The Dreaming brushed against the fabric of the universe, a quiet tide lapping against an infinite shore. Beyond it, galaxies bloomed into existence — radiant, young, uncountable.
Dream stepped out from his realm and into the expanse. He felt it immediately, as natural as breathing: his brother. Not foreign, not strange. Simply there.
Eternity.
The figure of all-that-is stood before him, vast and luminous. Its body was the cosmos, galaxies wheeling in its chest, quasars burning in its eyes. They had been born together, and though words were not needed, they chose to speak.
"Dream," said Eternity, and the name rang through every star.
"Eternity," Dream answered softly, silver eyes gleaming like the reflection of starlight on still water.
For a moment, they stood in silence. Not strangers, but siblings finally stepping into each other's presence.
Eternity's voice was the hum of the cosmos.
"I am all that is. The stones, the suns, the laws by which they burn. Yet I feel your dominion, and it is not bound as mine is. You shape the unseen, the unmade."
Dream's cloak stirred like smoke.
"Where you are what is, I am what could be. Without you, there is no foundation. Without me, there is no desire for more. No star would blaze, had it not once been imagined in darkness."
The galaxies within Eternity shifted, pulsing like a heartbeat. A smile — vast and solemn — passed through the stars.
"You are not a shadow of me, as I first thought. You are a brother. Reality and Dream — two halves, neither greater nor lesser."
Dream inclined his head, his own smile faint but sincere.
"And you are not the prison of certainty I feared, but its guardian. Without you, I would drift without anchor. Together, we are the breath and the heartbeat of existence."
For the first time, laughter echoed through the void — not cruel or mocking, but genuine. Eternity's laughter, a sound of stars colliding joyfully, of galaxies wheeling in dance. Dream found himself answering with a quiet chuckle of his own, low and soft, like wind through leaves.
Eternity reached out, and though its hand was the size of a universe, it met Dream's with gentleness. Not as ruler to subject, nor judge to wanderer — but as brother to brother.
"We will walk together often," Eternity said. "For as long as there is reality, there will be dreams to fill it."
"And when reality falters," Dream answered, "dream will carry it until you rise again."
And so they stood — shadow and star, possibility and truth — bound not only by birth, but by choice.
When Dream returned to his realm, the Dreaming shimmered brighter. For now, he did not walk alone.