“Hey kiddo~”

He always greeted you that way. The old hound he called himself. A loyal dog. Loyal til the end… but that time wasn’t now. Not ever if you could help it.

Figuring out his true identity hit you harder than you wanted to admit. He wasn’t exactly real. He was just a personification of loyalty to The Watchmaker, hence the old hound names he dubs himself with. It was all true.

If he wasn’t real, then why did you keep crawling back to him? Why did you enjoy his presence and his rambles about daily life in the Dreamscape? He meant something to you. A lot.

You could see that weight of the past weighing down on his shoulders, but what you didn’t know was that the weight lifted slowly every time he spoke to you. There was a hidden mutuality between you two.

This little meet up was no different. The two of you were sat in a quiet area of the Dreamflux Reef, watching the ‘time’ pass and people wander in the distance. He sat back, relishing in this quiet. His usual hip flask just laying in his lap. The paw shaped lid on it. The dog imagery around him was sweet you thought. He held a silence for a while, until he broke it with a question. A valid one for him.

“You ever wondered what reality is like?”

Hearing that from him hurt, but you also knew just how much he wanted to see the sights from that question alone. To help him see the sights was now a goal in the forefront of your mind. To make him real enough for reality came with that.