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azi-sings-calliope · 7 months

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Hiii to celebrate my new name, I wrote a little fanfic drabble about Calliope and Dream! (Set after Calliope is freed, they discuss Orpheus)

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The grass was unusually soft this time of year.

But then again, Fiddler's Green always had greatly appreciated her presence. The sun shining through the canopy glittered in such a way it hadn't for centuries.

The shafts of light, much like the Goddess across from him, filled him with wonder, bared guilt, and however much he wanted to deny himself he felt it, slight yearning. Perhaps it was because both the light and the woman, though he supposed Calliope possessed her own kind of luminescence, had not been seen in this realm for many ages.

Both of these events, or lack thereof had been of his own accord. Dream remembered this bitterly, remembering the day he closed the gates and held them fast so she could not enter the realm. Remembered the roaring emptiness that was the lack of Orpheus.

As his eyes flicked up to Calliope's face, he wondered why he had ever forced her out, why he had ever felt he could. Sitting before him was a woman just as, if not more, capable than himself of ruling the Dreaming. Anyone, mortal, immortal, dreaming or awake, could not mistake her as anything less than a Goddess.

A dissertation, Dream found when she opened her mouth, to be as accurate as it was simple.

"You said, at our last meeting, Oneiros..." They both winced at the memory. Calliope's voice, even weighed with centuries worth of grief and wounds, stagnant and new alike, had a rich, musical tone to it.

She could insult him, berate him, scream curses in a thousand languages to him and he would gladly listen if only it meant to hear her voice.

But Calliope, even proud and hardened through her millennia of existence, even after their son's death, had always been one to find strength in kindness. Though Dream knew he didn't deserve it, he found no use in pointing that out.

"... that you would invite me back to your Dreaming. And I ask you now, Shaper of Forms... if you wish to speak." Calliope finished. She sat up straighter, warm brown eyes watching his every move, as if she were a statue of a great god and he was a commoner kneeling before her, praying.

Dream swallowed, matching her inky eyes with his own. He searched them, and found nothing but warmth. He hoped she would find gratitude.

He opened his mouth, and found himself at loss for words. Dream did of course wish to speak, but for once his words were not carved into stone, set for eons, and he found himself lost, hoping new words would appear in Lucienne's library, words that would allow him to convey what impossible emotion he could share with her.

"I do... I do wish to speak with you, Calliope." Dream's voice was shaking, with loss and regret and love and gratitude and awe. "I... I wasn't sure if you would want to see me." The last words were a gamble, but a smile played across her lips, and he closed his eyes. It was a reverent action, as if his was offering thanks to whatever gods were listening, though he knew the Endless were unaffected by those powers. Perhaps it was to Calliope.

She somewhat tentatively reached a hand out to his, where it was resting against the grass. He turned up his palm, both their fingers trembling. Calliope traced the lines of his palm with her fingertips, each touch lighter than moth wings against his skin.

Her voice pulled his attention from her touch back to her face. "I am simply glad you invited me." Not a shred of anger in her voice.

"It was never my right to invite you. You have claim to this land, always." Dream stopped himself from speaking further, and they both felt the unsaid words. It was never my right to cast you out.

Calliope's hand stilled in his own. "Would he have had a right?" Her voice remained steady.

Dream's did not. He closed his eyes, which proved to be a mistake. A thousand memories, a thousand dreams of Orpheus played behind his lids like Destiny was flipping the pages backward on his book. As Dream pressed his eyes shut tighter, tears threatened to spill.

But he forced them open. Took a breath, though he did not need to breathe, and wondered if Orpheus was still alive, would they all be sitting under the canopy, listening to him play his lyre? Would he have had a right?

Dream's eyes flickered to the leaves above her, searching for a distraction. But he found none.

"I would have made mountains that scraped the stars if it would please him, and oceans twice as deep as the land was tall if he found it even slightly beautiful. I would give him claim to the wonders this world has to offer, and find those it doesn't." Dream vowed this with certainty, though vows between deities were not often done with shaking voices and grief in a garden.

A tear was trickling down Calliope's cheek, reminding him if the little waterfall where their son had first learned to play the lyre. She made no move to wipe it away, and it remained much like the memory.

Neither said anything for quite some time.

