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George holds his satchel close to his chest as he darts through the crowd. It’s less for fear of crushing the delicate items within—though that is, of course, a factor—and more for the worry of smacking someone with it. The rumors of his apparent evil have finally died down, and he’s isn’t looking to reignite them. If he never has to hear himself called witch or devil again, he can die happy. He’s a mage, for one, and for another he quite likes when people greet him happily in the streets, rather than with fear. Thus, the caution when maneuvering through a crowd.
And what a crowd it is.
Market days always bring in people from the surrounding, smaller villages. They’re known for their textiles in Ridgewood, and especially for their raw wool. George thinks the sheep are exceptionally stupid animals, after having to rescue and heal a great many of them from situations no clever creature could find itself in.
This crowd is larger than normal, and rowdier, even though he’d made a point of avoiding the market square. Someone grabs his arm and stops him short. He tightens his grip on his satchel and blinks in disbelief at the man with a hand on him. “Can I help you?” he asks, struggling not to grit his teeth.
“You’re the mage,” the man says. A statement, not a question, which George can appreciate. “Something has happened.”
Oh, really? George thinks sardonically. “What is it?”
“Better to see for yourself.”
He’s led through the crowd—“Make way!” the man demands, voice carrying easily. “I’ve got the mage!”—with little choice in the matter. He has half a mind to call up a bit of lightning and give this man a shock, but, again, he doesn’t want the murmurings of evil to return, so he trudges along. Listens, too, to the crowd and their whispers.
They’re frightened. Death, they say. Blood and ruin.
At the center of the maelstrom is a man and a cart. A shepherd, judging by his clothing, and the one to rile up the crowd, judging by his reddened face. On the cart lies the still body of a sheep, coat unshorn and appearing to be in good health, save for the enormous chunk taken out of its belly.
George’s own stomach squirms. Part of a mage's duties, if one wants to pledge service to a village, include dealing with all sorts of injury. Doesn’t mean George has to like it, or that he’s ever gotten over his queasiness at the sight of blood.
The man who had pulled him forward melts back into the crowd, and George is left to face a very displeased shepherd all on his own. He wracks his memory for any dealings he’s had with this one—children healed from fever? Ewes encouraged to bear lambs?—but comes up short.
“Hello,” George says weakly, clearing his throat and fully pulling his focus from the carcass to the shepherd. “I’m George. Mage of Ridgewood.”
The shepherd’s face cracks with relief. “The mage! Oh, please, you must help me. My sheep-” he gestures toward the poor creature, like George might have missed its state. “Something has murdered it.”
George hums sadly to keep himself from saying I see that. “Was it only the one?”
“Yes,” the shepherd says mournfully. “I had a full count otherwise, but I won’t use that pasture again, not until I’m certain the woods are cleared.”
Steeling himself, George turns back to the sheep. “May I?” he asks.
“Please.”
George inspects the wound. It’s really just a great, gaping hole. Terrible, bloody, gory. He doesn’t want to look at it, but; “It looks like whatever killed it didn’t eat much.”
“That was my thinking,” the shepherd says. The crowd murmurs worriedly around them. “I’ve dealt with wolves and coyotes. They eat things they kill. Drag them off. I’ve never seen anything but a man kill just to have a body.”
George shivers. “You don’t think whatever it is could have been scared off?”
“You know,” a new voice says from the crowd. New to the conversation. Not unfamiliar to George. His stomach swoops again, though this time it’s for an entirely different reason. “I think- I think maybe sheep just do that.”
“Dream,” George hisses, lifting his head to glare at the man.
It figures that he’d be an idiot about matters like these. Born into money, camecome from a city on the coast to live in an inherited house out at the edge of town to ‘study history.’
“Excuse me?” says the shepherd, taking an affronted step toward Dream. The crowd seems similarly displeased. All of them have probably worked with the animals at some point in their lives. Most of them probably know Dream for his frequent time spent lounging in sunny spaces and scribbling in an ever-present book.
“I’ve heard of it,” Dream says, coming closer to the sheep and then making a face when he gets a better look at the wound. “A new- disease?” The crowd gasps. George wants to drop his face into his hands and groan. “No!” Dream amends. “No disease. Just this one sheep. Did that. All by itself.”
“No, it did not,” George says firmly. “And we can’t say for certain yet that it was a—” he hesitates to say monster, or beast, though he knows everyone is thinking it. “—An anomaly. It may have been a wolf. I—” he gets a terrible, terrible idea in the moment between words. “—Dream and I, I should say, we’ll investigate.”
“Will you really?” the shepherd says, voice breaking. “I- how can I repay you?”
“No need,” George says easily. “It’s my, ah, duty. And Dream will be happy to help.” He kicks Dream in the shin—once earns him a reproachful look, twice earns him a begrudging nod—and plasters on a smile.
“Thank you,” the shepherd says. The crowd murmurs in approval, and starts to disperse, which helps George relax a little. “Do you need the body, or would you mind if I buried her?”
“No, go right ahead,” George says quickly. He doesn’t want to look at that body any more than he already has, even if it would help him find whatever did this. The shepherd deserves to bury his animal. “Could you tell me where you put your sheep to pasture, please? So my assistant and I can begin our search?”
“Of course!” he says. “A little ways out of town, just at the edge of the woods.” He points, and since the main part of the village sits atop a hill, it’s easy enough for George to follow his fingers—and finally, he places where he’s met the man before.
“You have that big white dog,” George says. Dream makes a small noise next to him. George is resolutely ignoring him, for now. “Ah- Mouse?” He remembers being very amused by that name, given to a dog that could have passed as a sheep herself. “Is she doing alright?” George had checked her over after a bout of fearfulness had come over her, something he’d never seen in a dog so large. But that had only been two weeks ago—he feels bad for so quickly forgetting the man’s face, though he thinks he spoke mostly to his wife.
“Yes, yes. The courage charm you gave us works wonders. I probably have her to thank that more of my flock wasn’t affected.”
Dream makes another noise, almost a squeak, even though George hadn’t kicked him. Or stepped on his toes. Strange man.
“I’m happy to hear that. And, what luck.” Now he does elbow Dream. “That’s just down the road from your house.”
“It is,” Dream agrees. He sounds a bit put out. Probably from being dragged into George’s mission, but he’d come in with that idiotic statement, so he really only has himself to blame. “What luck,” he echoes.
“I’ll let you be on your way,” George says, letting sympathy bleed back into his voice.
The shepherd offers his hand, and George takes it in both of his. A sealing of their deal, and another offer of condolences. George watches him take his cart horse by the lead, and the corpse with it.
He lets out a relieved breath of air, and then turns on Dream. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I thought-” Dream stutters, holding up his hands in defense. “I thought sheep did that. You said-”
“Ah,” George cuts him off, glancing around furtively. Luckily, most of the crowd has dispersed. He’s not sure how much harm it would do to him reputation-wise, normally, for it to be known that he and Dream had gotten a little handsy after the spring festival a month ago. But after Dream’s display of idiocy today, he hardly wants to be seen in public with the man. Even if he is nice to look at.
Truthfully, he’d been thinking about that warm, sticky night a lot. It was only shortly after Dream had come into town, and George had taken the role of showing him around the spring festival, since it could be overwhelming if you were new to it. He had, in the small hours of that morning, been called out to a sheep with its head stuck in a tree, and that little story might have found its way to Dream’s ear from his exasperated lips.
He and Dream have been—orbiting each other, since that night. It’s been fun, making charged eye contact across the street or just daydreaming about showing up on Dream’s doorstep on a lonely evening.
This isn’t what George had been expecting, and certainly not something he’d been planning. But maybe he can make the most of it.
“So when you say investigate…?” Dream says, cocking his head to the side.
George shrugs. “We’ll go look through the woods. See if we can find tracks or something.”
“I’m terrible at hunting.”
“Well, I’m not going into the woods alone. So.”
“I- I’ll be a liability. I’m clumsy, you know I’m clumsy, George. I’ll probably- step on the tracks. If there are any.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for you,” George says dryly.
It is a little strange, how Dream nearly looks sick at the notion. Maybe it’s the thought of being around George for so long. Maybe he just doesn’t like blood, or death. Whichever it is, George isn’t letting him out of it.
Dream’s shoulders slump. “Alright, fine. When do we start?”
