Everything in the Dreamlands makes sense. Even the things that don’t make sense.

Especially the things that don’t make sense.

An old Prussian king lived in a quaint cottage on the top of a hill, surrounded by a jungle village where a tribe of short, dark people prospered in the shadow of four-eyed sentinel birds. Most of the time, it resembled a log cabin, but sometimes bits of an old palace design snuck in.

The orange tabby cat with a crook in his tail slammed the front door open and watched the home he was invading warp and twist at its presence until finally spitting out the old man coming down from a violent start.

Quite literally.

The Dreamlands were true to their name. A land of Dreams. And nightmares were Dreams too. Guard your fears jealously here, for they are not safe.

This nightmare was a shadowy humanoid figure with a revolver, smoking from the shot. The cat banished it with a flick of its tail, ears pressed forward in alarm when the old man fell against the wall, clutching at his bleeding chest with his good arm.

“Ah shit!” The cat yelped as it darted into the house. “I forgot! I forgot, I forgot, I forgot - “ the cat chanted, half an apology. The house was already beginning to break down, swapping out a domestic reality for a crowded cobbled stone street in an old city where the old man feebly applied pressure on the gushing wound, staring up at his assassin.

“Willie.” The animal snapped. “You are a mortal soul in the Dreamlands!”

The nightmare wavered and the man blinked.

“Come on,” the cat needled, batting at the man with a paw. “You’re not seriously going to die to your own fucking nightmare like a little bitch are - “

A trembling hand reached out and batted at the feline’s ears.

“Thought not.”

“Sam! You - “ ‘Willie’ coughed. At first it was wet and hacking, but he deliberately coughed again, brow furrowed in concentration and this time it was dry. The nightmare with the gun disappeared like a popped soap bubble. The street took longer to disappear. Cobbled stone slowly became a shifting floor that couldn’t decide what it was made out of, stone, wood or tile, but was absolutely certain that it was made out of floor. A tell tale sign of memories blurring together. The shadows of the faceless gawkers melted back into the walls. The flat surfaces gained and lost details, changing from wood to brick to plaster and back with various designs and patterns arriving and leaving, but at least they stayed in one place.

The austere house at the top of the hill was back in roughly the same size and shape as before. It even had the chimney and the appropriate number of windows. For a Dream construct, the home practically broadcasted the owner’s dedication and focus.

The subconscious ruled in the Dreamlands. Every memory was given life here, everything you have experienced, everything you have learned, everything you thought you forgot. From past trauma to something as simple as word association. Keeping your reality focused. Keeping it still took decades of study for Dreamers.

Not that it meant much, to a cat.

Willie was still shite at poker.

Not his fault.

It hadn’t even been invented until he was thirty two and a whole continent away.

“You damn little - “

“Sorry Willie, but help.” The cat demanded.

“Wilhelm,” the man corrected automatically, brushing rust red flakes off his shirt before pausing. “I - help? You came barging into my home - ” He stared from underneath heavy brows snowy with age. “Help with what?”

“Finding Percy real quick.”

“Finding…” The old man trailed off. “What?”

“You know him, black hair, sparkly eyes.” The cat held out a front paw an impressive four inches above the man’s shifting floor. “My midget human, ‘bout this tall?”

“He’s grown since I saw him last, surely. It’s been - “ He began, still a bit slow on the uptake. “Wait - what happened?” He asked, suddenly alarmed. “Is he hurt?”

“Worse,” the cat said gravely and Wilhelm tensed, prepared. “He’s fucking lost.”

The old man stared, before rolling his eyes upwards before closing them. “Of course he is,” he muttered. With a soft grunt, he pushed off his wall, good arm still wrapped protectively about his chest. “Of course he is.”

They didn’t talk about his bad arm.

It had been a divine gift.

No one worshiped the gods in the Dreamlands. Sometimes Dreamers didn’t always understand why not. The shrines had power. The temples were all occupied. At times, you could see the massive forms lumbering across the horizon or crossing the sky. Compared to the Waking world, the gods were obvious and omnipresent. Worship was a natural conclusion. However, worship here meant getting attention and getting attention was…

Complicated.

They didn’t talk about his bad arm.

Wilhelm wanted to forget it and Sam wanted to let him.

“Where did you last see him?” Wilhelm said, all business.

Sam gave a cat shrug. “I don’t have a clue where to begin, mate.”

“But then - “

“I’m a cat,” Sam stressed. “I have ears. And a nose. And fucking eyes. If I knew, I’d just go get his ass.”

The man sighed. “Then how do you know he’s lost?”

