Brief Lives is the sixth story arc of The Sandman (1989), covering issues 41-49.
Delirium, the youngest of the Endless, has been feeling more unmoored than usual and wants to find their missing brother Destruction, who was always a stabilizing presence for her. She first consults Desire and Despair, who decline to help her, before going to ask Dream ("Chapter 1"). To her and the Dreaming residents' surprise, Dream (who has just had a bad recent breakup) agrees and the two set off into the waking world to ask Destruction's old friends ("Chapter 2"). They visit an old acquaintance of Dream's, Pharamond, who provides them with transportation and a driver named Ruby. Meanwhile, a long-lived human who once knew Destruction, Bernie Capax, is killed in a random accident. Another one, Etain of the Second Look, narrowly escapes the same fate. Destruction himself, having taken up residence in a small village, becomes aware of the quest through his scrying pool ("Chapter 3").
Sensing trouble, a Lapp Alderman who also knew Destruction turns into a bear and turns his shadow into a version of him. Dream and Delirium visit Bernie's son Danny, who shows them his father's recently-discovered illustrious secret life. On the way to Delirium's next contact, the group stays at a motel for the night. Delirium uses her abilities to sense their list of contacts and sees "the dancing woman" checking in on her friend Tiffany. Dream reminisces about an encounter with Destruction a few hundred years ago, where his brother expressed concern about humanity's newfound affinity for reason. Their driver Ruby dies after a lit cigarette sets the place on fire. ("Chapter 4").
Delirium takes over driving, and they eventually arrive at the strip club where the "dancing woman" and Destruction's ex-girlfriend, the Babylonian love goddess Ishtar, now works as a dancer. Ishtar, whose powers have waned since ancient times, has no leads for them. She decides to perform her true dance and channel the lust of the crowd into power, which blows up the club save for her friend Tiffany ("Chapter 5").
Dream recognizes the deaths and destruction their quest is causing, and cuts it short, to Delirium's dismay. Back in the Dreaming, he consults the goddess Bast, who had previously promised information on Destruction's location. She advises him to seek an oracle. Lucien informs Dream that Delirium's sigil has gone dark. He calls on Death, who angrily tells him to make nice with their sister. Dream visits Delirium in her realm and the two decide to continue their search ("Chapter 6").
They visit their oldest brother Destiny, who tells them that there is one oracle capable of seeking the Endless: Dream's son Orpheus. On Naxos, Dream learns where Destruction is but now owes his son a boon. They arrive at Destruction's location, where they are warmly greeted by their missing brother ("Chapter 7"). Over dinner, Destruction tells them that he is not returning to his post. Humanity is capable of destruction without him overseeing it, and he has taken to self-discovery instead. He leaves them, intending to travel to other worlds, but not before entrusting his talking dog Barnabas to Delirium ("Chapter 8").
Dream returns to Naxos and kills his son Orpheus, the boon his son had requested, before dissolving the priesthood that had cared for him. Despair arrives and asks after Destruction before relating this information to Desire. In the Dreaming, Dream rewards the beings who had helped them on the quest while mourning his son in private ("Chapter 9").
Tropes in this arc:
- Censorship by Spelling: Delirium wants to tell her sister that she's worried about Dream without him knowing, so she spells out his name. Or tries to. It ends up with too many Ms in it, and he's not fooled anyway.
- Creator Cameo: Jill Thompson began by drawing her own apartment for Etain of the Second Look, and wound up just being told to draw herself as the side character.
- Inconspicuous Immortal: In Brief Lives, the narrator relates that more "human" immortals among the cast prefer to live simple lives, even if they were born before the Earth first congealed from gas and dust. One of them, Bernie Capax, spends his current lifestyle as a rather bland-looking lawyer, carefully hiding the fact that he's old enough to remember a time when mammoths walked the Earth and that he possesses a safety deposit box full of fake passports just in case he has to move on in a hurry.
- Jedi Mind Trick:
- Dream sticks out in Renaissance Europe, and uses his powers to make a passerby believe he's an upstanding gentleman "Master Hawksthorne".
