#like a weird superhero XD he's like santa's sleigh in Elf that runs on the power of christmas spirit 😂 and yes he gets made fun of for it

[cuubism]

that idea about dream having once had wings is living in my head rent-free so have some hcs for the other endless & wings

imo destiny wouldn’t have wings. he is chained to his book, to reality, to the future and the past. he is a force that supports the laws of nature, rather than denies them. he is fixed in a way that dream & death are not. he does not have wings because he is the walls that keep us from flying, the ceiling hanging low over our heads. he is the limit, the boundary, the end. he has no flights of fancy. he is what is, not what can be. destiny does not have wings. 

death has wings, of course. it’s partially because we imagine her as the angel of death, come to bear us away to another world. death is an ending, a reality, like destiny, but the line between life and death is permeable (albeit in only one direction) in a way destiny’s lines are not. death is what brings people to another world. she guides us, lifts us up, brings us comfort at the end. death as the anthropomorphic personification is not only an ending, but a beginning, and it is the sound of her wings that conduct us from this place to the next. she is a doorway, a path, a light at the end of the tunnel. death has wings. 

and then dream. of course, dream. he is a literal flight of fancy, defined as that which is not, the essence of unreality. he is not limited by what is, he is free, he is dream. of course he has wings. 

later, he does not, but i think you’ve done a far better job talking about that than i ever could. 

desire is nebulous, hard to pin down. they are not concrete, they are emotions, they are everywhere & everywhen. if you shut them up, shut them away, they will destroy you, because they cannot be caged. desire has wings. 

despair… she is her twin’s darker shadow, their balance, the falling to their flight. desire lifts you up, whispers that there is freedom above if only you try. despair tells you that there is nothing up there, and you couldn’t reach it if there were. all that is left is to sink, to let the water weigh you down and to drift. to fall. to slumber in viscous tar that will not let you free. despair does not have wings. 

destruction is anchored in reality, in carnage, in ruin. he is a crumbling, a falling, a flame. he does not fly because he is inevitable, because he is not meant for such graces. but he wants to fly, longs for it, wishes hopelessly to escape the destruction he wreaks like a bird that flutters out of a window the moment before the whole of it tumbles to ruin. when he paints himself, he adds wings. 

delight flew, long ago. her wings were myriad colours and full of light. she was the rainbow at the end of a storm, the glint of a smile, the shimmer of light on glass. she flew with purpose, with luminescence, with glory. the flutter of a heartbeat, the uplift of joy. delight had wings. 

delirium does not. she drifts, unmoored by gravity or by reality, separated from everything more sharply than dream ever was — even dream must obey the line drawn between the waking and the dreaming, but delirium simply floats through such boundaries. she is disconnected, a speck on the wind, a hallucination, her movements unpredictable and bound by no laws. delirium is a ghost, and needs no wings.

i love these so much, thank you! particularly the idea of destruction painting himself with wings. i'm trying to decide if i want to posit desire having wings sometimes, my thoughts on it won't fully form... but desire as a concept can be so fickle, so on-and-off, that i wonder about their wings being so too. i really like your headcanons :)

add dream losing his wings to the list of Fucked Up Things That Messed Up The Endless As A Family, particularly if having wings is like an Endless thing at least for some of them. strong headcanon that it's just Not Talked About since dream won't speak of it after how things went down with destiny and nobody really knows how to address it anyway. if it's brought up it's usually desire being a dick about it (though deep down they actually do feel sympathy for dream, plus the fear of this happening to them too). everybody very functionally ignores it and dream doesn't mention it for 5 billion years 👍 nothing like NOT grappling with the sudden knowledge that you can be permanently changed against your will. it's fine

anyway this reminded me of how morpheus is sometimes depicted with wings in art. such as

In the Arms of Morpheus, W. Reynolds-Stephens

Morphée, Jean Antoine Houdon

Morpheus, Jean-Bernard Restout

you get the gist 😂