“His apartment wiggled,” Sam replied as if that answered everything.

It didn’t.

Wilhelm pinched the bridge of his nose. “Elaborate.”

“It wiggles, or shivers or whatever when he gets Here,” Sam said tightly, compulsively licking his right paw. “Gets more solid. And it did, but he didn’t show up.” There was a very real, trembling note of concern in its voice. “He wouldn’t leave me behind to go explore someplace. He - he fucking knows better. He wouldn’t.”

“Very well,” Wilhelm said softly and the cat ducked his head, turning away grumpily. “We will find him.”

“We better,” Sam huffed as it brushed past the old man deeper into the house. “So I can kill him for being fucking stupid.”

Wilhelm made a sound, little more than a harsh exhale, but the cat still turned back to look at him, eyeing his twitching beard suspiciously.

“By all means, after you,” Wilhelm said, eyes creased with amusement as he scratched his chin. “I will need my salts from the study and then -”

He was cut off by Sam’s groan.

“Why can’t you just chew on a bit of nip or hop on one foot for your magic like normal people?”

The irony was almost painful.

“Take it or leave it,” he told the animal and it just grumbled.

Gathering the necessary ingredients was the work of a minute or two of collecting vials and carved wooden bowls holding crushed mineral rich sand or spices.

“This works better,” Wilhelm was saying as he set his workbench. The cat perched on top of the stool right beside him, watching attentively. “Because it serves to narrow the focus and allows one to truly hold the spell. Wanting something to happen is not actually enough, this place needs to understand what you are trying to accomplish.”

“That’s…” The cat gave him a sideways look as the last of the saltpeter was poured into the copper cauldron filled with darkened water. “Sounds fucking risky.”

“It is not asking for attention,” Wilhelm rushed to reassure it as he picked up his ladle and made a slow clockwise stir. “The Dreamlands already responds to our very existence, what more can we demand of it? This is simply…focusing on its natural inclinations.”

They both held their breath as an image appeared within the water, shimmering like a silver reflection. As swift as a bird in flight, the reflection in the water blurred over the forest to the pits of black and bubbling and crawling before it hit the wide, blue ocean.

“The fuck?” Sam leaned in until it was nearly dipping its nose into the picture.

“Perhaps he just went for a swim. He always did love the water…” Wilhelm trailed off when the reflection dove into the sea. Down past the dizzying colors and twisted creatures of the shallow waters.

Down into deeper, darker waters with three headed sharks and a sliding ocean shelf made of ash gray sand and small, gasping mouths exhaling yellow bubbles of poison.

Down until the last shreds of light have disappeared. When the window stopped, it did so with such abruptness that at first they couldn't tell it had stopped in a blur of movement and churning water. The window shook, spreading jagged, sharp ripples through the water of his cauldron before they saw them.

“Fuck!” He vaguely heard the cat exclaim. “Turn it off! Turn it off!”

He was staring, frozen until a sharp pain stabbing his wrong hand brought him back to himself. “I - what - “

“Turn it off!”

He upended the table.

The cat leapt away, yowling as dark water black as pitch splashed onto the ground. The liquid hissed, eating through the floor like acid until Wilhelm wrung it out of his Dream.

For a long moment afterwards, neither said a word.

Sam’s right eye burned a brilliant bloody orange as the animal batted at its own face as if to pry the eyeball out of its skull.

It, too, had been a gift.

“Fucking…hate that.” It rolled his neck like a pro-wrestler about to step into the ring and coughed. “‘Kay, I’m getting him.”

“Him?” Wilhelm repeated incredulously. “There was no him.”

He could still see the fighting behemoths in his mind’s eye, tearing into each other like wild beasts over food or territory. One a roiling, seething mass as big as a building; a undulating tail like flowing fabric ending in a needle sharp barb did nothing to soften the antediluvian horror of flailing, coiling tentacles of a sickly shade squirming and shifting in seemingly every direction even as it collapsed into itself like some gelatinous, fleshy slurry rolling down a hill.

Its opponent had the upper body vaguely resembling a dark winged hydra, proudly crested serpentine heads of gnashing teeth beneath the spines and grasping tendrils spilling from its back; it’s lower body spilled from the lower jaw of one of the heads into a great open maw lined by vicious fangs of teeth, inky shadows leaking between them like saliva and where the throat would be, where the tongue should be, where a mouth wasn't was the abyss of space, populated only by a thousand burning green eyes as distant stars.

He hoped their spying hadn’t been detected.

That would be…

Bad.