George purses his lips like he’s really thinking about it. “Better get out there bright and early tomorrow.” He’s never seen Dream outside of his house before noon. “I’ll meet you at yours- say, an hour after dawn. Dress for walking.”
Before Dream can protest, he turns on his heel and leaves.
It feels good, to be a little petty. In his work, George has to put on a brave, kind face. People fear what they don’t know, and magic is a mostly lost art in these parts of the world. He’s lived in villages before that sung with magic. Spells for drying laundry and sweeping windowsills. Fake birdsong to liven dour halls. He’s been welcomed, here, for what he can provide, but it feels like he’s always walking an edge of acceptance, like if he isn’t working, he might be driven out.
If whatever happened to the sheep is of a magical sort, it’s best if George is the one to find it.
--
Just as promised, he shows up bright and early on Dream’s doorstep, a strange inversion of his fantasies.
He knocks, with no shame. The sound echoes. He wonders if Dream has decorated the house at all, or left it in the style of its former owner. The thought is a little sad. George’s own home is filled with all sorts of things—keepsakes from children he’s healed, plants for spells and potions. He’s traded magic for furniture built just to his liking.
Does Dream have a place like that? What did he leave behind, when he came here? Maybe George will ask when they’re traipsing through the woods together.
If Dream ever comes to open the door. George knocks again, and wraps his cloak a little tighter around his shoulders. His petty choice in timing has left him in the jaws of a cold morning, even with summer’s warm breath building.
There’s a heavy lock on the door. He can taste the bite of iron. It would still be an easy thing, for George to unlock it, but he can’t get a reputation for breaking and entering.
Finally, when George starts rubbing his hands together to keep them warm, the door swings open. Dream stands on the other side looking—awful.
“George,” he says, and his face is flat, but George hears the small curl of warmth in his voice. “Good morning.”
He wonders if Dream suffers from night terrors, looking at the bags under his eyes and the slouch of his body. He doesn’t look at all ready for adventuring, which won’t do. “Did I wake you?”
“No,” Dream says, and then seems to think better of it. “Yes. Sort of. I wasn’t- really sleeping. Are you cold?” His eyes have dropped to George’s hands, where they’re pressed together over his stomach, chasing his body heat. “Come in for a little. I have a fire going.”
A warm flicker of interest has George nodding in acceptance, and he steps past Dream to enter the house. It seems that his thinking was correct—the place looks like it was decorated by someone three times Dream’s age, and without his eye for artistry. Despite his current showing of outfit, George is usually quite impressed by Dream’s clothing, which is not at all reflected in the drab furniture or dull wall hangings.
“Come on,” Dream encourages, placing a hand on George’s lower back to guide him further in, and oh, it’s a nice feeling, the way Dream touches him, even through the layers of his cloak and shirt. He’s not sure he’ll need the fire to be warmed.
“I think you’re just trying to delay us going hunting,” George says, and he hears the way his voice sounds, and it makes him blush. He is absolutely flirting. That was half the point of all this, though, wasn’t it? Revenge—he’ll have opportunity aplenty to earn more of that—and time with Dream.
“Me?” Dream asks, pulling the hand not on George to his chest in faux offense. “Surely not.”
They step into another room, and the change in temperature is immediate. A fireplace flickers with warmth, and George sees the first sign of Dream’s touch on the house—a daybed sits in front of the fire, piled with pillows and blankets.
“Do you sleep out here?” George asks curiously.
“Sometimes,” Dream says. “It’s comfortable. I’ll show you.”
His hand presses against George’s back, directing him once more. George feels alight with fluttering feelings, swooping low in his stomach and up to his lungs, making his breath come a little short.
He sits, and the warmth of the fire is nice—it chases away the last of the chill—and then Dream is sitting next to him, pressed against him, and George feels hot. Dream’s hand slides to his waist so he’s nearly embracing George.
The last time they’d been this close, with alcohol blurring their lines and making them giggly and sloppy, had been rushed and frantic, though nothing more than a press of mouths and hands in an alley. George had repeated it in his mind enough that it might have left a permanent impression. He wants to feel Dream’s skin, the real warmth of him.
So, he takes it. He turns and finds Dream already looking at him, face still drawn in lines of exhaustion but brightened by a want to mirror George’s own. His eyes trace Dream’s lips, plush and pink around a small peek of teeth. That was one of the first things George noticed about Dream truthfully—the sharp points of his teeth. He remembers the feeling of them against his lips, his tongue.
He cups Dream’s cheek. His heart sings at the way Dream leans into it, how easily he sways forward when George pulls him closer and slots their lips together.
It’s a reunion, and it’s something entirely new. With the angle they're sitting at, George can tilt Dream’s head back and lick into his mouth—his lips part oh so eagerly—and feel the drag of his teeth against his tongue, and revel in the wet heat of him.
Dream is deliciously pliant. His hand stays on George’s hip, but he falls back when George presses at his chest so he can lie between his legs and cradle his head to kiss him down onto the cushions—and he was right, it is comfortable, and it smells like Dream, warm and a little wild—and he doesn’t go past George’s layers of clothes until George pulls enough away from his mouth to breathe “Touch me.”
George would like to do this properly naked, sometime, but he’s keeping it in the back of his mind that this is Dream distracting him, so he settles for arching up into Dream’s touch when he wriggles past layers of fabric to paw at his skin with his big, warm hands. He gasps into Dream’s mouth when he squeezes, and bites at his bottom lip when he feels the prickling pain of Dream’s nails.
He loses himself to the kiss, just as he had in the alley. A sort of lost where he vaguely knows where he is—the sun shining at his back, a landmark to his left—but doesn’t want to get back home yet. He wants to wander in the woods and flirt with the unknown, knowing he’ll be back in time for dinner.
Dream is more vocal than before. George had dared to hope that he would be, based on how their first kiss had ended—Dream pulling away to duck into his neck, a bitten off whine buried in George’s skin. He’s much less restrained now. When George sucks on his tongue or nibbles at his lip, noises pour out of him. And it’s a little quirk of George’s type of magic that he can taste Dream’s pleasure, the endless pool of his want.
When Dream rolls his hips up to meet George’s, George pulls away with a tsk. “We have a mission, you know.”
Dream chases after his lips, but George quite likes the desperation that pinches his brows, so he puts a hand lightly on Dream’s collar and keeps him down.
“You’re not thinking of the sheep.”
“They’re fine,” he says dismissively. “All still standing.”
“And how would you know?” George teases.
Dream flushes. “It’s- close. You know? I’d probably have heard if another one of them was being brutally murdered.”
“Oh?” George says, sitting back with genuine interest. Dream pouts at him for it, but George is a man who is not so easily tempted by pretty eyes and kiss swollen lips. Besides, they’ve been dancing around each other for so long—a few more hours can only be a delicious seasoning. “Did you hear when the first one died?”
Dream blinks. “No?”
“Are you sure? Not a baah-” George has his sheep impression down to a science. Dream huffs a laugh at it. “Or, like, a terrible ripping noise?”
“S’all peaceful out here.”
Dream’s lying about something. George can see it in the way he bites his lip, the uncertainty in his voice, the way his pulse races under George’s hand. But he realizes something else, along with it—Dream is always lying. It’s only within the surge of a direct lie that George can tell that the taste of untruth clings to Dream like a second skin. Interesting.
“Well, our walk in the woods should be nice, then.” He swings his legs off the couch and stands, primly resituating his mussed clothes.
Dream sighs and follows him up. His hair is falling across his forehead, and George reaches up to swipe it aside. “My fault,” he says at Dream’s questioning look. “I’m a problem solver.”
They don't exactly walk hand in hand, humming and skipping, to the site of a crime scene, but it’s a near thing.
George feels light. The taste of Dream’s mouth is still sweet on his tongue, the promise of more to come sweeter still. The morning has blossomed into a truly gorgeous day, blue sky studded by a few picturesque clouds, and an elegant breeze keeps the temperature from climbing too high.
It’s unlikely that they’ll find anything, George knows. Too long since the attack, too many other animals walking in the woods and pastures to cover up tracks. But he wants to give the shepherd peace of mind, so he drags Dream with him to the low fence that hems the pasture in—free of sheep, just as the shepherd had said it would be—and over.
