so much dreamlike art, the art of fantasy during the many wars, the art of post-industrialization, surrealism, Dada, post-modernism, the advent of comics, the advent of animation, all of radio, and television, and on and on and on and it hurts Hob’s heart to think of but she does love seeing Dream’s wonder in witnessing it now.
For all that she plays at stoicism and misanthropy Dream has such a genuine love of art and storytelling, and it still breaks Hob’s heart to think of her alone and cut off from it all for so long. Left to only her thoughts, which Hob knows well are turbulent at best.
She knows that Dream has seen all of it, now, in its scattered form in the Dreaming, but Hob is determined to let her experience it like a person, too.
Dream is of course, herself, also a piece of dreamlike art.
“Come down here,” Hob says, tugging on her hand.
Dream frowns, but drapes herself beside Hob on the settee, propping her head on her arm.
“I wanted to see the art up close,” Hob explains, with a grin.
“I don’t think that is the point of this exercise,” Dream says, but doesn’t move away.
“I still can’t believe I actually convinced you to let yourself be photographed,” Hob admits. “Would’ve thought you’d prefer to whisp away like a dream and never be recorded.”
“I have been drawn infrequently in this form, it is true,” Dream agrees. “Such is my nature. Artists may try, but art of dreams is always an abstraction.”
“Nobody can capture the true you, then?” Hob teases, brushing a strand of Dream’s hair behind her ear and letting her hand linger there, cradling her face.
Dream’s smile echoes with the deep knowledge and mystery of all the thousands of years of her life. “Because it is an abstraction does not mean it is not true.”
“Wise philosopher,” Hob murmurs. “C’mere.”
Dream leans into her arms, and Hob kisses her, tasting the fine line of her mouth, hands running up the sharp angles of her back. She distantly hopes their photographer, currently on a short break, might actually capture this moment, private though it is.
“Do not show these to anyone else,” Dream murmurs, and ah, maybe they did capture this on camera, and only Dream can see it from her angle.
Hob laughs, a breathy thing against her mouth. “God, no. Those are just for me. Although I do love having you on my arm. Showing you off. Prettiest thing in the world that you are.”
Or being on her arm, as it were, for Hob has attended a fair number of cryptic supernatural events in that manner.
“Such a flatterer. One might think you are only around to stoke my ego.”
“Aren’t I?” Hob kisses her again, soft and sweet and lingering. “Not that it needs any more stoking.”
“Oh, but it likes it.”
Hob kisses along her throat, under the hinge of her jaw. “I’ll bet.”
They kiss until it gets to the point where it’s starting to feel a little much for a setting where other people could appear at any time. Although… a proper boudoir session. It’s a compelling thought. A very compelling thought, even if those photos might actually kill Hob instantly.
“What else do you want to do on your day off, oh dream lord?” she asks, instead. “Considering I’ve roped you into my own machinations for half of it.”
“It’s been no burden,” says Dream. She smirks. “I have been suitably bribed with compliments.”
“Cheeky.”
“What shall we do with our evening?” Dream muses. Then grins, and it’s— it’s rare, that grin. A smile of genuine delight that breaks through her usual seriousness only on the slimmest of occasions. God, Hob loves that smile. “Movie.”
“Of course. I should have guessed.” Hob rolls onto her back, dragging Dream with her. This has become a common occurrence on days Dream permits herself a break from her never-ending work. Sometimes, Hob will take her out to the cinema properly, but more often than not they just end up on Hob’s couch, Dream sprawled across Hob’s lap, Hob stroking her hair as she watches whatever they’ve put on with absolute fixation.
“Netflix and chill,” so to speak, does not work with Dream. She’s far too committed to whatever story she’s dived into to be distracted. She watches films like they’re devotionals written for her, and maybe they are. Dreams captured momentarily in a frame.
Never separate a dream lord from her dreams.
Netflix then chill usually ends up happening, though.
“A movie it is, my liege,” Hob says, and Dream smiles, satisfied.
Least it’s not YouTube. Matthew had attempted to explain YouTube to Dream a while back, and it had been a horrifying experience, although her pinched, perplexed expression had been so adorable. Should Hob find a dream lord adorable? Oh well, she did anyway.
Later, Hob had given Dream her laptop to play around with, and found her still there many hours later, squinting at the screen, where a YouTube video was playing. Hob had no idea what was going on in this video, it was some kind of surreal, hypnotic animation.
“There is… so much, Hob,” Dream had said, sounding awed.
“Yeah, and a lot of it is shit, I’m afraid to tell you.”
But Dream just repeated, in a whisper, “There is so much,” and Hob’s heart hurt but in a good way, such a good way.
Hob had yet to try to explain TikTok to her. Not so much because of the horrors contained therein – when she really thought about it, Dream had seen and known every deep horror that had ever crossed the human psyche and could probably be fazed by very little – but rather because Hob was a bit worried she might just lose her into the endless scroll of content.
Give a dream lord an app full of the chaotic mess of dreams and only God knew what might happen.
“You spoil me,” Dream murmurs now, running a delicate hand up and down Hob’s arm.
Hob laughs. “You ask for the smallest things, love. Ask me for the world, and I’d give it to you.”
“I already have your love,” Dream says, bright-dark glimmer in her eyes were she looks down on Hob. “That is no small thing.”
Hob’s love for Dream is in fact very big inside her. “No, I guess not. But it’s easy to give.”
“And you say that I am an impossible creature.” Dream touches her face with light fingertips. “Although, I have found that…” she considers her words. “It has not been so hard to take, either.”
What it means to hear that from the woman who’d literally run the first time Hob had called her a friend. Hob doesn’t think Dream knows how it feels to her. She’ll probably never quite know, but that’s okay.
“Good.” She threads a hand in Dream’s hair, throat tightening. “Good, my darling. Good.”
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