“Something must have gone wrong with the magic,” he murmured. “They were - they were too close, a kind of gravitational pull on the search…” Wilhelm glanced up, just realizing he had been staring at the floor as he registered that Sam wasn’t saying anything. “There was no him,” he repeated optimistically. “Why would he be fighting a sea monster? And how would he have gotten to the bottom of the ocean anyway?”

The cat blinked slowly. “I think one of them…” It got quiet. “One of them was him.”

Wilhelm stared and his stomach churned. “O - oh?”

“The eyebally one,” the cat said with forced nonchalance. “He had eyes like that before.”

He was not going to think about that.

Scheiße.

He was already thinking about it.

He’d known that boy since he had been too young for any sense of propriety, running around buck naked with his nappies on his head just because he could. His favorite word had been ‘yeah’ as an answer to everything, even when he meant no, and was always putting something in his mouth.

He didn’t want to think about it.

“Are you…sure it’s not some…distant relative of his through his mother or member of her court…” He stubbornly balled his right hand into a fist to stop himself from reflexively reaching for the dead (it’s not dead) flesh of his left. The Dreamlands tried to latch onto that memory with its relentless greed, but oh, he’s far too familiar with that nightmare to afford it even an ounce of power.

They don’t talk about his bad arm.

Sam closed his eyes. After a long moment, it sighed. “Maybe.”

“I will need something more personal, a connection to follow so we can be absolutely sure…”

He didn’t know what they would do if a second attempt led them right back to the horrors beneath the ocean.

Try to keep the cat from getting itself killed, he supposed.

“Yeah,” the cat said, subdued. “Okay. His place is not far, can grab something.”

“Not far?” The old man paused in the act of shuffling on his overcoat, hat in hand. “So the reason you broke down my door as if you ran, half-mad across the entire continent was because…?”

“I fucking swear on me mum…” Sam groaned again. “I forgot you’re a bitch about loud noises, alright?”

“I was shot!” Willie sputtered. “Nearly assassinated! Three times!”

“You got over it!”

“I most certainly did not - “

“And a fucking cold got you in the end!” The cat jeered as it bounded out the door, crooked tail standing proud as he chased after it.

Indeed, the boy’s home wasn’t far at all.

“I did not realize he was so close.” Wilhelm said with an unasked question. The cat had led him, huffing and annoyed, right to the small valley on the edges of the jungle village he himself lived in. It was little more than a pure white box with a red door, its pristine colors surreal against the dirt ground and dry grass that surrounded it.

It was…surprisingly solid for a Dream construct.

“It moves,” Sam said.

“It - “ Wilhelm began and then stopped.

The cat marched right up to the red door and opened it with a flick of its tail. “Mind the gap,” it called back from over its shoulder. “First step can be a doozy.”

“But there aren’t any stairs…?”

Reality blurred with a step.

“Wha - “ The old man gasped as he found himself in a sterile white hallway lined with windows showing a view ten, maybe twenty stories up as if he hadn’t just walked in from the ground. He turned around to see that the wooden red door had disappeared, replaced by a gunmetal gray gate with buttons on one side. There was no way this space would have fit inside the small hut he had stepped into. “How?”

“No idea.” Sam huffed. “Lil fucker’s bullshit.”

A polished wood door led to an expensive looking living space with white leather couches, dark wood and glass furniture and white carpet. There was a fireplace and exotic looking flowering plants in every corner. A wall full of baby pictures was right by the entrance to what looked like the kitchen and behind a glass wall was a balcony with a pool, complete with a yellow rubber duck bobbing up and down in the water. Just like in the hallway, they were inexplicably high up off the ground as if on the top of a very tall building.

“It is so…” Wilhelm gently removed one of the pictures from the wall. It was a memory. A picnic scene with an exhausted, but happy handsome swarthy father beaming at the photographer like his every wish had come true. He had a proud hand on both of his boys, the older one blond and blue eyed with the father’s curls and darker skin flashing a thumbs up and winking and the younger…He was a little younger than when Wilhelm saw him last. Five or six, black hair and shimmering eyes. He wasn’t smiling at the camera, but up at his mother.

The woman was beautiful, pale and dark haired with a gently amused curl to her lips. Most of her was facing her husband and sons, but it was as if she had turned her head at the last second. Her black eyes stared unerringly into his own.

Everything was crisp.

Solid.

“This is impossible,” Wilhelm whispered.

As if spurned by his disbelief, the picture frame faded from his hands only to reappear in its place on the wall.

“Bull. Shit,” Sam repeated. “Don’t think about it. Just find something.”