“You need any help with that?” Dream asks cheekily after he easily steps over. He offers a hand as if George is a prince who wouldn’t know a sheep from a donkey. George takes it, and once he’s clear of the fence and Dream still hasn’t dropped his hand, he channels a small bit of magic through the touch, a touch of power that stings like a weak bite from an ant.
Dream doesn’t drop his hand, but he does narrow his eyes. “What was that for?”
“Felt like it,” George says. Dream huffs at him like a dog, and then drops his hand. It’s a practical measure, since the field is mired with sheep refuse and dented by their hooves, and it wouldn’t do any good for one of them to trip and drag the other down. Still, George feels a little bad, and offers Dream a nudge with his shoulder as they walk toward the woods.
Dream nudges him back, and George tucks a secret smile into the corner of his mouth.
“Do you have any ideas of what it might be?” Dream asks.
George has been thinking about it, but he hasn’t come up with any good answers. Maybe if he’d looked at the wound closer, to determine if it was made by claws or teeth or something else, he’d have a better idea, but he’d been too squeamish, and now he’s got nothing to go off of.
“No,” he sighs. “My nearest guess would be human. I don't think anything else would leave the body. Maybe it’s a cruel prank, or a mistake.”
“Could be,” Dream muses. “Do you know anything about the shepherd? Does he have enemies?”
“Are you asking me for gossip? It’s you who haunts the inn most every afternoon, last I checked.”
“You’re the mage,” Dream argues. Their arms brush together with nearly every step. “You know everyone. Everyone knows you.”
“Exactly. Everyone knows that I know everyone. No one would tell me their secrets, especially not if it’s a grudge.”
“What a tragic life.”
“Only if I was a gossip.” George is. Not in a cruel way, and not in the manner that he wants to gather information for himself. He misses his friends from home—they’d swap information about anything and everything, just to have something to talk about. “Like you,” he tacks on, when he feels that Dream might pick up on his sudden sullenness. It’s easily shaken in the face of a beautiful day and—he’ll admit—with Dream at his side.
“What is history if not gossip,” Dream says. “D’you think I could make this a book? The sheep murders?”
“If you embellish plenty and sell it right,” George snorts. “And make me the hero.”
“That’s not how history works. It’s not a story.”
“Well, someone is writing it, and I imagine their perspective colors the whole thing. You wouldn’t make me the hero?”
They’ve reached the edge of the woods. They’re a little intimidating, up close, and George is glad for it when Dream reaches out and squeezes his hand, a there and gone gesture.
“Maybe I want to keep you for myself,” Dream murmurs, ducking in close to say it in George’s ear.
“Mmm, selfish,” George says, pushing down the warmth that rises again in his belly, not so easily quelled by distance from the daybed and the fire. Oh, how prominently all of it will feature in his dreams. Already, it’s taken on an unreal quality, hazy and blurred at the edges. He shakes his head to dispel it and Dream’s words. “Look for footprints,” he instructs. “We’ll walk the perimeter of the field. Not much point in looking beyond.”
Despite his words the day before about being clumsy, Dream takes the lead, head bowed as he intently scans the leaf litter for tracks. Only a few places are bare enough that they’d show footprints at all, but the futility of the task doesn’t bother George beyond regret that he won’t have much of a report for the shepherd. It’s nice, being with Dream like this.
And then Dream stumbles, just a little. It looks like he tripped over his own feet, and he’s managed to do it in one of the clearest areas.
George laughs at him, the sound echoing off the tree trunks. “Did you manage to scuff up the tracks?” he teases. Dream ducks his head and then shuffles his feet a little more.
“Haven’t seen any,” Dream reports, a little breathless, likely with adrenaline from his near-fall. “I’ll keep looking, though.”
And on they go.
“I should have asked him where he found the body,” George grumbles. The pasture is deceptively large, hidden behind rolling hills and a varied treeline. They haven’t seen anything more suspicious than a rabbit darting off into a bush.
Eventually, they make it to the end of the pasture, marked off by the same low fence. George shakes his head at it, like he can blame it for a lack of evidence.
“We’d better find him, then,” he says. “You can leave, if you want.”
Dream blinks, and then shakes his head. “If I had to wake up early I’m sticking with you.”
That sounds like a backwards logic to George, but he doesn’t hide his smile this time. And Dream is so close—he can’t resist swaying forward and pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you,” he says. “It gets lonely, doing this kind of work alone.”
“I always wondered,” Dream says.
“It’s nice sometimes.” They’ve started walking toward the house that sits between the pastures, a distant shape on the horizon. “I like the quiet, and I’m, you know, not a half-bad mage.”
Dream hums along. George links their pinkies together.
“But—and don’t take offense if you’ve felt the same—I can tell that people don’t quite trust me. Or maybe, that they don’t really see me as one of them. I’m always ‘the mage.’ They see me and they think about what I can do for them.” He swallows, panting a little at their trek, and then carries on. “Which is my job, obviously. I get to stay in the mage’s house without paying anything to anyone, and I get food wherever I want it, and there’s money built in to the running of the town to get me all the plants and herbs I could want-”
“But you’re still human,” Dream says softly. “George, hey, that’s all so, so normal. You’re not bad for feeling like that. And people should treat you better.”
There’s a heaviness in Dream’s voice, a sorrow George has never really heard from him. He supposes they can probably relate to each other, in a way. No one really understands Dream, or where he came from. Why he gets to move into the big, untouched house, and spend time in the village without doing much of anything.
“Thanks,” he says, swallowing back a lump in his throat. “I think they’ll get used to me eventually. It’s only been a year.”
Dream huffs again. “Seems like plenty of time to me.”
Fuck, George likes him. He’s sweet and he’s funny, and he goes along where George drags him. It’s different to know that he likes looking at and kissing Dream, to knowing he wants to be around him. How addictive it is. Maybe he’s not so sad that this case seems unsolvable—he can drag Dream out into the woods again, and again.
They find the shepherd’s wife near the house. George tells her, regretfully, that they weren’t able to find anything out of place, and she accepts it gracefully, inviting them in for tea.
The house is cozy. There are small children tucked into corners and under blankets, and most of them stare at George like overgrown owls. He tries a smile, and gets a high-pitched giggle in return.
Dream is a talker. Despite the lack of sleep that shadows his eyes, he pulls the shepherd’s wife and a few of the braver children into a conversation that is, somehow, not about sheep—probably a good idea with them being a sore subject at the moment. George mostly listens to the timbre of his voice and sips at his tea, chiming in when he feels the need.
They don’t overstay their welcome. Once the tea is gone, they excuse themselves from the table with hearty thanks. Outside, George’s pinky finds Dream’s again.
“You want to come back to mine?” Dream asks. He sounds a little nervous, and George is sure that if he touched his cheek, he’d find him blushing.
George pretends to think on it, even as his body and mind are set on an enthusiastic yes.
He doesn’t get time to say so. Someone appears on the path that leads from town to the shepherd’s house, speeding up when they see George. He sighs.
“Mage!” they say. “I heard I could find you here. My daughter’s come down with a fever,” they continue, fear coloring their voice. “Could you…”
“Of course,” George says, already mapping out the supplies he’ll need to grab. To Dream; “Raincheck?”
“Alright,” Dream sighs, unlinking their pinkies and stepping aside. “But, ah, I won’t be home tonight.”
George blinks. “Okay.”
“Tomorrow,” Dream says. “Not so early, though. Hah.”
“We’ll see.”
Dream rolls his eyes and then waves, walking backwards until he nearly stumbles. And then George watches him go, missing him already.
“Mage?”
“Right,” he says, squaring his shoulders until he feels like the mage again, and not someone who chases after Dream’s touch. “We’ll need to stop at my house, but I can help your daughter.”
--
By the time night falls, George is thinking of nothing but collapsing into his bed. One task had turned to another and another—not an unfamiliar sequence of events for him, but one that always leaves him feeling entirely drained. The combination of using magic and running around town to answer every voice that calls for him—it’s an overwhelming type of exhaustion that has him squinting at the lock on his door for a long few moments, trying to remember what, exactly, a key is. He opens it with a twist of magic instead, and hardly even remembers wriggling out of his clothes and crawling under the blankets.
The upside is—he sleeps great. Dreamless and deep, and when the sun squints through the curtains he’d failed to draw closed, he wakes easily.
