Medusa was sixteen when Dream first saw her.
He found her sitting on a sun-warmed stone at the edge of the sea, the temple of Athena rising behind her like a marble spine. She dipped her fingers into the water as if it were ink, swirling shapes that vanished before they could become anything. The wind brushed golden hair across her cheek. Her eyes were clear, bright, painfully alive.
She reminded him of someone he used to know.
Someone who didn't survive his world.
Dream stood behind her, invisible to mortal eyes, and felt the weight of the story he had watched play out too many times in the mythology of his past life. He knew her fate. He knew the cruelty of it — blamed, punished, transformed for something that had never been her sin.
Not this time, he thought.
Not her.
Medusa shivered as she looked up toward the temple doors. "I don't understand what I did," she whispered to no one.
"You didn't do anything," Dream murmured, stepping forward — and this time, he allowed himself to be seen.
Medusa jerked back with a gasp, sand scattering beneath her heels. Dream softened his posture, hands open at his sides as if greeting a startled bird.
"It's alright," he said. "I'm not here to hurt you."
She hesitated. "You're… not from here, are you?"
He smiled faintly. "Not really."
He looked human — a slim young man with tousled dark hair and eyes like deep water — but there was something unnameable in the way the world bent subtly around him. Mortals could never quite put words to it, but they always sensed it: an old gentleness, an ancient ache.
Medusa studied him. "You shouldn't be here. This temple is sacred."
"I know," Dream said. "That's why I'm here."
Her brows knit. "I don't understand."
"You will."
For a lingering moment, he simply stood with her, listening to the sea. It reminded him of long nights on a different Earth, riding the subway home after work, watching strangers scribble poetry on their phones or stare into the dark windows, dreaming even while awake. He missed humanity — the simple, fragile honesty of it.
Medusa had that same honesty.
He hated the thought of her losing it.
She finally asked, quiet and careful, "What are you?"
He considered telling her the truth — Elder God, Dream, the first imagination in creation — but she didn't need a god. She needed someone who saw her.
"I'm someone who doesn't like unfair stories," he answered.
Her lips parted, a spark of fragile hope appearing. "Then you came at the right time."
Dream exhaled, the air shimmering faintly with the weight of possibility. "Tell me everything."
And she did.
She told him about Poseidon, about fear, about the moment the sea god cornered her in Athena's temple, when she cried out for help but no one answered. She trembled through the retelling, shame and confusion knotted in her voice, as if she believed saying it aloud made her responsible.
Dream listened without interruption, every muscle in his body tightening. He had lived lifetimes, seen ages rise and crumble, watched entire species go extinct — but nothing angered him like cruelty inflicted on the innocent.
When she finished, silence filled the space between them, heavy as stone.
"It wasn't your fault," Dream said simply.
Medusa's breath hitched. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them back as if she didn't deserve to cry.
"No one will believe me," she whispered.
"I will."
That broke her. Her shoulders shook, and before she could turn away, Dream rested a gentle hand on hers. It was a mortal gesture — warm, grounding — something no god ever offered.
"Medusa," he said softly, "listen to me. Your story is supposed to go somewhere terrible. But I don't let stories hurt good people if I can help it."
She stared at him like he was speaking a language she never knew existed.
"Why?" she choked.
"Because I can."
He guided her away from the temple, toward the cliffs overlooking the sea. The sky was beginning to darken. A breeze tugged at her hair. She looked small beside him — and impossibly strong.
"Dreams are choices," he said. "Stories are choices. Even myths depend on choices. Today, I'm choosing you."
Then the world shifted.
Dream didn't craft illusions the way other gods did; he shaped reality by shaping meaning. As he lifted his hand, the boundary between waking and dream thinned like silk. The air rippled. The sea stilled. The world inhaled.
Medusa felt her heartbeat sync with something vast.
"Close your eyes," Dream murmured.
She did.
The temple faded — its cold marble, its judgmental shadows. In its place rose a sanctuary of his design: a soft, warm expanse of twilight, where stars hung low like lanterns and the ground glimmered with silver dust. A dreamscape that answered only to him.
Medusa gasped as she opened her eyes. "What is this?"
"A place where no one can hurt you," he said. "A place where the curse that was meant for you cannot reach."
"But Athena—"
"She'll see nothing," Dream interrupted. "She'll think you vanished. Because you have. From her reach, at least."
Medusa hesitated. "You're… taking me away?"
"No," he said gently. "I'm giving you a chance to live."
He stepped closer, and his voice softened to a tremor of kindness.
"You were never meant to be a monster."
Medusa collapsed into him, clutching the fabric of his shirt as if the world would swallow her if she let go. Dream held her carefully — not like an omnipotent being rescuing a mortal, but like a man comforting someone who desperately needed it. His divinity thinned around him until he felt almost human.
When she finally pulled back, she whispered, "What happens next?"
"You stay here," Dream said. "At least for a while. I'll weave a new life for you. A safe one. A true one."
"And Athena?"
Dream's expression shifted — something colder slipping beneath the calm, like deep ocean currents. "I will speak with her."
Medusa looked frightened by the thought, but Dream only offered a soft smile.
"Don't worry," he said. "I don't get angry often. But when I do… it's very quiet."
He left her with a gesture — the dreamscape shimmering like a cocoon around her — and stepped back into the waking world.
The temple of Athena stood silent and imposing. As Dream approached, marble columns trembled subtly in recognition of the god walking toward them — a god older than the pillars, older than the myths carved into their stone.
Inside, Athena manifested with a flicker of divine light: tall, radiant, armor gleaming with celestial fire. She observed Dream with cool, assessing eyes.
"Elder One," she said. "You trespass."
Dream tilted his head. "Medusa is under my protection now."
Athena's gaze sharpened. "She defiled my temple."
"No," Dream replied. "She was harmed in it."
The two stood in perfect stillness. Athena's aura crackled like thunder beneath marble. Dream's remained steady, quiet — but infinitely deeper.
"You would rewrite fate for a mortal girl?" she asked.
"Yes," Dream said. "And I'd do it again."
Athena narrowed her eyes. "You interfere with Olympus. That has consequences."
Dream's voice was soft — dangerously so.
"I am not one of your Olympians."
The room dimmed.
"I am Dream," he said. "And I will not let you destroy a life to soothe your pride."
Athena's expression flickered — uncertainty, annoyance, a hint of fear. She could not command him. She never would.
"This will echo," she warned.
Dream turned away. "Good."
Outside, he paused at the temple steps, looking toward the horizon where the sun was rising, spilling gold across the world.
Medusa would survive.
Her story would not be carved by cruelty.
Not this time.
As he walked away, Dream whispered to himself, "A better myth begins now."
And somewhere deep within the dreamscape, Medusa slept without fear for the first time