There was a window that was not like the rest. It did not show the forest canopy with colorful four eyed birds flitting among the leaves. It was a black beach with sand of razor sharp obsidian shards and in the distance a tall black spire rose amid a starry sky that abruptly became dark and empty in the center. The shadow of some winged creature flew in circles around the tower.

He tore his eyes away.

“This…this is not the home of a Dreamer, is it?” Wilhelm said thickly. It was nearly indistinguishable from the Dreamlands itself.

Real.

“I said don’t fucking think about it.”

The old man ran a weary hand down his face.

“Too late,” he said miserably.

“If it helps,” Sam began in a reasonable kind of tone as it laid down in that indolent way of felines. “He’s still a dumbass.”

“That’s not the point, you little - “

The door to the apartment clicked open and they both went still and silent as they watched Percy walk into his home.

The boy was filthy. Covered in streaks of an oily, gray substance, a bird’s nest of black hair on top of his head, a dozen bleeding scratches underneath tears in his clothing and an impressive shiner on his left eye, swollen shut and leaking a molten silver. He was missing a pant leg and both shoes, trekking barefoot onto the wooden floor and leaking saltwater. An almost hysterical bubble of laughter welled up in Wilhelm’s throat at the thought that he looked just like any other ten or eleven year old boy coming back from a scrap in the streets.

So it had been at least five years.

There was relief, that he was still the contrary little shit who had stared up at him in awe, his mouth in a small ‘o’ of surprise before blurting out, ‘You’re old!’

Then there was the shame that he had spent half a decade avoiding a child.

When they had first met, he had been horrified by the thought that children, barely more than infants, could find their way into the Dreamlands by accident. He feared he had found the answer to the inexplicable sudden death of sleeping young children. In his mind, the boy was basically an orphan, fending for himself in a strange, savage land.

But he had a mother.

Wilhelm cleared his throat. “Perseus.”

The boy startled and Wilhelm held his breath as a hundred burning green eyes blinked open on the boy’s form for a moment.

‘He had eyes like that before,’ Sam had said.

Mein Gott.

“Percy,” was the muttered complaint. He blinked his good eye and the dark pupil was blown wide. “Heeeyy, Will! I haven’t seen you in a while, man.”

The prickling running up and down his bad arm (Percy had a mother) tightened the old man’s smile. “Are you well?”

“You got fucked up,” the cat translated.

“Uh, no. I mean, yeah?” Percy stared at them blankly, a small wrinkle of confusion forming on his brow as if he heard what they said, but didn’t understand. “Maybe.”

A shiver went down Wilhelm’s spine and he could see it run down the cat’s back as well. Something was wrong with him. His stomach sank and he fought not to take a few steps back.

“Like Carl?” He murmured deep in his throat, barely more than a breath of shaped air, trusting the sensitive ears of the cat to hear him.

(Carl was dead.

He had to be dead, because the thought that he was still in there - that he came out of the other end of the teleporter not completely hollowed out by what got him - was a terrible one. He didn’t want to go through that again, but Dreams were not wishes. No matter how hard you tried.)

Sam did not reply, but instead rose to his feet, stretching out as cats do. First the front paws, claws out and wickedly gleaming and then the back legs. Perfectly nonchalant, but the fur along the back remained ruffled and slightly raised.

Sam was a blunt creature.

If he didn’t attack now, that meant he didn’t know who, or what, was in Percy’s skin.

The boy was oblivious to the tension, an utterly punch-drunk smile spreading across his face. He’d always had an awkward, but endearing smile, but now the sight of the crowded mouth - more teeth than the human jaw could ever accommodate - curdled milk in Wilhelm’s stomach.

“You should see the other guy.” Percy declared.

They did.

“We did,” Sam said, deliberately casual. Only the line of raised fur along his back gave it away as not being as relaxed as it seemed. “Fucking ugly bloke, what?”

“Noooo,” Percy trailed off. He looked down at his hands and actually wiggled his toes as if he was counting them, like he needed to remind himself how many appendages the human body normally came with. Then he nodded to himself, coming to a decision. “Maybe a little.”

Sam snorted.

Another too-wide smile. “Delicious too.”

The cat’s tail lashed back and forth as Wilhelm stood there like a stump, uncertain what he just heard.

“Why.” The cat asked flatly. “Are you always putting shit in your fucking mouth.”

The boy had the audacity to look smug.

“‘I’m not a baby anymore, Sam’,” the cat mocked in a high pitched voice. “‘I don’t bite anymore, Sam. I’m not teething anymore, Sam.’ Fucking liar.”

