The Room Between Dreams
She awoke in a room that was neither familiar nor entirely strange. The walls were painted in colors she could not name shifting subtly as though breathing. Light came from no visible source, yet corners glimmered with a soft glow. The air was still, but it vibrated faintly, carrying a scent that was both memory and imagination: the smell of rain on stone, of a book left open too long, of lavender she remembered from a childhood garden that may never have existed.
Linh moved toward the center of the room. Each step made no sound, yet the floor seemed to ripple beneath her feet, responding as if alive. On a table lay objects she recognized and did not: a cracked teacup, a violin with missing strings, a photograph where the faces blurred and shifted when she blinked. She understood instantly that this room had nothing to do with reality. It existed in a space between consciousness and unconsciousness, between what was remembered and what was imagined.
She sat on a chair that had no shadow and lifted the photograph. The figures within began to whisper faintly, not in words but in impressions: joy, loss, laughter, regret, longing. Each emotion felt sharp and delicate at once. She could feel the echoes of her own life mingling with these phantoms, as if the room was teaching her to see the continuity between memory and the present.
A window appeared on the wall, though none had been there moments ago. Beyond it, she saw herself as a child, running through fields she had long forgotten. Then, in another pane, she saw herself as an elder, sitting quietly beside a river she had never visited. Time was layered here, like pages of a book pressed together, and yet all of it was present at once, inviting reflection rather than comprehension.
She reached for the violin. The missing strings repaired themselves under her touch, vibrating with a sound that was both sorrowful and luminous. She realized that music in this room was not produced by action but by awareness. Each note echoed something deeper than melody: the weight of living, the fleetingness of experience, the quiet insistence that all moments are significant, however small or forgotten.
Hours or perhaps eternities—passed. The room shifted constantly, walls appearing and disappearing, objects reassembling themselves into patterns she could not anticipate. Yet, amid this constant change, there was a profound stillness, a meditative rhythm that resonated in her chest. It was as if the room were a teacher, guiding her to see that life is not linear, not merely composed of events, but a fabric of impressions, emotions, and echoes that coexist invisibly.
Eventually, she noticed a door. It was simple, unadorned, yet radiated the quiet gravity of exit and return. She opened it, expecting light, darkness, or some final revelation. Instead, she stepped into another version of herself sleeping, in her own bed, the early dawn filtering softly through the curtains. The room between dreams had vanished, leaving behind only a lingering sense of understanding: that her memories, fears, hopes, and dreams were all threads woven into the same tapestry, visible only when one paused to perceive them fully.
She awoke fully, heart steady and mind quiet, feeling the imprint of the room inside her. And though she would live her days in the tangible world, she knew that somewhere between each blink and each sigh, the room continued to exist, patient and reflective, waiting for the next consciousness willing to wander and observe.