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Sleep is not his brother, Death. Sleep is a temporary reprieve. Death is eternal.

Sleep is warm and soft, where death is cold and distant. For that, for all that is, Sleep and War should by no means have compatibility. But by some impossible odds, they manage to have all the more in common than ever anticipated. Even the immortal must sleep, if only to pass the long centuries ahead. It is almost funny, how much time they have, and yet so little to do with it. Hypnos has not always been around. But sleep? Man, immortals alike, they both must rest. And they have, for eons. He is nearing his fourth century-- and he couldn't feel any less that he had made something of himself. All of that time-- 400 years-- and what was he doing with it exactly?

Sleeping. Writing. Sleeping. Sorting. Repeat. Day after day, long night into the next. Time felt even more so like the construct it was. The minutes blurred together, and could have been hours, in the space between seconds that it took for him to blink. He knows what lies ahead. The garden of Queen Persephone, on which he dares not trespass. He skirts around it altogether. Instead he follows the trail of ruby poppies that sprout from his steps, watching with carefree whimsy as they bloom from the snow underfoot. So sporadic, so full of life...

He envies the flowers. They, like himself, did not choose to exist. But they would not be burdened by the parasite of sentience. Their roots would search beneath the earth, finding better, suitable places to grow. They would move on and leave a legacy-- a seed, to begin the cycle anew. And what would Hypnos be doing? Nothing of note.

He raises a hand. Within it, his cloak materializes, thick and stuffed with feathers. Quilted patches of the brightest red with white wool trim. The god drapes it around his shoulders. He settles down over top a snowdrift. It cradles him, cold but pliant. Hypnos is always cold.

The petals feel like silk in his hands. They glide from his fingertips like the flowing tresses of water that fill the creek meters away, slipping over aged stones smooth as the finest tempered glass, ebbing with refracted neon greens and blues of the mushrooms that glow steadily with their iridescent spores. Violet eyes watch with fading interest while they scatter to the gentle breeze, twirling about over the waves. He's bored-- a bird within the confines of a thorned cage. Tangled, gnarled roots encase his limbs and the musk of rotting bark clogs his nostrils.

He's drowning in honey. Oozed down his throat like velvet saccharine, teeth falling from his skull, tongue tied and glazed to the roof of his mouth. He plucks the next flower briskly, watching while the stem sways beneath the motions, cruel and practiced. His wings are too cramped to unfold from his back. A crown of solitude rests upon his head; one of his own making, emblazoned with the independence he once craved, going out of his way to forge. Self-servitude has turned to loneliness in the bat of a golden lash. The little pixie is all alone now.

But a prize to be shown off in earnest. A novelty to be gawked at. A beauty for admiring. All of it, everything he wanted. But it feels empty now.