“Oh, come on, Sam, it was - just - I mean basically calamari…” He tried to explain -

But the animal wasn’t having it. “Didn’t you eat a fucking zombie a week or something ago.”

What?

Wilhelm ignored Percy's sputtering.

Can they talk about the zombie thing?

“You - “ One could see the boy blindly cast about for an argument and it was clear having to think was paining him. “You - uh, you can’t tell me what to do!”

“The fuck I can’t!” Sam hissed. “Fuck you - who was it that told me not to bite -“

The boy’s head reared back in mock outrage, glee shining in his one good eye. “Because you never know where they’ve been!”

Wilhelm palmed his face.

That had to be Percy.

The cat went blank and still as a statue for a moment. “Did he just - ?” Not even waiting for Wilhelm to respond, it turned back on the boy, spitting. “You fucking hypocrite - “

“Sam, Sam it’s okay,” Percy attempted to sooth his cat with an odd, lopsided grin. Just an amused curl of one side of his mouth. “It’s okay - you cat,” he pointed with a trembling finger. “Me half-god.” He blinked slowly. “Half. Haaaalf. Not one-eighth. Not demi but…”

His nose wrinkled as he swayed in place. His bad eye opened a sliver and whatever rested within that socket whispered.

…Maybe it wasn’t Percy.

“Maybe demi but different demi.” The boy looked at them expectantly. “You know?”

“Uh.” Sam leaned away from him, wary again as a drop of blood from a star dripped down the boy’s face. “I don’t - I have no idea what the fuck -”

“My mom. Mom is -” Percy mimed his head exploding, complete with a brassy, reverberating whoosh and expanding smoke effects from his hands. Then he flapped his arms, desperate to explain whatever scattered thoughts were flitting back and forth in his head. “I can’t - I won’t die until I do!”

The cat stared, speechless.

“That…is rather how it works for most of us,” Wilhelm pointed out gently, for lack of anything better to say.

Sam only tilted its head in Wilhelm’s direction, unwilling to take its eyes off whatever was masquerading as the boy they knew. The casual gesture was punctuated by the agitated lashing of the cat’s tail back and forth.

“Death is a process. It has to happen, mortality itself is a collection of factors that  -”

“People die when killed,” Sam cut in.

Wilhelm sighed. “Yes. Fine.”

Now it was Percy’s turn to stare at them, completely and utterly stumped. His mouth flapped open and closed, searching for the words, but Wilhelm could almost see the thoughts dribbling out of his ears until the boy gave up with a whiny,

“Oh.”

Sam made a soft yowling sound. “Hoooow’s about we have ourselves a bit of a lay down, hmm? Just a small kip.”

Percy frowned. “I’m already sleeping.”

“You’re shaking,” the cat replied flatly.

The boy blinked and looked down at himself again.

He was. Tremors were running up and down his slim frame like beetles burrowing into a carcass.

“I can just - “

“Sit. The Fuck. Down.”

For a moment, Percy was about to argue. Wilhelm could see it in the stubborn jut of his chin, but then he twitched like a puppet jerked on its string, swayed again, then plopped down where he stood with a loud put upon sigh.

“Happy?” He grumbled as he sprawled across the wooden floor.

“Ecstatic.” Wilhelm drawled in response before the cat bit the boy’s nose off. He yelped when the apartment shifted around them, the foyer stretching to place the front door far away from them until they were deposited in the middle of the living room. There were no distortions or hints of instability.

The sheer ease of it all!

He snuck a glance at the boy stretching out on the floor, leaving smudges of red blood too bright and shining to be real on white carpet.

“My brain is floating out of my skull,” Percy said suddenly, very seriously, staring up at the ceiling. “Are my ears still backwards? I think Erebus turned them backwards. And my asshole ran away.”

“Fucking tragic, that is,” Sam replied, also very serious.

They were not actually talking about his literal…?

“Does that make me constipated?”

They were.

“Only if you need to shit.”

“No. But I can’t poop without one, so I better not.” The boy’s brows furrowed. “I was hungry, but I lost - I’m losing my stomach, Sam.”

“Better hold on to your hat then.”

“Okay,” Percy said, as if that made any sense at all. He wasn’t even wearing - a black bowler hat appeared on the boy’s head and Wilhelm about swallowed his tongue. “My brother said I need to eat.”

The cat blinked. “Aren’t your siblings jackasses?”

‘Siblings?’ Wilhelm mouthed, horrified.

He thought of the smiling blond boy from the photo-memory. There were more like him?