- Dream, Matthew, and Delirium need to enter a strip club and are faced with a bouncer. Dream uses his powers to make them look like three ordinary men coming for a good time.
- Minor Insult Meltdown: Never easy company in the best times, Delirium wears thin on Dream's patience, along with the general destruction (lowercase "d") their quest is causing. Though he doesn't insult her, he basically tells her the whole quest was his idea of a lark, he didn't really want to find Destruction, and he's not going to help her look anymore... all in a polite yet cold manner. Delirium knows her extreme struggles with clearheadedness, to say the least, make her odds of finding Destruction (her favorite sibling) alone next to nil, this being why she got Dream to come with her in the first place, so she hides inside her realm crying and closes the portraits leading into it. Death gives Dream one of her most severe dressing-downs in the series and gets him to go and apologize, which he does despite the risk Delirium could drive him permanently insane. It all turns out for the best, and they reconcile.
- Moment of Lucidity: When Dream has an emotional breakdown at the prospect of talking to his estranged son Orpheus in order to find his long-lost brother Destruction, Delirium wills herself into a moment of lucidity to tell Destiny off and get Dream to pull himself together. Considering she is the Anthropomorphic Personification of madness, her lucid state "hurts very muchly".Destiny: It is... refreshing... to see you so collected.
Delirium: Stick it. Coins have two sides. Destruction told us that, when he told us he was leaving. But I already knew that. - Offscreen Breakup: Thessaly and Dream apparently had a bad breakup sometime between the events of A Game of You and Brief Lives. Morpheus is moping about it at the start of Brief Lives, and it's why he agrees to accompany Delirium.Morpheus: She... has decided she no longer loves me.
- Painted Tunnel, Real Train: In one scene, Merv in Dream's palace is seen pasting up wallpaper with a picture on it depicting a corridor lined with books. When he's done, Dream comes down the corridor that was just put up.
- Pyrrhic Victory: While Desire had always wanted to bring Dream down and vowed to make him spill family blood, all they can feel is pity and dread for their brother when it finally happens.
- Right Behind Me: Merv puts up wallpaper while complaining to Lucien that their boss Dream is a flaky stick-in-the-mud. Dream emerges from the wallpaper to lambast Merv.
- A Simple Plan: Cited almost verbatim when Morpheus assures Lucien that his roadtrip with Delirium is "completely straightforward" and that nothing could go wrong. Just the phrase "roadtrip with Delirium" should be enough to indicate how naive that is.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Ruby, the chauffeur who drives Dream and Delirium. She dies in a fire due to a lit cigarette, but it's heavily implied her death (and others) are the results of Dream and Delirium's search for Destruction. Dream feels guilty enough about her death that he resumes the search after initially abandoning it, which leads him to seek his son the oracle's assistance finding Destruction, who asks for death in return. This not only breaks Dream emotionally, but has massive consequences in a later arc.
- Sole Survivor: Tiffany is the only one to make it out of the club. Desire gives her a coat and the "And I alone am escaped to tell thee ..." line.
- Stylistic Suck: Destruction's awful poetry... and art... and sculpture. He himself just couldn't care less: he's just happy to create, never mind the quality of the result. He finally does find a creative endeavor he's pretty good at: cooking... which is loaded with irony because cooking is inherently destructive to the ingredients.
- Time Abyss: One chapter mentions that there are "only" around ten thousand humanoids on Earth who remember the sabre-toothed tiger, a thousand who remember the first Atlantis, five hundred who remember the lost civilisations that pre-dated the dinosaurs, and maybe seventy who are older than the planet itself.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The final issue tells us what the minor human characters in the arc are up to: Delirium's friend Mary Canby is mourning her son, the little girl on the plane Chloe Russell has a new kitten, Bernie's son Danny is burning his father's belongings, the cop Delirium drove insane is strapped to a table, the ex-stripper Tiffany is on a talk show discussing her experience, and the priest Andros and his family bury Orpheus.