His first thought is that he would very much like to see Dream. His second thought is that he ought to go back and re-check the woods, in case the—potential—beast came in the night. It’s easy enough to resolve his two wants, knowing that Dream will be cross with him if he shows up early again.
It’s not nearly as fun to walk the edge of the woods alone, but he gets it done much quicker than he and Dream had managed. It’s a rote task for the most part, eyes scanning over brush and trees and dirt.
His heart skips in his chest when he gets to the place where Dream had stumbled yesterday, that clear patch of dirt. The scuff marks of Dream’s boots are still there, faintly—but over the top of them are great big tracks.
At first, George thinks they’re human. A strangely barefoot and large human, but the print is longer than any animal’s. It only takes crouching down—careful not to disturb any of the myriad of tracks left in the dirt—to dispel that notion. At the end of each toe is a divot, lighter than the rest of the print, but clearly left by claws.
Shit, George thinks. This is the outcome he’d feared most. It would have been awful, to confirm that a human had killed the poor sheep for nothing more than violence for violence’s sake, but a beast like this is bad news for George, bad news for getting the villagers to accept magic.
Because only a magical creature could leave a print like that.
George’d never specialized in the study of them. For the most part, they’d been pushed to the edges of the world centuries ago, or quietly faded into human civilization. You’d hear stories—frequently—of faeries and devils, but most of those were only meant to excuse human actions or scare children. But every mage worth his salt knew that the magical creatures weren’t really gone. There’d hardly be any magic left in the world if that were true, and George feels the beating, humming pulse of it right alongside his own.
He takes a worn notebook from his cloak. It’s mostly, embarrassingly, filled with little words of motivation. Every mage he’s ever met has a terribly personalized little book full of their favorite spells and ingredients. George’s live safely in his head, but he carries the book anyway for appearances and times like these.
The quality of his sketch isn’t great, he can admit that. But he gets the important parts, the relative length of the heel to the toes and the dips of the claws. He feels oddly excited to show it to Dream—a real clue. Surely a historian can appreciate a mystery like this. It’s easier to think about than what it might mean for George if—when—it really does turn out to be a magical creature.
He finishes walking the border of the woods, just to ensure he’s not getting overly confident and missing more clues, but finds nothing.
It’s late enough—the sun is firmly risen in the sky, nowhere near dawn any longer—that he doesn’t feel bad going straight to Dream’s house. If he avoids the main path and sticks close to the woods to avoid being pulled into more tasks, then that’s a little secret to keep between him and the trees.
Dream opens the door before he can knock, a crooked grin on his face. “Hiya George,” he says.
He looks better rested. George feels a little bad for dragging him out so early yesterday. “Dream. You won’t believe what I found.”
Dream’s face twitches before resolving into a dimmer smile than before. Was he bluffing about not wanting to go? Should George have waited for him? “Oh? What, uh, what is it?”
“Can I come in?”
“If you insist,” Dream says, already stepping aside.
George is amused to see that he’s made an effort to clean the house up. There’s less dust on the—still clearly unused—furniture in the entryway, and a small bouquet of wildflowers set out on a small table near the fireplace, which is merrily crackling away again.
“When’d you have the time to pick these?” George asks curiously, brushing a gentle finger over them. He thinks he’d seen a few in the woods, drooping with dew. The blue had caught his eye, standing out in the yellow and brown of the forest. “Don’t tell me you went out early without me.”
“You did it first,” Dream grumbles. “But, no way. I picked them last night.”
“Ah,” George hums. “The secret nightly adventures.”
“Hey,” Dream says, changing the subject rather abruptly. George wonders after what he could be hiding, tucks it away to puzzle over later. “What’d you find?”
“Come look.” George settles down in front of the fire, taking a seat crossed-legged on the floor rather than returning to the daybed. He’s not sure he could focus if he were back there, surrounded by Dream’s scent and yesterday’s memories.
Dream follows like a loyal dog, sitting across from George with enough space for the notebook to lie flat between them. George flips quickly past his pages of quotes and little musings to the wobbly lines of his drawing.
“A clue,” he says, though it feels obvious. “I found it in that place yesterday where you tripped. Maybe it caught your scent,” he laughs a little to himself. “Maybe it thought you’d be easy prey, with how clumsy you are on even flat ground.”
Dream scoffs. He traces the edges of the sketch. “How big was it?”
George holds his hands up and apart, approximating. Dream, the idiot, waggles his eyebrows.
“Big,” George says. “There’s no way it was any normal animal.”
“And not a human either.”
“A prank, maybe. Though I just- I have a feeling it’s not that.” He sighs. “I can’t stop thinking of how people will react, if it is some kind of magical creature.”
“What do you mean?” Dream asks, cocking his head and furrowing his eyebrows. “You think- you think they’d blame you if it was? Even though you’ve been helping?”
“Fear isn’t all too rational.” George fiddles with the hem of his cloak. “I’m probably just being paranoid. Obviously, I’ll do anything to find it. And,” he swallows. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world if I had to move on. I like it here, but if people couldn’t stand to have me around-”
Dream looks almost sick, face pale and hands curled together in his lap. He shakes his head viciously. “No. I wouldn’t let them. You shouldn’t even have to think like that.”
“I was only joking about you writing me as the hero,” George laughs, though it comes out a little strangled. The depth of emotion in Dream’s eyes and voice—perhaps he doesn’t need to be sitting on the daybed to lose himself in feeling. “I’m not sure anyone would listen to you.”
“I’d make them.” Dream’s voice is steely. “No matter what, I’d make sure they know it’s not your fault.”
“Well then,” George says, and he can’t meet Dream’s gaze any longer. His cheeks are burning and his belly is squirming in that pleasant way again. “I’ve heard this house has a rather nice library.”
“Oh, did you?” Dream teases, and the slope of his body relaxes into something more manageable, though not any less tantalizing. “The second floor does happen to have quite a few books. Not sure you could call it a library.”
“It’s the closest I can get. Would you let me use it?”
“Obviously. This is our mystery, isn’t it?”
Dream leads him by the hand up the stairs to the library. George is a little surprised to find it in excellent condition—free of dust and well organized.
“Someone comes by once a month and tidies it up,” Dream admits while George pokes around. There’s only one area made for sitting, the rest taken up by books, and Dream is sprawled out on it. “But I do come up here often. It’s- nice. Peaceful. And I love reading.”
“Would you happen to know where books on monsters might be kept?” George asks. His heart flutters at Dream’s admission, and he can so easily imagine him curled up with a book.
He looks away from the books long enough to see the end of a flinch cross Dream’s face.
“I’m not sure,” he answers. His voice is carefully even. “I mostly read the fiction ones.”
“That’s okay,” George says, dipping his voice into a bit of softness, though he’s not sure what’s set Dream off. “I like looking.”
“Wake me up if I fall asleep.”
“I’ll do it by throwing a book at your head.”
The collection proves to be more mysterious than George had first thought.
Fiction is woven together with books he’d studied to become a mage. There are gaps, where he thinks tomes on magical creatures ought to have been shelved. He doesn’t ask Dream if anyone has been over to borrow books, not wanting to disturb the light sleep he’s fallen into. In fact, George gets a little caught up in looking at Dream’s lax face. There’s a peacefulness to it that he hadn’t even noticed was missing, but it’s evident in the smooth lines of his face and the small smile that seems to naturally curl across his mouth.
Has he been so caught up in himself that he’s missed something being truly wrong with Dream? It feels like he’s always picking up on small inconsistencies in his mood or reactions, but nothing seems to connect them. A mystery within a mystery.
Eventually, George settles for a dusty book—maybe the only one in the entire library—that he finds in the wrong section and lost between larger entries.
It’s amateurish, from the binding to the penmanship, but it promises observations on magical creatures, so George takes it to the settee and, gently, nudges Dream out from sleep with a hand on his shoulder.
He blinks awake slowly, lashes fluttering and body lengthening with an elegant stretch that takes up the entirety of the settee. “You find something?” he slurs, voice deep with sleep, as if he’s awoken from a full night of it and not a nap. When he sees the book in George’s hands, his eyes widen. “Where the hell did you find that?”
“Got lucky poking around,” George says. “Move. I need to sit.”
Dream is doing a very good job of taking up all the space. George raises an eyebrow at him when he doesn’t budge.
“I want to read with you,” he says, and sits up. “No point in us working together otherwise, right?” There’s a very alluring twinkle in his eye. “Sit in front of me.” He pats the cushions, and George quickly gets the idea.