Percy huffed. “Only - only the triplets. Darkness is cool. He helped and then - and then there were some looking,” he said, skipping train tracks. “Other gods. From - around here, I think? And they thought I was cool. And I was. Cool. I won. I cheated, with a volcano,” He whispered loudly, as if imparting a great secret. “It woke up,” and in the Dreamlands, that could very well be completely literal, “but I didn’t die, so it was fine. Not dying was important. And I think I got asked out on a date."

By what?

The boy gingerly rolled onto his side, giving them a heavy, one eyed look as if to ask them something very important. “It’s not my fault mom’s kids are good looking, right?”

“No,” the old man said, completely bewildered.

“Right. Okay.” Percy rolled onto his stomach and began to trace the swirling pale patterns in the rug. His hat was tipped rakishly, complete with a blood red feather sticking out of it. “I knew that. I’m too young for a girlfriend anyway.”

He was not going to touch that with a ten foot pole.

“We will get you a snack,” Wilhelm offered, trying to escape.

“I could eat,” Percy admitted. “Yeah, thanks.” He lifted his head, throwing them a bright, hopeful smile. “Mom didn’t really mean it, you know? She can’t help it sometimes, but she was sorry!”

Wilhelm allowed himself to reach across to touch his bad arm. “I know.”

“‘Kay.” He laid his head down again and his hat slid off. “We can be friends again, right?”

Wilhelm smiled weakly and shuffled the cat back into the next room when Percy’s attention shifted to his hand as if it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. And perhaps it was. It was shifting under the attention, fingers merging together, twisting, becoming spindly, becoming smoke before hardening into a dark spine before relaxing back into a human boy’s hand.

The heavy wooden door closed behind them with a satisfying click and he let out a sigh. “Verdict?”

“The stupid burns.”

“Sam,” Wilhelm scolded. “You know what I mean. Is he…” He shrugged his good shoulder in Percy’s general direction and whispered out the corner of his mouth, trusting those cat ears to pick it up. “Well?”

“Tripping premium top fucking balls,” the cat said. “But yeah, it’s him.” 

He was assuming by the context that ‘tripping balls’ was another way of saying ‘acting drugged.’ He wasn’t going to ask if he was correct. He’s always been a little afraid of asking the cat what it was even saying since he learned that ‘clap’ was no longer just a word for smacking your hands together.

If it was Percy, and he was under the effect of some kind of hallucinogenic then…

Then…

He was dismayed by how little that actually solved.

Sam tilted its head, wiggling its right ear. “Not convinced he’s alone in there. He’s too fucking…”

It trailed off, searching for the words.

“Demigod,” the old man ventured. “What do we do then?”

“Dunno,” Sam said unhelpfully. Its tail lashed back and forth quickly. “If it were anyone else, I’d tell them to never put a fucking mushroom in their mouth ever again, but he’s always mouthing shit and nothing ever fucking happens sooooo…” Sam glanced back at the door thoughtfully. And then shrugged. “Dunno.”

“And when he wakes up from this Dream…?”

“He’s a mortal soul in the Dreamlands, like you.” Sam muttered. “You never really wake up, you just leave for a bit.”

“I see,” Wilhelm hummed.

It was true. You never do wake up from the Dreamlands. At one time, he thought you could. Everyone wakes up from Dreams. However, the Dreamlands were far more than flights of fanciful imagination. It reacted to your emotions, thoughts and fears. It had a rudimentary form of memory and followed byzantine rules that were strangely consistent. At times, he almost thought it was aware.

Perhaps you could wake up from Dreams. But Nightmares were Dreams too.

And some nightmares never end.

He sighed as he had no ideas making themselves known either. “Well, I did say I would get him something to eat…”

The cat grumbled, turning towards the open doorway leading to what looked like the kitchen. “Right. Do something about the munchies…brat going to eat me out of house and home.”

“Is this not his house and home?” Wilhelm asked mildly.

Sam shot him a dirty look.

And then it froze right outside the kitchen, its tail shot straight up, crook and all. “Fuck.”

“Now what?” Wilhelm grumbled as he stepped past the animal…and stopped dead right at the door. “...what?”

The kitchen was a disaster.

There were cartoons and plastic bags holding previously frozen food that had been allowed to drip all over the counter top for hours, if not days. Streaks of multicolored brown goop had congealed on the white cupboard doors, right next to nauseatingly sweet, artificially fruity smelling puddles and bloody water from thawed meat pooled on the tiled floor.

The old man moved automatically. Most of it was driven by reflexive disgust at the mess, but he would be lying if he denied a sliver of concern over a black haired boy with a thousand eyes seeing all his spoiled ice cream.

