From: ted4646@rigel.tamu.edu (cartoon boy)
Subject: Sandman:  Dream's most recent failed relationship
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 20:13:00 GMT

perhaps a spoiler or two for those who haven't read some back issues
and are planning on buying the TPB's to catch up.

i also apologize about the David Bowie bit included at the beginning
of this file i'm about to send out, by now everyone knows it's not 
a Bowie song the examiner is singing.













Well before I begin, I'd like to comment on someone who thought the
scientist in Dream's flashback was singing a David Bowie song.  The 
lines in the song "Heroes" go:

I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
And nothing will tear us(?) away
We can be heroes, just for one day

The song the medical examiner was singing was similar, and it is easy to
see where the confusion could have been.  Expecially in a story involving
Delerium.

But on to the main purpose of this posting, Morpheus's lost love:  originally,
I had thought it to be one of two ladies, and after a rereading of several 
issues, I believe I know who Dream's ex-girlfriend is.

Is it Unity Kinkaid?  In _A Doll House_, Dream (or is that Desire?) takes an
interest in the Unity Kinkaid/Miranda Walker/Rose Walker meeting  (crone/
mother/madien again?) on page 22, panels 4,5; page 23, panel 1 of issue 10.
At the end of ADH, Unity takes a crystal looking heart from Rose and shatters
the heart/vortex, thus dying.  Could Nuala's pendant (Brief Lives part 2) be
a fragment of that heart?  Possibly.  

We never did see Unity leave at the end of ADH, and she did die while in The
Dreaming...  But Lucien states "She's *gone*.  On her way back to the waking
world." (Brief Lives #2) If she did die in The Dreaming and then left, 
wouldn't Lucien have said something like "She's gone.  On her way to see your 
sister." (Death).  I doubt that the Dream King would have given her an option 
like he gave Nada at the end of _Season of Mists_.

Which makes me think that the ex-love of Morpheus is Thessaly.

At the end of AGoY, Barbie's boon of Dream was "I want to send us _all_ home,
me and Hazel and Foxglove and Thessaly.  I want us back safe and sound."
But, unknown to her, the house had collapsed and, in the words of Dream,
"It will take a little time before I can send you all back."  And indeed,
he did send them back in stages.  First Barbie went, then we don't see 
any more of the three on the skerry.  Barbie woke up, alive because of the
"safe and sound" clause in her boon.

-as an aside, IMO Death couldn't take Barbie away when the building
collapsed as Barbie was in the Dreaming.  Barbie was lucky to include the 
"safe and sound" bit, as without it, she would have woken up and died-

About the return of the three that were trapped in cuckoo-land, Barbie
has this to say (page 13, panel 8):  "Hazel and Foxglove...._They_ 
were fine.  And Thessaly....I think she was fine too."  Did Thessaly 
even return before Barbie went to Kansas?  If you recall when Barbie was
speaking to the grave marker at the conclusion of AGoY, she reveals 
what happened to the tenants after the house caved in.  According to
Barbie, George was in his tub and died in the collapse, Wanda and Barbie
were in George's apartment along with Maise Hill and only Barbie survived,
Foxglove and Hazel seemed to be avoiding Barbie--everyone is accounted 
for, except for Thessaly.  In my opinion, Thessalain stayed in The Dreaming
and finally returned before the events in Brief Lives #2, "on the way
to the waking world."

Mervyn (also in BL part 2) states about Lord Dream that "He spend a couple
months hanging out with a new broad.  Then one day the magic's worn off..."
Hey, Isn't Thess a witch?  What's that, a coincidence?  In Sandman?  I think
not.

"She had decided she no longer loved/s me."-Morpheus.  Thessaly appeared 
rather...fickle, for want of a better descriptive.  From her words at the 
end of AGoY, where she complains that Dream isn't good looking, and too 
thin too boot, it appears that she is unwilling to come to terms that she
has a crush on him.

But to me, the clincher is Nuala's necklace--the crystal quality could be a 
red herring, leading us to believe that Unity was the lost love.  When Nuala
shows the pendant to Lucien and Mervyn, the coloring of that one panel is 
the same as the coloring in the panels where Thessalian pulls down the Moon
(AGoY part 3, pages 19,20,22; BL part 2, page 4, panel 5).


just a few random thoughts from thomas, aka ted4646@rigel.tamu.edu

"We're entrepreneurs in an expanding field."
				-the Corinthian