She meets him in the Far Marches and is immediately discomforted. "Dream," she says, lowering her head to him with a show of respect she doubts others would manage.
He nods back, dark robes twining about him. "Dreams," he greets her.
By all rights, the Marches shouldn't be large enough for the both of them.
This night, he looks young. Wears youth like a mask. Most of the time, he doesn't bother; he's made apathy and anger into an all-too-familiar art form. He maintains his features, though. That is one thing she's noticed about the Endless - whatever they look like, they look like themselves. Dream, even as a youth, is tall, thin, bony, with black eyes that have stars dancing in them. Shadows gather in the hollows of his face, as if he's applied greasepaint, then faceblack. It's his natural skin, and while she hesitates to use the term 'natural' to define him, it fits. He is as much a force of nature as Janus or Eli or... nature.
Blandine, Archangel of Dreams, does not quite know how to define him. He is not an ethereal, not one of the gods, for when belief fades, so do gods. The only term she has to describe him is the one he uses for himself, 'Endless'.
There are only seven Endless in total, which may be why they were not spoken of too much, even though their names and identities are often identical to the Symphonic Words. Saminga refuses to acknowledge Death even as she wanders the earth and gives him the Word-essence with each life she took. She does not need any for herself. Though, Blandine does wonder sometimes if the reason behind the Angel of Death's vanishing might not have been too much similarity to Death of the Endless.
They all have similarities. Eli and Destruction, Gabriel and Delirium, Andrealphus and Desire. Blandine had mentioned that, how it made her nervous, to Yves. "Think of them as Words incarnate," he had suggested. "For while we are our Words, we deny parts of them - there's no doubt to that. Simply the fact that you can oppose Nightmares shows that you refuse to represent all dreams - though, yes, dear," he had agreed, smiling, as she started to protest, "Beleth took Nightmares and forced your hand. Yet, still it's possible. Lust can exist with love or without it, but Andrealphus only accepts one kind. Divine and Infernal Fire are opposed. And so on. Yet there is an entire Word out there, being represented in manners you choose. So, no, Dream does not bear the Word of 'Dream'; Dream is Dream."
Somehow, she isn't surprised that Yves, oldest of Archangels, can accept such a thing. She has heard rumours about the eldest of the Endless, Destiny, an old man with a book.
"Well?" she asks Dream. Her voice gets sucked away into the air and expelled again as he listens to it, and the image makes her shudder. His brows crease for a moment as he examines her; then he pulls his cloak more tightly about his shoulders. (She feels the Marches twist around him, sees the glimmer of red at his breast.)
"I have seen your wife recently," he tells her.
She sucks in the void of the Marches, then forces herself to exhale. Of course he had. This is the Dreaming, and he is both dream and nightmare. "So you saw her."
His eyes gleam, blue in their depths, and he holds up a globe in his hands. It seems to be a portable dreamscape, but it is unoccupied, and she wonders, not for the first time, if it is Morpheus who has made the bubbles that surround sleeping men and women, the dreamscapes she is so capable of manipulating.
In the depths of the dreamscape comes an image that expands to fill the air before her, waveringly. Beleth, Demon Princess of Nightmares, disjointed form thin and wraithlike, digging through the wreckage of ...something. An old building. Grecian, she wonders? But no, it is earlier. Pre-civilization. Blandine recognizes a broken window and freezes, the air turning cold about her.
It plays around her, the Marches responding to the memory: war. Broken and twisted angel bodies falling and Falling. The thrum of it, metal on metal, screaming. The Symphony wailing as it clashes and burns and harmonies collide into discord. Noise. It was all just noise. And Blandine's heart breaking, and Beleth pressing herself to Lucifer's slender back, and screaming until her throat went raw, until she spat up blood on her dark lips until they were gone, thrown out of heaven, Beleth reaching for her with a look of rage as if she could drag her down too. And behind Blandine as she stood and watched and tried not to do anything, tried not to pull her lover back up because it was time to go, time to let go, because her lover had betrayed heaven, betrayed them all - and behind her, their shared tower, their home where they watched over dreams, shattering. Stones tumbling down. Foundation cracking. Card 16. The Tower. Catastrophe.
Windows shattering.
And now, Beleth has returned to that Tower, the remains of which marks the borders between Blandine's side of the Marches and Beleth's side, between Dreams and Nightmares, for it had been in the center of things before.
"Thank you," Blandine tells Morpheus, and to her own surprise she has managed to hold her breath steady. "And what do I owe you for this revelation?"
"I have owed you other things," Dream says, "now and again. And for what it is worth, you do not get in my way, while that wife of yours is known to try to do so."
"I must go," Blandine tries to explain, and Morpheus nodded, just a gentle lowering of his head, and vanishes.
Blandine goes. She flies across the dreaming, her blue-black robes floating around her, trailing behind in a wake. She finds the broken tower, finds the rubble, finds the catastrophe, finds the gaunt figure of Beleth rooting through it.
"It's mine!" Beleth tells her as she flies up. The Princess's fingers are bloodied, nails cracked and peeled back from having dug at stone.
"What is?" Blandine inquires. She again manages to keep her voice steady, despite the dove's wings panicking inside her chest.
Beleth bares sharpened teeth at her. "The necklace. I remembered it tonight. I saw something in a dreamscape that reminded me of it."
Blandine can't guess at what she is talking about, but just nods, heart aching, and takes the other edge of the stone that Beleth is labouring to lift. "Then let's get you your belonging."
They heave, Beleth spitting curses at her, telling her to leave, leave, go away, it's not yours, who cares about you, this place isn't yours, the locket isn't yours, it's mine, it's mine, it's mine.
They heave, and Blandine sees it under the stone.
She remembers it from before the Fall. She remembers when she gave it, laughing and smiling. She was always laughing and smiling back then, shining with rapture from her work, from her life, from her love. And Beleth, poor Beleth, would follow her like her shadow, smiling quickly and nervously when she smiled at all. Blandine had put the locket around her neck and saw a real smile, large enough to show white teeth, before it had vanished again behind thin lips. She had handled the locket years later and found her own picture inside, closed it and put it away before Beleth could see, smiled.
And then the Fall, and it was gone.
Beleth snatches it up, holds it to her, scowls ferociously, white lights glimmering balefully in her black eyes. "It's mine," she tells Blandine, lips twisting. "Go away. I hate you."
Blandine looks at her, watches Beleth become torn between fight or flight, the Marches darkening around the form of her old lover. Shadows are gathering, making her seem larger. And yet, at the same time, her knees bend as if she intends to take off with her prize.
Blandine looks at Beleth, and opens her arms.