With an indulgent sigh, he settles between Dream’s spread legs, his back to Dream’s chest, the book in his lap. Dream hooks his chin over George’s shoulder, and George’s skin prickles like he’s just done a particularly satisfying bit of magic. He relaxes in Dream’s hold and flips the book open.
The pages aren’t so brittle that they fall apart under his touch, but it’s a near thing. The age is a good sign, though—a chance that it was written in a time when magical creatures were much more common. George’s hands are a little shaky, with Dream pressed warm and solid against his back, nearly draped over him. But he’s not going to ask him to move. He’s too selfish, and too weak, for that.
He flips slowly through the pages, to be both delicate and thorough. It seems as if the author has made up the names for most of the beasts within, since George can recognize some of the descriptions but isn’t at all familiar with the titles they’re filed under.
They seem to be grouped by number of limbs, which is an odd enough choice as to be enduring. He skims the sections on sea creatures and their many, flailing appendages, able to safely cross them off the suspect list. It’s slower going when he gets to the creatures with four limbs. The spacing between footprints had suggested that the creature was bipedal, but of course the book first goes through those that walk on all four.
He reaches the first bipedal creature—and he’s fairly certain it’s only a description of an ape—when Dream moves. Not away, oh no, only tilting his head to press a light kiss to George’s shoulder. He’d discarded his cloak before settling in to read, so it’s easy enough for Dream to shrug aside the fabric of his shirt and get at his bare skin. He shivers, and feels the curve of Dream’s smile.
“You’re distracting me,” he murmurs.
“Maybe that’s the point.”
“I thought-” Dream’s teeth brush his ear, and he stutters over his words. “I thought we were a team.”
“Does this not feel like teamwork?” Dream is so close, so wrapped around him, that George feels like he’s everywhere. Can it be teamwork if they’re near to melting into one body? “I’m helping. You’re so-” Dream licks behind his ear, which should be gross. Gooseflesh rises across George’s skin. “Pent up. Focused. Always.”
It’s not even really true—George takes plenty of time for himself. He’d gotten a full night of sleep! But Dream is—hard to disagree with.
Resigned—and already so distracted he’s not sure that he could get back on track, even if he really tried—he closes the book and lets it thump to the floor. “Alright,” he breathes, boldly taking Dream’s hand and pressing it between his legs. Dream groans into the sloppy kiss he’s trailing down George’s neck. “Distract me.”
--
Dream has absolutely no food in his house, so they leave together for lunch. Predictably, George only gets a few bites into his before someone approaches the table and asks for his help with something or other.
There’s a sad smile etched on Dream’s face when George quickly finishes his meal and gathers his things. George doesn’t meet his gaze—he’s sure it would be begging him to stay, to relax and take just a little more time to himself. But George has taken the whole morning. He’s made no progress on the investigation. The least he can do is help the people who seek him out.
“See you tomorrow?” Dream offers.
George isn’t sure he could go an entire day without seeing—without touching—Dream. He smiles, and the one Dream returns is genuine and warm.
He heals blight in a gorgeous garden. Dispels a curse that had gotten stuck on a boot after a long journey at sea. Tries not to cringe when he has to take a very large spider out of a kitchen.
Using his magic doesn’t drain him. He feels like he’s brimming with it, an excess pressed into his skin where Dream’s hands had been hours ago. He’s strangely giddy as well, stifling the joy that keeps trying to crawl on his face while dealing with people in crisis.
When he arrives home for the evening, it’s still light out. He takes his time watering plants and tidying up, even tucking a few new keepsakes into various nooks and crannies.
Satisfied with all the work of the day, he settles at a table with a candle and the book from the library.
Despite his comfort in his own home, and the satisfaction of a day well-spent, reading the book with its thin pages and spidery writing alone by candlelight is a bit eerie. The descriptions of the bipedal creatures also tend toward the abstract, and his imagination runs a little wild, making their shapes out of the dancing shadows.
Moon-sworn. A chill runs down his spine as he traces the word. It’s not a term he’s heard, like all the others in the book, but he can imagine what it describes.
He nearly falls out of his seat when a pounding knock echoes through the house.
Magic sparks at his fingertips as he creeps toward the door. He could probably knock just about anyone flat on their back in this moment, with fear sanding the edges off his limits and power pooling in his chest. He summons a light to float over his shoulder, steady, unlike the candles that have driven him to near paranoia.
He opens the door with a wave of his hand.
The sounds of the night sweep into the house. Chittering mammals and crooning bugs, the distant rush of the river and rustle of leaves. And on George’s doorstep is the shepherd, his face twisted with fear and sadness.
George drops his hands immediately, magic gone into the night. “More deaths?”
“Five of them,” the shepherd says. His chin wobbles as he tries to draw up strength. “And I found this.”
He pulls a folded cloth from his pocket, and passes it to George. Under his magelight, he lets it fall open in his palm. Fur. Light brown. The length of a dog’s, but not quite so soft.
His first thought is wolves. But shepherds know how to deal with those creatures of the night.
“Was it the same kind of death?” George asks. He doesn’t temper his voice with softness—this calls for action. “Nothing eaten?”
“It was. And even the- the pieces taken from them were left behind.”
George nods. “I’m so sorry. But with this-” he carefully closes the cloth back over the bit of fur. “-I should be able to track the beast.”
Relief flashes over the shepherd’s face. “Truly?”
“It might take time. It’s a complicated spell, and fur is- distant. But it’s far more than I’ve had to work with so far.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t find anything else,” the shepherd says, and George waves him off. “I’ll go tomorrow and check with my closest neighbors. See if any of them have had similar losses.”
George bites back a wince. He doesn’t want this to spread. He wants it kept safely between him and the shepherd and Dream, but the deaths of more sheep would only bring worse hysteria. “That’s kind of you. Would you like me to walk you home? I assume the kills of the- the beast were recent.”
“I believe they happened right as night fell, and I was only slightly delayed in finding them. And please, Mage, do not worry about me. You’re already doing so much.”
“Be safe,” George says, accepting this as a point of pride. “Take this with you.” He gestures for his ball of light to drift to the shepherd. “It will dispel when you tell it to.”
The shepherd bows over his hands and murmurs a thank you, and then he’s off into the night. George watches him go until he can’t see the light any longer, and turns back inside with the cloth held carefully in his hand. He’s very glad for the excess of magic. He’ll call on it until it runs dry.
--
Dawn finds George exhausted and angry.
His tracking spell is off. He’d tried it—and several variations—over and over, until the well of his magic dried up. But every time, he could only feel himself pulled toward Dream’s house.
He’s flawed. Distracted. Failing, because he can’t stop thinking about Dream’s hands and mouth.
There’s nothing to do but keep trying. To push through until he truly can focus, and Dream is far from his mind.
So he fixes himself a hearty meal and scarfs it down. His own library has little going on in contrast to Dream’s—even on the front of organization—but he pulls down the largest spellbook he has and pores over every tracking spell it knows. He sets aside those that need ingredients he doesn’t have. Better to try the ones he can, than waste time collecting the strange things some of the spells call for.
On top of the meal, he downs a potion meant to rejuvenate his magical reserves. Because it’s an outside magic source—even though it was brewed by him—it doesn’t quite fit within his body like his natural magic, or even the strange overflow from the day before. He feels outside of himself. The words of the spells swim off the page, and even when he can pin them down, they don’t make any sense unless he says them aloud to himself.
It’s a mess. He’s a mess.
So when the knock comes—and it’s not even uncommon for him to receive this many—he’s preparing a speech about how he can’t be distracted from his current task and he is terribly sorry. He has to steel himself for it, with his track record of refusing anything the village’s people ask of him.
But he doesn’t find a villager asking after a charm standing on his doorstep, nor the worse option of a shepherd come to report more deaths.
It’s Dream.
“Are you okay?” he asks, immediately upon seeing George. “You don’t look well.”
“Thanks,” George grumbles.
“Come on- I only know it so well because I’ve seen it in my own face so many times. Did you sleep at all? What happened?”
George dips his head to show he doesn’t truly hold any hard feelings. “More dead sheep. And I still know nothing.”
“How many more?”
“Five. The shepherd came to me last night. He hasn’t come back-” he pauses. Looks over Dream’s shoulder, to the bright day beyond him. “It’s not morning.”
