Previous Post Dance Dance Revolution (Tie-In to http://www.chillwater.plus.com/HH/hhstories/untold%20tales%20of%20ll%20321.htm">Untold Conclusive Tales of the Parody War #321: The Winner) Under an unfamiliar night sky of multicolored neon-tinged nebulae, the campfires, chants and other lights and sounds of the celebration in the Spokane Indian Reservation carried on into the hours that blur the lines between late evening and early morning, peppering the otherwise dark and untouched surrounding landscape of thick forests, jagged peaks and stark plains with beacons of bright, loud joy, as tribal members treated guests of all colors, creeds and species to an ecstatic experience in the truest sense, their songs, dances, meals and stories all swirling together to saturate and transcend the senses. “They’ve started calling it Dreamland,” Sheriff Louis Laughing Fox, of the Spokane Tribal Police, informed his son’s most recently arrived guests. “It’s one of the areas of our tribal reservation where we let the refugees from, and conscientious objectors to, the Obedience Brands set up a Temporary Autonomous Zone, and it’s where enough of them asked to stick around that our tribal council decided to let them, at least for a while longer, provided they keep care of the area, and provided I keep an eye on them.” He sighed ruefully. “Those bastards managed to rope me into serving as a tribal elder after all.” “I must say, it’s all a bit different from the Indian camps I visited in Faerie,” Elisabeth “Bettie” Barrie blinked at the veritable carnival of glow sticks, fire-twirlers, rave fashions, black-light paints, and multiply pierced and tattooed bodies. “Yeah, don’t greet any of us redskins by asking to ‘smoke-um peace pipe,’” Louis snorted. “You mean, you people don’t tend to respond to social faux pas by threatening to burn us palefaces at the stake?” Bettie deadpanned. “Well, that’s my worldview shattered, then.” The corners of Louis’ flinty eyes and otherwise straight line of a mouth twitched and crinkled in what passed for a grin of wry humor with him. “I can see why he likes you.” Bettie averted her eyes for the first time from his steely gaze. “I’m sure I don’t know whom you mean,” she lied, then shook her head. “Anyhow, if you could just point us in the proper direction, my … date for this affair is anxious to check in with his sister.” Louis squinted appraisingly at Griffin, who clutched Bettie’s hand protectively in response. “Sure,” he finally nodded. “Her and the other English girl insisted on babysitting my granddaughter, so they’ll probably be fussing with her with the rest of the family … including him whom you’re sure you don’t know likes you, apparently.” Even as Louis was called away by his “other girlfriend,” a similarly middle-aged Arab woman (she wondered, not for the first time, at the preponderance of men in polygamous relationships, among the social circles of so-called “super-heroes”), he advised Bettie to “head for the light show,” and sure enough, that’s where she found them. There were Naari Magweed and Samantha Featherstone, tending lovingly to yawning, squirming infant Iris Paintbrush Sunrise. There was toddler Oliver “Ollie” Hastings, intently pestering his big sister, Gwendolyn “Wendy” Leslie, who clearly couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or amused by his mischievous misbehavior. There were Meggan Foxxx and April Alice Apple, clinking their wine coolers in a toast and waving at Bettie to join them. And there he was, the Whirling Dervish of a loincloth-clad living light show himself. Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove danced around the campfire like time flowed differently for him, and for those moments of movement, it somehow did. As the Moby remix of The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” pounded and soared from nearby portable stereo speakers, Dream spun around the flickering flames in slow-motion, his day-glo yellow body leaving similarly colored trails of light in his wake, tangible enough that Griff could actually smear them with the tip of his finger. They tasted like banana popsicles on his tongue, and the tears that spilled from Dream’s cheeks, when his head whipped around dizzily, hung as rounded droplets in the air behind him, as he shaped the light trails he made by sweeping his arms wildly and broadly in complex, unpredictable patterns, impossibly sculpting his internal sunshine with nothing more than his mad, manic, willful willpower. After all the feats of sheer impossibility he and his friends had accomplished, Dream was feeling promethean as hell, and this reality-defying display was the least he could do to express it. He wanted to vandalize the whole world with the graffiti of his defiant smiles, and shatter its fragile-as-glass remaining rules with his triumphant laughter. He was laughing and crying all at once, because in spite of all the death, despair and destruction he’d witnessed, and fought and failed to prevent, the Parody War marked the most fun he’d ever had and the happiest he’d ever been in his life, and in spite of his considerable imagination, even he couldn’t imagine how this day could possibly get any better, until Bettie and April approached him. “What would you say,” Bettie bit her lower lip, until April elbowed her to continue, “to a marriage in the William Moulton Marston mold?” Dream halted his performance with a wobbling stance, his afterimages taking a few seconds to catch up with him, and gaped at the implications. “You’re sure?” he had to ask April. “You’re my guy, and I’m your gal,” April asserted, “but this way, we both get a gal on the side,” she slung an arm around Bettie’s waist, a gesture which she soon returned. And with that, he took them both by their hands and pulled them into the dance anew.

Some interesting stuff at play here, especially (to me) the line about how the Parody War was the best time of Dream's life. Considering that he was leader of the LL for a good chunk of that time, it's rather interesting. He definitely seems to have matured recently as a result of all of his transformations.

Of course, judging by the ending of the story, some things never quite change...