The Library of Unspoken Dreams

She found the library by accident, though later she would realize that accidents were only dreams in disguise. It stood at the end of a corridor that shouldn’t have existed a hallway between two thoughts, hidden behind a door that refused to stay closed. The handle was cold when she touched it, yet her palm left a faint warmth, as if memory itself had a temperature.

Inside, the air shimmered with quiet breathing.
There were no candles, no lamps, yet a soft twilight filled the endless aisles. Books hovered slightly above their shelves, whispering in languages she didn’t know but somehow understood. The smell was intoxicating ink, dust, and something else: the scent of forgotten mornings, of words never spoken aloud.

A woman sat behind a desk made of glass and shadow. Her face was indistinct, as if even the library refused to define her. When Linh approached, the woman smiled, her voice carrying the calm rhythm of pages turning.

“You’ve come to return something,” she said.

“I don’t think I borrowed anything,” Linh replied.

The librarian shook her head gently. “Everyone borrows from dreams. Some return them. Some do not.”

She motioned toward the aisles. Each shelf glowed faintly with shifting titles The Dream of a Bird That Forgot to Fly, The Sound of Moonlight in Water, Memories of People Who Never Existed. Linh reached for one book, and it pulsed under her fingers, warm as skin. When she opened it, she found not words but a moving image herself, standing in a childhood garden, whispering secrets into the dark. But when she tried to listen, the scene dissolved into mist.

“These are the unspoken dreams,” the librarian said. “Every thought you never voiced, every feeling you buried too deeply to name they come here. They write themselves.”

Linh wandered through the aisles for what felt like hours, though time moved differently there like breath, like tide. Some books hummed softly when she passed, others turned their pages as if sighing in recognition. One shelf near the back was different: the books there were blank. Their covers shimmered faintly, waiting.

“What are these?” she asked.

“Those belong to the living,” said the librarian. “The dreams not yet dreamed, the words not yet thought.”

Linh touched one. Her reflection appeared faintly on the cover, eyes wide, as if watching herself from another life. “May I read it?”

The librarian smiled. “No one can read what has not been written. But you may write it if you’re willing to forget something else in return.”

“What must I forget?”

“Anything you hold too tightly.”

The library fell silent then, as if the walls themselves awaited her choice. She thought of all she carried the unspoken apologies, the faces she no longer saw, the moments that had faded like candle smoke. Slowly, she nodded. “I understand.”

When she opened the blank book again, words began to form on the page not written by hand, but drawn from within her. She saw her dreams, her fears, her memories shaping themselves into sentences. The ink glowed faintly, the same color as dusk.

As she wrote, she felt something slip away a heaviness she hadn’t known she bore. The librarian watched quietly, eyes kind and knowing.

When she looked up, the book was full.
And she could not remember what she had forgotten.

“Will I ever know what I gave up?” she asked.

The librarian smiled sadly. “You already do. But knowing is not remembering.”

As Linh stepped back into the corridor, the door faded behind her. The sound of whispering pages lingered in her ears, soft and infinite. Later, when she closed her eyes to sleep, she thought she heard a voice her own murmuring gently from somewhere beyond the veil of waking:

“The dreams you do not speak will find their way back to you as light, as shadow, as silence that listens.”