“Just past noon,” Dream says gently.
“Well,” George sighs. “I hope that means it was only those five—and how awful is it of me to say that?”
Dream’s expression shifts, but George is too tired to parse it. “Can I come in?”
“‘Course.” He steps aside, feeling a little ashamed of the state of his home. There are spell ingredients and books scattered everywhere. The air has a sulphuric tinge to it, a sign of an overuse of magic. “Sorry.”
Dream gets distracted looking at a shelf of plants, and George takes the opportunity to tidy up his main work table. He closes and slides the book from Dream’s library under another, and—on a whim he can’t explain, even to himself—he folds up the cloth with the bit of fur still in it, and tucks it into a pocket of his cloak where it’s draped over a chair.
“Sorry for what?” Dream asks. “This is so nice.”
“People usually say cluttered.” He wipes his sweaty palms on his pants, feeling guilty for hiding things from Dream.
“Idiots.”
A beat of silence passes. George feels like if he blinks for too long he’s going to fall asleep standing up, and he doesn’t know what to say.
“Did you need something?” he tries, and then cringes. Dream isn’t someone come asking for his help. And George wants him here.
Luckily, it only draws an amused smile from him. “Got worried when you didn’t come try to knock my door down at sunrise. I slept in today.”
“Maybe it’s that only one of us can get a good night of sleep at a time. Universe is out of balance otherwise.”
“Hmm.” Dream crosses his arms and cocks his head, a performance of thinking. George is certain that whatever he’s about to propose is an idea he doesn’t need to reach for. “Does the universe care if we both nap?”
“I’d have to ask it,” George drawls. “You want me to get out some cards?”
“I say we risk it.”
George bites his lip, and then shakes his head. A reluctant refusal. “I need to keep working.”
“George,” Dream groans. “You aren’t getting anything done.”
“And it’s partially because you distract me.” It comes out with more venom than George intends. “I- no, that’s not it. I let you distract me. And I need to stop.”
Dream steps across the room, and scoops George’s hands up in his. He’s warm. Gentle. “I really do just mean a nap,” he says. “I’m sure you have a spell that can wake us in a short amount of time. Let yourself rest for a little while. Think of it like this; you’re only wasting time not getting anything done while you’re too tired to focus.” He pauses, raises an eyebrow until George gives an assenting nod. “If you rest, you can come back stronger. Get things done quicker.”
“Fine,” George says. He pulls Dream closer by their connected hands, and then all but collapses into his chest. “God, I’m so tired,” he murmurs. Dream smells good. So unlike the oozing magic of George’s home, but, somehow, he fits with it. A wilder kind of magic, maybe. Or perhaps George is beginning to lose his mind.
Dream presses a kiss so soft to the crown of his head that it makes George want to weep. “I don’t know where your room is,” he says, voice low and careful. “Otherwise I’d offer to carry you.”
“Let me keep some pride,” George says. His voice is muffled in Dream’s shirt. He kind of doesn’t want to move, ever, but he makes himself take a step back, though he keeps one hand firmly intertwined with Dream’s.
He keeps his eyes half closed as he moves through the house, going mostly off memory and instinct. Dream trails behind him like a loyal dog.
By contrast to the rest of the house, George’s bedroom is relatively simple. He’s got a few art pieces on the walls, and a small pile of trinkets at his bedside table, but it could otherwise be described as plain. It’s a nice respite on days when things feel overwhelming, though he soon comes to miss the chaos.
Unconcerned with what Dream sees—or, maybe, just not worried about his reaction—George strips down to his underclothes, and then crawls into bed with a happy sigh. Exhaustion crashes over him so entirely that the corners of his vision go black, a sure sign of magical overtaxing. Oops. He stays awake long enough to watch Dream pull his own clothes off—and to hope that the visual will visit his dreams—and then he’s out.
His dreams, in reality, are strangely shadowy. He’s at the edge of the woods. An entire herd of sheep mills near him, and he tries to convince them to leave, but they won’t listen to him.
“Danger,” he says, again and again and again. But he can’t seem to get himself to believe it.
He wakes in Dream’s arms, head tucked under his chin.
Despite Dream’s suggestion, he hadn’t set any sort of magical alarm. Judging by the waning light in the room, evening has taken them. George feels far more rested than he thinks he ought to. With a clearer head, he can admit just how far he’d drained himself.
But he’s nearly buzzing with energy now. Maybe, he thinks a little giddily, Dream holding him has something to do with it. God, George hasn’t let himself be a romantic for so long, and now certainly isn’t the time for it, but… No other explanation comes to mind, and he doesn’t think it would be wise to dedicate time to figuring it out. Maybe his stars have aligned. Maybe he’s dying. There’s a mystery to solve.
He nuzzles at Dream’s bare skin. Warm. A little tacky with sweat, from cuddling through a warm afternoon. He presses a kiss under Dream’s chin. Down the line of his throat.
A small rumbling noise builds in Dream’s chest, almost like a purr, and George listens to his breathing quicken as he wakes up. It’s fascinating to feel a body come alive pressed against him. He could do this every morning—or, evening, if naps would be commonplace.
“George?” Dream asks, like he’s not sure where he is.
“Hi,” George says, rearranging himself so he’s face-to-face with Dream. “Our nap went a little long. I think it’s going to backfire, and I’ll stay up all night again.”
He expects Dream to tease him back. Maybe offer to come over for another distraction tomorrow. Instead, he tenses. His eyes flick over George’s shoulder to the window, and widen.
“I need to leave,” he says. “I’m- don’t stay up all night. Okay?” He leans forward and presses a kiss to the tip of George’s nose, and then he’s pulling away. George stares at the line of his back in bewilderment.
“...What?” he asks, belatedly. “Leaving?”
“I have- things to do. You should rest some more.”
“I can’t,” George whines. There’s so much to do, and Dream is leaving. “Cancel them. Stay with me.”
Dream turns back to him, and George freezes. His face is heartbreaking. He looks like he’s being torn in two, but George can’t see what’s hurting him. He doesn’t know how to help.
In silence, Dream pulls his clothes back on. He keeps looking back at George. He doesn’t want to go, George thinks. But he always has somewhere to be when night falls.
Something clicks for George. It’s blurry, indistinct, more hunch than hypothesis, but he has to fight to keep his face calm as Dream, fully clothed, ducks down to press a kiss to his forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he promises. “Don’t kill yourself working too hard.”
“Alright,” George says, heart racing as he pretends to settle back onto the pillows. “See you.”
He listens to the patter of Dream’s feet through the house, and then the whoosh of the door closing behind him. And he sits up.
The clothes he hurriedly picks out are dyed dark, greens and browns that’ll blend into the shadows of night. Regretfully, he leaves his cloak behind, taking only what meager spell ingredients he can fit in his pockets. He’s so alive with magic and energy, heart beating in his throat, that he doesn’t think he’s likely to need them, anyway.
The final item he grabs before leaving is the scrap of fur.
It’s easy to sneak through the night, to follow Dream’s trail. He’s used to avoiding the eyes of the villagers when he needs to travel without being stopped and asked to run an errand, and he uses that knowledge now. He only catches a glimpse of Dream when he appears on the crest of a hill, but he’s headed exactly where George had expected him to—his house. Out on the edge of town, near the fields of the bereaved shepherd.
His mind is strangely blank as he follows after Dream. He’s focused on stepping carefully. Of ducking away when he hears voices, but moving quick enough that he won’t miss—whatever it is he’s going to find.
Dream’s house rises familiar and large in his field of vision. It’s backed up right to the woods.
With shaking hands, George pulls the fur from his pocket, and murmurs his most basic and reliable tracking spell over it. He feels himself pulled, and throwing caution to the wind, he lets it guide him, uncaring for hiding himself away. It takes him close to the outer walls of the house, and then beyond, toward the forest. It’s full of shadows still settling in the last of the light, and George’s eyes dart between them.
He doesn’t see Dream. The pull of the spell tells him he’s far, that he’s covered more ground than any human should be able.
And at the edge of the woods, he finds a pile of clothes that he knows well. He imagines they’d looked much the same, discarded on the floor of his bedroom.