Calliope leaned against a tree to her right, tucking her feet under her and gently sweeping her brown hair behind her ear. The golden, dappled light played across her, making her seem as if she was an angel in a grand painting. She reached out her hand.

"Come, Oneiros."

He came. Dream leaned against the tree with her, the rough bark biting into his back. They clasped their hands, sat with her knees against his upper leg.

It was comfortable. But there was always that missing space between them.

Calliope sighed softly, not one of content but if grim certainty.

"I am angry, Oneiros."

"I know."

She sighed again. "We are angry, the both of us, at the world. At choices that even we as deities could not interfere with. I am hurting, and so are you, and that is our reality." Ever so gently, she turned and rested her head on his shoulder, looking up at him if he ever moved away. He didn't.

This was a way they had often sat, admiring the views of the world, of their son. It was comforting. It was terrifying.

"I've -" Dream's voice cracked. "I've never been very good at reality."

He felt Calliope chuckle slightly against his shoulder. "I've gathered."

Dream closed his eyes again. "So what are we to do?"

She shrugged, sighing again. "Move forward. Never forget the past, I suppose."

Dream's fear, then, was realized, and he had no doubt it was Calliope's as well.

He knew, as it was his function, that nothing was ever truly dead until it no longer appeared in memories, in dreams. The world would dream of Orpheus until the world was no more, and even then.

It felt, then, that in the Green, in their intimacy, that a wound was being prodded at. Not in a torturous way, but in the way a doctor did, before it was fully healed.

"I think, old love, that we confront our realities now." Calliope stood, and Dream sorely missed the feeling of the soft fabric of her chiton against his arm.

"Shall we?" She asked.

"Shall we what?" Dream asked, standing now too.

Calliope extended her arm, as if she were trying to touch the rays of sunlight.

"Come with me -" Calliope said, sure and proud, but warm, still laced with that intimacy shared but seconds earlier. " - to the Waking."

Dream stopped. His world has given him safety, surety. The Waking had left him afraid.

"Why?"

Calliope only smiled. "We may find what we're looking for. Perhaps something we're not."

Dream smiled tentatively, and stepped towards her. "And just what are we looking for, Calliope?"

Calliope's smile turned sad as she flicked her eyes up to the canopy. "Reality, Oneiros."

-----

They had found reality, or some form of it.

Many museums had art, sculptures, all forms of beauty. None possessing the kind she could create.

Dream had asked Calliope to show him what she had inspired. She showed him countless books, read them to him.

The sound of her voice speaking, sometimes singing or reciting words she had inspired was painfully beautiful. He had loved it, but when she sang, only wished for a lyre in the background, to serenade them both.

But there was no lyre for them anymore. The Met held a Greek Myth exhibit, and neither could bring themselves into the Orpheus section. Reality existed, whether they saw it or not.

So here they sat, and Dream had though a million times before, no sight he loved like this.

Calliope sat, with a pistachio cake, her favorite kind, and a coffee in her hand. She looked almost mortal, but gazed with far more age in her eyes than any human would ever be capable of.

Dream knew art. He had spoken to, inspired them. He even considered himself an artist of a kind. But no matter the billions of artists he would meet, no matter how talented, a child with crayons or a Renaissance oil painter, they would always fail. Calliope would make frauds out of them all, for an artist could capture beauty, sound, but they could never capture just what it was like to sit across from her while she picked pistachios off the top of a cake.

They could never capture what it was like to feel her presence when he saw her in the Dreaming for the first time. They could never capture the admiration he felt for her, even while he was all of inspiration itself, and she was a Muse, he never could quite understand how she carried out her role so well, with so much love and care, and still have enough to show him. They could never capture the joy at learning she was with child, and never capture the dread of learning that baby was mortal. They could never capture the grief of losing that son and hearing her scream and see her fall to the ground. They could never capture the regret of learning they had taken the final days of her presence for granted.

They could never capture the emptiness of watching her stand, wiping the pistachio crumbs off her jeans, bidding him farewell, and watching her walk away into the crowds.

And they could never capture the certainty of knowing that she would return.

#calliope!!#calliope x dream #orpheus #i just wanted to write something #if theres any spelling mistakes #its because i wrote this at eleven at night #hope you enjoy!#did i just write hundreds of words about #dream simping over calliope?#yes #yes i did.

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