The Dream We Never Woke From

Every night, when the city fell silent and the lights dimmed to a soft glow, Aiden dreamed of a girl standing beside a lake of glass. Her name was Elara. He did not know how he knew it, only that when she smiled, the world around him turned to light.

They met the same way each time. She would be waiting by the water, her reflection perfect and still, and he would walk toward her, though the distance never seemed to close. Sometimes they spoke of stars, sometimes of music, and sometimes of nothing at all. But each time he woke, he felt the echo of her laughter in his chest.

For years, he kept the dreams to himself. He tried to forget, to live as if she were only a creation of sleep. But each time he closed his eyes, she was there again, and the lake shimmered like a mirror holding another life.

One night, he asked her, “Why do I always find you here?”

She looked up at the sky, where two moons hung side by side. “Because you once promised to find me in every world,” she said.

He frowned. “Every world?”

“In dreams, in time, in the spaces between,” she whispered. “We are not bound by the waking world. But the more you remember, the closer we come to the end.”

He did not understand. All he knew was that he did not want to lose her.

When morning came, he woke with tears on his face. For the first time, he remembered more than the dream. He remembered a name carved in stone, a melody played under falling rain, and a promise whispered at the edge of sleep.

Elara.

He began to paint her. Each canvas came closer to her face, her eyes, her smile. The more he painted, the clearer she became. The lines no longer felt like imagination. They felt like memory.

Weeks passed. The world outside blurred into a haze of days and nights. Aiden lived between wakefulness and dreaming. Sometimes he thought he saw her reflection in windows or heard her voice in the sound of running water.

Then, one evening, as he finished another painting, he felt the air shift. The scent of rain filled the room. When he turned, she was standing there, real and trembling, her eyes filled with wonder and sorrow.

“You called me too strongly,” she said softly. “Now I am here, and the dream is ending.”

He stepped closer, afraid to breathe. “If this is the end, let me hold you once.”

She smiled. “You already have, in every life we dreamed.”

He reached out and touched her hand. It was warm, fragile, fading at the edges like smoke touched by dawn.

“What happens when you disappear?” he asked.

“You will wake,” she said. “And you will forget. But the world will keep something of me. A song. A scent. A painting. Dreams always leave traces.”

Her form began to blur, light dissolving her into the air.

He whispered, “Then let this be the dream I never wake from.”

The last thing he felt was her fingers on his face, gentle as the falling rain.

When Aiden woke, the room was filled with morning light. The painting before him was complete. A woman by a lake, her reflection smiling up at her.

He stared at it for a long time, not knowing why his chest ached, or why tears fell without reason.

Years later, people would come to see the painting that hung in the city museum. They said it seemed alive, that if you looked long enough, you could see the woman move. Some swore they heard faint laughter echoing in the gallery when no one else was there.

And every night, somewhere beyond sleep, by a lake that mirrored the stars, two souls met again, smiling as the world turned quietly around them.