--
He makes it home in a numb daze, and sleeps again; there’s no point in staying up to figure out the end of a mystery that’s been under his nose the entire time. Distracting him. He could have held a vigil, probably, to watch over the remaining sheep, but a black cloud of thought has him leaning toward what’s a few more?
It’s mostly awful knowing that he has to handle it. There was never going to be a clear resolution, once he was sure that it was a magical problem, but the worst of the outcomes had looked like fighting to regain approval, or being forced out of the village. This is far, far worse.
And he should have seen it. Dream’s bumbling in the beginning. His insistence on being with George to look for evidence, all his reactions to—all the times George had called him a monster.
That’s the real crux of it. Dream is, by every definition George has laid out, a monster. The beast.
In the light of day, he flips to the page on the moon-sworn again. A creature of the night, of transformation. He’d swear he can see where the hand of the writer trembled as they wrote the words.
George reads it, and reads it again, but the worst truth of all is that the book hardly knows anything about the beasts. It suggests further reading through titles George is sure he has no hope of finding.
There’s a final note, inked into a margin almost as an afterthought—a creature of the devils? Seduction is a strong weapon. George’s hand tightens on the page, and he hears the fibers of it strain not to tear. Maybe he ought to rip it out. Maybe he found it, tucked away—and, gods, Dream probably hid all the rest of the books that could have helped him—as chance, so he could be the one to rewrite the entry.
A taste for sheep, though it doesn’t eat them. Warm. Good at hiding, if the one it hopes to fool is guileless.
Has Dream always been this way? From the moment George first saw him, new to town and wide-eyed with wonder and hope. What’re you so excited for? George had asked him. It was cute, his enthusiasm for a sleepy little corner of the world.
A fresh start, Dream’d said.
Maybe there’s a swathe of dead sheep in his wake. Maybe—worse.
George doesn’t know what he believes. He doesn’t know what he thinks. He misses Dream. His touch. His words. The soft way he’d urged George to sleep, how he’d stayed and held him.
Time feels syrupy, slow. George is a fly caught in amber. Subject to fate and nothing more, incapable of changing what’s to come unless he can free himself, and he doesn’t know how to do that without knowing what to do and he doesn’t want to make things worse but he’s so afraid that he will.
He thinks of the day before. Dream coming to find him. How happy he’d been, through his haze of exhaustion, that Dream had been thinking of him. And whatever the real reason for Dream’s visit, George needs to keep him away. Just for today. Just long enough for him to find a path forward, or to shutter his emotions.
Stumbling, he rises from his seat and goes to the door that opens out into the lush garden that he’s worked so hard to coax from the earth. Whichever mage had taken this house before him had left it in quite a state, and the time between their residencies had only worsened it. It’s got a healthy glow of life now.
George whistles, a sharp, rising note. A small bird emerges from under a bush and alights from the ground to land on his finger.
“Can you deliver a message for me, sweet thing?” he asks, putting a touch of magic in his words. The bird twitters, its small feet digging into his skin, little prickles of life that jolt up his arm and pull him, just barely, from a stupor of pity.
He leans close and whispers to it, a long, rambling tale of being pulled in every which direction by chores and villagers. How he’s so terribly sorry, but they’ll have to put off the investigation for the day, and he’ll miss seeing Dream. He wishes that weren’t true.
The bird bobs its head and then takes off, small wings flinging it into the air and to Dream. It will sing his message exactly as he said it. He hopes it doesn’t give Dream a fright. He hopes that it works.
--
It does. Like a charm—though George makes no progress in a plan for what to do about the killing, about the beast. There’s just not enough information in the book, and he can’t go to Dream and ask to see the ones he’d hidden, and he can’t risk being pulled away to attend to inane things if he leaves his house, so he winds in an increasingly tight spiral, pacing his house and reading and rereading the single page from the book. He reads it upside down. Holds it up to a mirror. Lights a candle and squints for hidden messages, but, of course, there’s nothing.
It’s maddening.
Everything has gone wrong without any material change. If he hadn’t had a hunch to follow Dream last night, he’d know nothing at all. Maybe he’d have been out looking for prints again, or grumbling over the fur. Or perhaps he and Dream could have spent another day in the library, panting into each other's mouths. He hates how desire still swirls in him at the thought.
Maybe it’s latent desire that makes him reckless. Maybe it’s simply the setting sun washing the room in golden-orange light. Maybe he simply can’t stand another moment inside.
With practical, hurried efficiency, he gathers his cloak and a combat satchel. It’s already padded with ingredients for flashy, violent spells, but he checks them over just to be sure, and smiles grimly at the confirmation that he’s ready.
But he doesn’t leave with the thought of facing Dream down. On his own doorstep, he cloaks himself in a spell of hiding. It’s simple enough as to not take much energy, but none who don’t know to look for him will see as he passes, or as he follows. And who would think to see him in the woods? Not Dream. Not the beast.
George wonders over if the beast thinks at all, as he walks. If he acts as an animal, surely he would eat the sheep he kills, so he must think like a creature of darkness. Craving only to create death.
It’s a very clear night.
George’s magic sits condensed in his chest. Normally, he’d describe it as something about and around him. Reaching out to the world. He feels heavier with it so close, but more in control. His emotions, which so heavily dictate the outcome of his spells, are similarly locked down.
There aren’t any clothes, this time. Yesterdays must have been carelessness, a clue George never should have found, had Dream not sought him out—had Dream not comforted him. It doesn’t make sense. But George isn’t thinking about it.
He’s only come to look. He needs to know more about the beast, and the best way to know something is to observe it.
Can he trust himself? It was him that fell for Dream’s facade.
He grits his teeth and pulls out the fur, as he has so many times. He’ll have to redo the spell over and over again, if he hopes to find Dream in the dense wood and—he doesn’t want to expend the magic.
With a steely determination and an unhealthy dose of fatalism—he’s only going to look—he places the fur on his tongue. The texture is awful. It’s a piece of Dream. He swallows it.
It’s not the kind of magic that comes with an exact spell, but George can feel where Dream is. He hasn’t run off quite so far as he did the night before. He pulls his spells closer around himself, and follows the line of the trees.
He should have checked with the shepherd again. Told him to bring his flock into the house, if need be, or flee the town. Take his children and his wife with him. But that would only shift the beast’s gaze to new targets, George is certain. It’s almost worse, to think that it doesn’t hold a grudge.
Maybe, George thinks, he can draw the beast’s attention solely to himself. Isn’t that what he’s wanted, all this time? Dream’s attention, all to himself. Even if it’s bloody and sharp.
He can taste Dream, when he’s close. It’s—still him. A little wilder, maybe. Mixed with the dirt and the trees and the cool night air.
It’s terrifying, how quiet the beast is. George senses that he’s close, and then he hears the barest, barest hint of footsteps, the crackling of twigs, and he has to duck behind a tree—instinct taking over, even though he knows he’s shielded—to avoid the gaze of the beast falling on him.
It would be a lovely clearing, in other circumstances. The ring of trees that hems it in are neat and even. The grass doesn’t grow so tall as to be inhibiting, and George doesn’t see the signs of small mammals diggings their tunnels and upsetting the dirt.
But in the center, curled up on himself like an overgrown dog, is the beast. His—its—fur is the color of Dream’s hair. Its proportions, even in the prone position, are strange. A wolf stretched into the stature of a human, everything longer than it should be. Its eyes are open, but its head rests on one paw, its tail curled close, tickling the tip of its nose.
George’s hands shake. He’s seen it, now. It’s unmistakably Dream. It’s unmistakably a beast. Those claws or those teeth have ripped holes into sheep for nothing but to see them dead. And the thing lies in a gorgeous clearing with its head pillowed like a precious pet. It’s disorienting. George can’t bring himself to move.
The breeze picks up at his back. He doesn’t think to quell it. Doesn’t think to move, before the nose of the beast twitches and it lifts its terrible and great head, yellow eyes turned to George.
He should run. He only came to look. He’s going to get a hole in his chest to match the sheep but maybe—maybe Dream will see fit to eat the piece he takes from him.
When the creature stands, the lines between man and beast blur. It walks on two legs, but its front arms swing low even as it holds its head high. And it’s fast, all the speed and grace of a predator. George remembers Dream calling himself clumsy—remembers seeing it, again and again. Was it all a game? Or is he entirely lost to this form?