“What even were you doing?” Wilhelm hissed, picking up the most intact packages - brightly colored plastic tubes with pictures of fruit on them - and rushed to the ice box.

“Shit, I had to do something with him - “

Him?

He opened the ice box.

He closed the ice box.

Wilhelm fell against the wall beside it and slowly slid down it, blueberry, raspberry and watermelon Pops!cle bags falling to the floor alongside him.

“There are body parts in the freezer,” he said dully.

“Not my fault!” Sam protested immediately and for a moment, he foolishly dared to hope the cat had a reasonable explanation. “He fucking came like that!”

“Explain,” he demanded.

The whole story didn’t make any more sense.

“...he’s got power, sure, but pop him in the noggin and his head fucking flies off. Ain’t nothing fucking happening cut up like he is.”

“Kronos,” Wilhelm repeated in a dead voice. He was no academic in life, but he had been born into the last days of the Holy Roman Empire. There was no escaping that history. “Percy rescued the Titan Lord from the Pit and now he’s on ice. Here!”

The cat blinked. “I just said that - ”

Wilhelm reached out and swiped at the cat’s ears, shutting it up. His head was beginning to spin unpleasantly (the pagan gods of the Waking world were real). “Is he conscious?”

The cat hesitated. “...no?”

He leaned away from the unassuming humming appliance. “You do not know?”

“He can’t do anything!”

“Anything can happen in a Dream!”

They glared at each other.

Sam was the first to look away. “I could take him. If he fucked around.”

He could take - ignoring the sheer arrogance of that statement, because Kronos was an immortal god and Sam was an orange tom cat: “You are holding him in Percy’s home.”

Sam spit at him, chops curled back into a savage snarl. “You don’t get to bitch about his safety anymore. You fucking left, remember?”

His bad arm prickled uncomfortably as the shame came flooding back.

“You are right, of course,” Wilhelm mumbled contritely.

“Damn straight.” Sam sat proudly, ears bent back against his head. “Which is why he’ll be staying with you.”

“What!” The old man sputtered. “Absolutely not!”

“He’ll be away from Percy.”

“He’s a pagan god.”

“...Okay,” Sam said slowly, clearly not understanding the problem. “But, in pieces. He can’t do anything you can’t handle, seriously.”

“You don’t know that!” Wilhelm snapped. “He’s a god!” His breath was coming fast, too fast. He could feel the weight, foreign and cold, hanging off him as a gangrenous limb fit only to be amputated. He didn’t look at his bad arm, he never looked at it if he could help it, because it would look back.

His bad arm was a divine gift.

As much as a replacement for what you took could be a gift.

No one worshiped the gods in the Dreamlands.

Percy, painfully young and absolutely horrified, hadn’t realized that insisting - ‘it was an accident! Mom didn’t mean it! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ 

(People died.

He almost died and he did not know what would come after, this time)

- only made it worse.

“You don’t know that,” he repeated, softer.

“He was human once,” Sam nearly whispered.

His breath caught.

His curiosity burned. Humans could ascend?

Truly?

There was a long moment of silence.

“I will consider it,” Wilhelm said stiffly as he gathered up the popsicles back onto the counter and then he rooted around in the refrigerating unit. “Clean up your mess,” he ordered. “I can handle a few sandwiches.”

He almost couldn’t handle a few sandwiches.

Nothing looked the way it should have. The bread was already sliced right out of the clear, crinkly package. As was the bacon, looking almost like a different cut of meat entirely, and he had to be walked through using the ‘microwave’ by the cat, because the stove had a lot more knobs than he was comfortable with.

The future was not convenient. It was confusing.

At least the lettuce head was familiar, as was the tomato, albeit far larger than he was used to.

The knives were tucked away. The wood block almost shoved into the corner on the far end of the counter, as if they were trying to hide away. He reached for the closest handle.

Something took hold of him.

‘Is that what you think?’ A man hissed into his ear. ‘Is that what you fucking think!? Come ‘ere!’

Blood splashed onto the counter as the back of his hand opened.

‘Look! Look at it! It’s not silver! It’s not fucking gold! It’s red! Like MINE!’ The man was yelling through tears. The stink of alcohol was almost a physical slap to the face. ‘Tell me again what Apollo said, you little shit. You bleed red! She left BOTH of us!’

He felt so very, very small.

A grain of sand on an infinite beach, battered by the waves. Lost and drowning.

‘We’re. Mortal!’

Then it was gone and the kitchen knives, quietly tucked away in the corner, were silent.

“Willie?”

The old Prussian king grabbed one of the ‘paper towels’ from the counter and cleaned up the red blood staining the white surface.

