there are a lot of evil people in the world and a lot of darkness in the world and so it’s very important for me to stress that now more than ever is the time to spread kindness and compassion. combat the evil by not only not partaking in it, but actively refuting it. destroy the notion that being compassionate or generous or kind to someone is uncool or embarrassing or even scary. be the change you want to see. start a chain reaction. positivity only breeds more positivity. do an act of kindness for someone so that that person who is too afraid to do it themselves can see you, realize that they’re not alone, and perhaps sheepishly follow your example. and then the next person who is too afraid but sees that person can do the same. when bad news comes out about bad people or horrible atrocities in the world it’s such an easy impulse to despair, and obviously it’s important to feel what you need to feel. grieve. be angry. be sorrowful. be empathetic. but dust off your pants and get up and be a part of a chain reaction that, no matter how small the scale, and spread compassion and love and care. all the reasons why you might not—“it’s hard! it’s scary! people will make fun of me! it’s useless because there’s too much evil!” are all grade A arguments as to why you should. you have no idea how many people you could inspire to do the same. even if it doesn’t get you anyway far, you can at least say you have the nobility of trying. please choose love and please choose life. you are worth loving and you are worth inspiring others to love
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I've been sitting on this little happy ficlet for absolute ages because there was a time I thought I might incorporate it into another fic. That seems increasingly unlikely though, so here it is.
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The Dreaming was beautiful when Dream was happy.
It wasn’t always beautiful, though Hob would never say those words to Dream. It was always magnificent, always awesome in the old sense of something grand and beyond understanding. It was terrifying sometimes, too. But in Hob’s opinion, the Dreaming was really only beautiful when Dream was happy.
Like now.
Lying on his back in the wildflowers, bare arms thrown back above his head, dressed down in a black t-shirt and long flowy skirt, feet bare. Happy crinkles at the corners of his closed eyes, the barest hint of a smile that might have been bright as the sunrise for how it looked on Dream’s usually subtle face. The bumblebees and dragonflies that kept landing gently on him and brushing off again in cheerful spirals, as if delighted by their creator’s presence.
Hob had never been to this part of the Dreaming before, which, admittedly, wasn’t saying much when the Dreaming was effectively infinite. Dream had brought them to an expansive field of yellow grasses and rowdy wildflowers of green and teal and mauve and a hundred other colors one would never see in the waking world. It wasn’t Fiddler’s Green; it was wilder than that: rock bluffs dotting the fields in the distance, an endless grey-blue sky that was clear for now but threatened to tip towards rain at any moment, sweet warm wind that tugged on Hob’s hair with grabbing hands. A fierce, untamed landscape holding itself gently, for now.
That was the way Dream was beautiful, Hob thought.
He leaned on his elbow, looking down at Dream’s peaceful expression where he lay beside him. As he watched, an iridescent wasp lit upon Dream’s nose, its six sharp legs stark against his pale skin. Hob moved instinctively to scare it off, before remembering that this was the Dreaming, and stilling his hand.
The wasp didn’t try to sting Dream, of course it didn’t. This dream space lived on the border of danger, but wherever it touched Dream, it turned soft, indulgent, adoring.
Dream opened his eyes to look at the wasp. He didn’t say anything to it, at least not in any way that Hob could understand, but he stroked a very light finger along one filigree wing, and it flitted off again, away back to its hauntings.
In its absence, Hob traced a fingertip down Dream’s profile, in much the same way he had touched the wasp. Dream’s eyes fluttered shut again at the touch.
“They all love you,” Hob said.
Dream hummed. “I feel a particular accord with this landscape,” he said, a ghost of a smile on his lips at Hob’s words.
“Yeah, it reminds me of you. More than the Dreaming as a whole usually does.”
“Oh?”
Hob sat upright and tugged Dream up with him, brushing strands of grass from Dream’s hair. Then he kissed him softly on the lips and said, “Constantly on the verge of thundering.”
Dream grumbled under his breath, something about making it rain in Hob’s flat later. Hob just kissed him again, this time on the cheek, saying, “That wouldn’t be the most fun way to end a date, darling.”
“I suppose not.” Dream leaned back to meet Hob’s eyes, his expression now glinting with mischief. “I did have other plans. But if you insist on thundering.”
He blinked, and the sky split open with a tremendous crash, rainwater pouring down in a torrent that soaked them both immediately to the bone. Hob noted with amusement that Dream was letting himself get wet, too. His shirt was sticking to his narrow frame, skirt clinging to each bend of his legs. And his normally fluffy hair was unmentionable.
Hob grinned widely at him, water streaming over his nose and lips, dripping into his eyes. “The things you will do just to have your way.”
Dream’s eyes narrowed in challenge. “Must I have you struck by lightning, as well?”
“C’mere, you.” Hob dragged him into a hug, wet and sticky and clinging, as the rain kept pounding down and sinking into the grass around them. Flowers were nodding under the weight of the droplets, and the corners of the sky had gone dark and grey — but Dream was happy, was the thing. Hob could tell by the way he let Hob manhandle him into the hug, pressed the side of his face against Hob’s, the twitch of a smile on his lips that Hob could feel against his cheek. Storms in the Dreaming were so often indicative of Dream’s sadness or rage, and it was thrilling to be caught up in one that was born of playfulness instead.
The rain was even warm.
“You’re so beautiful,” Hob told him.
“Everything you say is at random,” Dream complained, somewhat hollowly considering he still had his fingers clutched in Hob’s dripping shirt.
“Nah. You just don’t understand the incredibly complex workings of my mind.”
He could sense Dream’s eye roll without having to see it.
“Isn’t it simple enough to just know that I always think you’re beautiful?” he asked, quieter now and almost hushed out by the rain. “It’s like the sky. It’s really always beautiful, but sometimes you catch it at a certain angle and you think, oh.”
“I am, in fact, also the sky in the Dreaming,” Dream said — just to be ornery, Hob thought. But then he said, softer, “You have a gentle perspective of me.”
It was true, Hob thought, that most might not look at this tempestuous landscape with generosity, might not be so easygoing about its overbearing rain. But Hob saw Dream smile and all he wanted was to tip his face up into the storm.
He ran his hands through Dream’s sopping hair. “You can count on that.”
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