Ironic, that George is going to die while thinking of the logistics of the creature to kill him. Maybe they’ll remember him as a hero. Not a clever one. Maybe Dream will still be the one to write the tale.
George can’t bring himself to run, but somehow, he steps out from behind the tree and into the clearing. Magic brims at his fingertips, crackling and sparking.
The beast—Dream—is tall. When it lowers its head to look at George head on, its height nearly halves. George raises his hands. Holds its gaze. Claws and teeth scream for his attention, and nearly every part of him screams to fight. Except for one. Except, George can only look at the eyes of the creature, and in them, he can only see Dream.
They move at the same time. Several days of living in each others pockets, bringing them into sync. Dream slashes, and George is going to end up with a hole clear through him. George’s magic sings, and Dream is going to be reduced to a pile of singed fur.
But—
George changes the spell. Dream hesitates.
What should have been a violent magic becomes soft, becomes a thing that doesn’t leave George but anchors him. A rope around his midriff, reaching out to Dream and snaring him like a fish on a hook.
A binding spell, George thinks, a little hysterically. Used in archaic ceremonies between lovers, to tie them for life, it keeps them from harming each other, and it’s not a spell he’s used in years, but he knows it well because there’s always some part of him that’s wanted after the assurance that someone would stay, that someone would agree to stay, that magic could be used to make love a powerful thing.
It’s never been used as a defensive spell. It wouldn’t work, if the pair involved couldn’t bear it.
The spell settles over them like a net. It’s a great, rending outpour of magic, and the last thing George sees before he faints is the terrible arc of Dream’s claws, reaching out toward him—
--
George blinks himself awake.
His head pounds with the beat of his pulse. Aches shiver up and down his body like he’s come down with a flu, and the press of hard earth against him doesn’t help. With a groan, he sits up, and then freezes at the feeling of being watched.
Dream. Sitting across from him, with George’s cloak wrapped around his bare shoulders, barely flicked over his lap to protect his modesty.
“The beast-” George says, looking around and over Dream, like he might have hidden it in his back pocket.
“Is me.”
George, even through his pain and disorientation, levels him with a flat look. “I know that.”
Dream cocks his head, just like George has seen him do a dozen times over. “Then what’re you looking for?”
“I… Don't know.” George blinks, hard. The moon is shining so brightly, and all the colors of the clearing seem to be competing for George’s attention. “Where does it go?”
He can tell Dream has never spoken of this with anyone by the way he blinks, and takes a moment to gather his words. “We’re not… We’re not truly separate. I’m always the… the beast, and he is always me. My body only looks different. And- my mind.”
“Then why the sheep?” George presses. Raising his voice makes his head pound, and he rubs at his temples. “You killed them?”
“I’m not explaining it right,” Dream says. “I tell you I am the beast to- to not avoid the guilt of what I have done. To tell you that, as he acts, I am there. It is me. But a me that is… Afraid. And hungry.”
George shivers. It’s a cold night without his cloak wrapped about him, but he can’t ask for it back from Dream—it’s all he has against the chill. But his mind is dulled, frosted over at the edges from magical exertion.
“What did you… Do?” Dream asks, after a beat of silence has passed between them. “I’ve never been able to push the beast down during the night, not until I felt you- do. Whatever it is you did.”
The laugh George huffs out is one of disbelief. “I bound us together,” he says. “You are- magic. Made of it. I could have killed you-” Dream makes a noise of disbelief. “-I could have. You haven’t seen most of what I can do. But I-” he stops, shakes his head. It’s hard to get the words out, even as he feels them so deeply.
Because he’s glad to see Dream alive. More glad of it than he thinks he’s ever been of anything.
Free of the overwhelming feeling of helplessness, looking Dream in the eyes and seeing him safe and- and sane, it feels as if the wool—hah—has been lifted from George’s gaze. Without the terrible band of fear around his chest, constricting his every breath, he can taste the air and know that it holds a hearty future.
“I couldn’t kill you.”
Dream ducks his head. “I think I- if you hadn’t stopped me-”
“It doesn’t matter,” George says. “You feel how it’s changed, don’t you?”
“This thing you’ve done to me. Or… What you’ve done to us?”
“Tell me,” George says, sprawling back on his hands. He’s starting to feel awake, again. And he reaches toward Dream, though not with hands or body. He reaches for him with the bond that hangs between them, to feel the immense well of magical power that pools from Dream. “Tell me how it happened. Were you born with the beast?”
“No,” Dream says. “And I wasn’t bitten. It was a curse.”
George can taste his pain. “I’m sorry.”
“Bad luck.” Dream rings his hands together, and pulls George’s cloak tighter to him. “The wrong place at the wrong time and- and I couldn’t stay with my family, not in the walls of a palace. They’re- nobles, as you’ve probably guessed.” George inclines his head in acknowledgement. “They sent me out here. Where they hoped I would be- out of the way, I suppose.”
“An exile,” George says softly.
“Yes.”
“I haven’t removed your curse.”
“I can feel that.” Dream lifts a hand, and when he curls his fingers, those terrible claws appear. “But I also feel… More in control.”
“You’re at balance,” George tells him. “You weren’t born with magic, and you didn’t learn it as a mage would. It’s- it’s a wilder kind of magic than the kind I know, or the kind any human can manage. The curse made it a part of you, in the form of the beast. A- they’d call you a werewolf, where I come from.”
“Better than moon-sworn,” Dream huffs. “I don’t think the moon has anything to do with it.”
“But I’ve- bound us, as I said. You’re magic- it feeds me. I hold the reins, in a way.” Dream makes a pitiful attempt at a neigh. George wishes he were close enough to kick him.
“Well… What are we going to do?” Dream asks. The night is open around them. George, finally, lets his magic drift out again. He feels Dream, and he feels everything else.
“What we’ve been doing, I guess. We don’t make a half bad team.”
“What?” Dream snorts. “Yes we do.”
“Well, maybe if you weren’t distracting me-”
“You liked it!”
“Obviously”
George looks at Dream. Dream is—grinning. It warms his face. Softens his shoulders. George’s mouth twitches in response, and then Dream is moving with a grace George has only seen from him in his other form, across the scant space between them to pounce on George—there truly is no better word for it—and lie over him, that grin still stretching his face.
“George,” he says, like it’s his favorite word in the whole world. “George, George. Come with me.”
“What?” George asks. It’s a little hard to think—Dream is so warm. And very, very naked. “To your house?”
“No,” Dream laughs. “Away from here. We’ll- we’ll travel the world, George. I’ve got- I have this penpal-”
George groans and lets his head fall back against the grass. “No good story starts with a penpal, Dream.”
“Oh, don’t be jealous. He’s a prince.”
“Dream.”
“He’s real! I swear it. And if he’s not- well, you say I can still let the beast out?”
George rolls his eyes. “Of course. You’ll need to, I think.”
“Alright. Then I’ll just eat him, if he isn’t who he says he is.”
“What’s the name of this penpal?”
Dream’s face flickers with mirth. “Sapnap.” George’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “It’s a normal name in his kingdom.”
“I think neither your penpal or his lands are real.”
“Well,” Dream says, voice dropping a tone lower. He puts his mouth right near George’s ear. “I guess we’ll have to find out, won’t we?”
George shivers, and then shrieks when Dream licks his cheek. “What- god, this is a terrible plan. What would I do with my things?”
“Put them in my house,” Dream shrugs. “I’ll have the person who comes by and cleans the library water your plants. And- you mages, you need a- a base for your magic, right?”
“Yes, but…” George trails off, and realizes he’s about to fall right into Dream’s trap. He sighs. “But you’d be mine, wouldn’t you. My walking source of magic.”
“You’ll be like a snail. Or a turtle.”
“How exciting.”
“George,” Dream whines. “It’s a great plan.”
“I think I preferred you moping.”
“I’ve been moping for so long. It feels-” Dream ducks his head more innocently into George’s neck now. “It feels good. To be- balanced, as you say. To have you with me.”
George settles a hand on the back of his neck. His hair has grown long, and he plays with the ends of it lightly. He can’t deny that, even as exhausted as he is, how fraught he still feels from the whirlwind of emotion, it does feel good. All of it.
“Alright,” he sighs, though he feels light. “We’ll take your adventure. Walk into the mouth of a dragon named Sapnap.”
“Dragons aren’t real,” Dream says.
“Oh, Dream. How much you have to learn about the world.”