The Garden of Dreams

Every night, when the world fell silent, Elara dreamed of a garden that did not exist. It was vast and endless, filled with silver trees and flowers that glowed with soft blue light. In the center stood a fountain made of glass, its water falling upward into the stars.

And always, there was someone waiting for her there.

His name was Kael. She did not know how she knew it, only that when she saw him, her heart remembered before her mind did. He smiled at her each night as if she were the only person in the universe.

“You came back,” he would say.

“I always do,” she would answer.

In her waking life, Elara was an artist who painted what she saw in dreams. Her walls were covered with the same silver trees, the same fountain, the same eyes she could never forget. Her friends said she had an overactive imagination, but she knew better. The garden felt more real than anything else in her life.

One night, she asked Kael, “Who are you?”

He hesitated. “I am someone who once lived, long ago. The garden is the place between life and forgetting. You found your way here because you still believe in dreams.”

“Then why do I meet you every night?” she asked.

“Because you called to me,” he said softly. “You painted what your heart remembered. I followed the light of your imagination back here.”

As the nights passed, their bond deepened. They laughed, they told stories, and sometimes they simply sat in silence watching the stars rise and fall like slow waves across the sky.

But every morning, when Elara woke, the garden vanished like mist, and her heart ached with the weight of something she could not touch.

One night she found him standing by the fountain, looking at the stars with sorrow in his eyes.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The dreams are thinning,” he said. “The bridge between our worlds is breaking. Soon I will fade, and you will not find me again.”

Her chest tightened. “Then take me with you.”

He shook his head. “You belong to the living. If you stay, your body will sleep forever.”

She stepped closer, tears burning her eyes. “I do not care. My life means nothing without you.”

Kael took her hands. “Listen, Elara. Every soul carries a garden of dreams. You built this one from your longing, and I was drawn to it. When I go, I will not truly leave. Every time you dream, I will be there, waiting.”

She pressed her forehead against his. “Promise me.”

He smiled, and the world around them began to shimmer. The trees turned to light, the sky melted into gold. His form began to fade, and her fingers passed through his like smoke.

“Remember this,” he whispered. “Love does not live only in the waking world. It blooms wherever hearts dare to dream.”

Then he was gone.

Elara woke with tears on her face. The morning light poured through her window, warm and real, but her heart felt hollow. She went to her studio and painted until her hands trembled.

She painted the fountain, the trees, the stars. When she finished, she stepped back and saw something she had not added herself. In the reflection of the glass fountain, two figures stood together, hand in hand.

She smiled through her tears. That night, when she closed her eyes, the garden awaited her once more.

And this time, when she entered, Kael was there, smiling, holding out his hand.

“You came back,” he said.

“I always will,” she replied.

And so, in the garden of dreams where time could not reach them, two souls met again and again, their love forever blooming in the place between sleep and eternity.