IN THE SPACE BETWEEN SOLAR SYSTMS AND BRIDGE BETWEEN UNIVERSES—NEITHER THERE NOR HERE; PRESENT EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE ALL AT ONCE—SLEEP WAS BORN.

Well, as born as one could be at the dawn of time. Created was a better term: created from the sands on the shores of the Dreaming and heated with the fire of a thousand burning stars—molten glass made of stardust, blazing and melting and cooling, designed to slip through the cracks between worlds; a fine line separated only by what mortals would soon begin to call consciousness.

She guided this awareness—their spirit, their subconscious—and took it to the Dreaming, where they could live out their wildest dreams or confront their darkest fears.

Without Sleep, there would be no dreams, and without Dream, there would be no sleep. So, whether it was sprinkling the sands of sleep through people's minds or fleshing out Dreams and Nightmares—mirrors reflecting the million sides of the natures of humanity—you rarely saw one without the other, and for good reason, too.

When Dream leaves his realm to hunt down a rogue Nightmare, he never returns, leaving a state of disarray and panic in both worlds as their fragile equilibrium is thrown out of motion. Sleep has to double the requirements of her role with half her power, and Dreams and Nightmares lose faith in their creator and abandon their positions as the worlds begin deteriorating.

Some mortals go to sleep and never wake up, minds tantalising close but always just beyond Sleep's reach. Some lose the ability to sleep all together with the bridges between worlds crumbling, and she could do nothing to guide them.

For over a century, she plagued the Waking World, using what little was left of her power to try and create order from chaos and sleep without dreams.

That's until the King of Dreams finally returns, and he isn't all too happy to see the state of disrepair his realm has fallen into.

RITU ARYA AS
SLEEP

❝you brought this on yourself, your majesty❞

A/N:
am i really posting this when i already have another morpheus fic up? yes, yes i am. you have the bonus episode to blame for that.

anyways morpheus my beloved <33 he's gonna be kind of a dick at the start, but that's what character growth is for.

and sleep, LOML. her powers are closer connected with dream's than any other nightmare/dream because they both rely on eachother. if she didn't bring mortals to the dreaming, he'd be useless, but if she didn't have a place to bring them, she'd also be useless. so when dream was gone, she had to kind of take over his role whilst dealing with her own role. she needs a pay rise fr