“I am well,” he answered quietly.

The cat eyed him dubiously. “What the fuck was that?”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I do not know.”

Another memory, like the picture? A nightmare? Both or something in between?

He wanted to ask, but whatever it was, it felt like an old, private shame.

He was familiar enough with those.

They finished making the sandwiches.

Percy was waiting, more or less patiently, in the living room. A small, spinning galaxy was dancing between his fingers as he slouched on the white leather couch before a long glass table. No shoes. A dirty white button up shirt rolled up at the sleeves. A streak of molten tears was still leaking from his swollen eye.

Every inch a bored, young godling resting after a fight.

“BLTs?” Percy asked. “Nice.”

“There’s a Titan Lord in your ice box.” Wilhelm tattled.

Sam glared at him.

“Uh.” The boy blinked slowly, hand hovering over a sandwich as his good eye traveled over to the cat. “Zagreus? You didn’t throw him back - “ He paused. His face scrunched up. “Throwing someone into the Pit sounds like a war crime, Geneva cares about that. So we shouldn't, because 21st century, baby.”

…What?

“High as fuck,” Sam reminded him as a low hiss.

 “Do you care about him being in your ice box?” Wilhelm stubbornly pushed on.

“My ice cream is in there,” Percy responded and out of the corner of his eye, Wilhelm saw Sam flinch in the middle of stealing a piece of bacon. “But not really? He’s not my problem and he doesn’t want to be.” Percy smiled guilelessly. “He’s smart like that.”

Wilhelm had absolutely no idea what to say.

He was saved from having to say anything by a loud, lingering honk. Percy’s head whipped around.

“What was that?”

“The signal horn,” Wilhelm supplied. “There is something of a market festival in the village today.”

“We’re near people?” The boy said abruptly. He stuffed the remainder of his sandwich into his mouth and stood up. “I wanna see, let’s go!”

Sam bounded right at his heels.

If it pressed a little too long against his shins, a little too eager to keep it friend within its sights, no one said a word.

Wilhelm watched as Sam dug this cute little woven vest from the bottom shelf of the closet by the front door, shimmying into it. It had hooks on the side where Percy painstakingly perched leather pockets. Whoever made it for the animal had a sense of humor. It was decorated with a small orange cat chasing a red bird.

“ - I ain’t buying you shit,” the cat was complaining as Percy tried and failed to clean his shirt. “Get your own fucking money.”

“I’ll pay you back.”

“Do you remember N’ath?”

“Um.”

“Because I remember fucking N’ath, you cheap bastard.”

“Oy, my parents are married!” Percy barked a laugh. “Luke called me a koala once.”

“Yes,” it said immediately. “What the fuck’s a koala?”

“Sam. Sam! Sam,” Percy said. “I love you.”

The cat recoiled. “You really are fucking flying, mate.”

Eventually, they remembered him and both turned to regard the old man still sitting, nonplused on the sofa.

“Willie. Coming?”

“I have seen more than my fair share of market days,” he declined, patting his knee. “Let me rest my legs a little longer.”

Percy’s smile softened. “Sure. Stay as long as you like.”

And he did.

He went out on the balcony to smoke a bit of his favorite pipe, the earthy, bitter taste calming as he contemplated. The yellow duck floating in the pool was free of judgment and he watched it make laps in still water.

He went back inside and glanced over the wall of pictures.

They were all of a very young Percy, from a chubby cheeked baby to a six year birthday party. The blond boy was present only in the last few rows of memories. Sometimes he looked as young as ten, perhaps twelve years old and in others an older teenager or young man with the same features appeared.

Not mortal, then.

Could this be Apollo?

His eyes searched for the picnic photo-memory and it took him longer than it should have to find it.

Because it had changed.

The mother was now returning Percy’s smile, a possessive, gentle hand trailing through his black hair, ignoring the photographer entirely.

It had changed.

Goosebumps broke out all over his skin and he hurried away.

The kitchen was just as he left it. After a moment of thought, he retrieved the plate of crumbs and put it in the sink. He busied himself cleaning up the remains of the mess, little stains left behind by the cat’s half-assed effort. The knives were still in their dark corner. An echo of their cry (we’re mortal!) wailed in his ears. But eventually…

Eventually.

He opened the ice box.

“Lord - “ What had Percy called him? Names were important, he knew. The Name a god was addressed by, changed the god. “Zagreus.”

Something shifted.

He could feel it as the temperature dropped and the shadows lengthened.

The Titan of eld stirred.

“I have questions,” he continued.

The deep voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“Speak.”