The dreamkeeper’s letter to a dreamer

 

Here… a piece of paper. Perhaps you’re wondering, “Who put this here?” because this should have been your private place. And indeed, it is. So what does this note do among the pages of your journal? I put it there. By doing so, did I violate your privacy? I leave that choice to you, but it seems to me that I am too ethereal a being to commit such a violation.

Would you be disturbed if a ghost were peering at you? This is something like that: my existence depends on whether you acknowledge it, because if you wish, you can turn me into a hallucination. Yet I hope you do not.

Because you are intelligent. I do not mean that in the conventional sense. This is not a utilitarian intelligence, and what makes you intelligent is precisely that: humans cannot use you. So you turn inward. And as you turn, you access different dimensions; you take refuge in different universes.

This journal, where you write your dreams, is not composed of mere “dreams”; it is made of worlds that are fundamentally real to you. Humans call them dreams to strip them of their reality, to make you exploitable—but you do not heed them. The deeper you descend, the further you go.

I appreciate this because I, too, am writing these words from those depths. This is a language only we can understand, and no one else needs to. No one should come between us.

In my mind, there is also a chaotic galaxy, filled with tiny planets and stars, and this makes us like two galaxies brushing past each other.

But for you to remain your own galaxy, without colliding with any other, you must feed and nurture the black hole at its center—with your dreams.

This world is singular, just one planet, yet as long as you carry such a galaxy in your mind, all of its insults and threats directed at you will dissolve into nothing more than simple noise.

But perhaps it is precisely because it is such a simple noise that it disturbs you so much? The explosion of bombs is, I think, less irritating than the buzzing of a mosquito—don’t you agree? It seems that way to me, and this only fuels the energy within you, allowing you to generate entirely new realities, fresh from the fire, with a fiercer blaze.

Some of them hold happiness. Some of them carry sorrow. But whatever they are, they are all yours, and that gives each of them a profound value beneath the surface. Every single dream is like a gold ingot your mind has gifted to itself. The more dreams you have, the richer your mind becomes, enriched alongside this treasure.

At night, when I entered your room from the balcony, gliding silently through the air on my wings so that no one would notice, I saw this treasure with my own eyes: walls covered in drawings, sheets of paper scattered on the floor, shelves full of books, toys, and on the ceiling a wallpaper of the Milky Way galaxy glowing in the night. Here, only a rich soul could be living.

From your room, the whole city is visible, because it sits high above. That is a stroke of luck. To watch it all night while you sleep, in a calmness as if gazing into a dream, and to immerse yourself in that dream… I never had such a chance.

I grew up in a box. The moment I was born, they trapped me in a four-walled cage. There was nowhere to run. I had been defeated, my fate sealed. I would sometimes pound the walls with my fists, but it only cracked my bones, not the walls. In the end, I gave up. I turned inward. I dove into the ocean inside me, just like you.

Neither of us were there to swim—we were there to explore. And this exploration wasn’t for adventure; it was for preservation, to preserve ourselves. There, I found many treasures: corals, seashells, fish, strange creatures glowing in the darkness of the water. I feared none of them, because even the wildest among them seemed to welcome me, as though I had finally come among them.

I spent a very long time in that ocean. If someone had asked me, “Where are you?” I would, of course, have said, “I’m in the ocean,” because nothing else of the previous world remained. I had left the box that held my body—mentally.

But then, when I stopped dreaming for a while and returned to the ordinary world… I realized I was no longer in the box physically either. Wings had grown. I was flying. I had escaped the four walls. How? Was this, too, a dream?

At first, I descended to the ground, almost falling. I was not yet skilled at flying. The moment I landed, I began experimenting again, trying to lift myself once more. I repeated this for a long time. Eventually, I could fly in the air. Had I become a bird now?

Of course, while in the air I still had to hide from people, because I was still in the city. That’s why I didn’t fly during the day. I hid my wings beneath my clothes, and the bulge they created on my back I covered with a backpack.

At night, I began to stay awake, because for me life now began after ordinary life had ended. So, while everyone thought I was asleep, I wandered the city. Then, I went beyond wandering—I began visiting house to house. I entered through open windows. Inside, I left notes in special places for the person sleeping there to find when they woke. Sometimes I left little sparkling jewels, sweet candies, and so on. According to their interests, I also left dried butterflies, miniature puppets, or diamond accessories.

Of course, I did not do this for everyone. Since the day I gained my wings, an instinct had formed within me, telling me who to approach and who to avoid. This way, I knew who would cherish these gifts, who would treat them poorly, and who might even throw them away. So I followed my feelings, going only to those the intuition directed me toward.

That’s how I eventually reached you—you were one of those whose living spirit I could almost smell. I think what drew me to you were your dreams—and the writings about them. That is… your attachment to reality. To your own reality.

When I first entered your room, you were asleep in your bed. You seemed lost among the blankets, yet you were there. Beneath your pillow lay your dream diary. To avoid waking you, I managed to take the notebook without lifting the pillow, and despite the darkness of the night, I could see what was written inside and began to read.

Perhaps you would be frustrated at me for reading it, but I had succumbed to curiosity—and I do not surrender to curiosity so easily for anyone.

As I read your dreams one by one, color and vibrancy filled my mind, even though they were mostly in muted, somber tones. At first, this might seem like a contradiction: why see the colorless as colorful? Because just as I had grown sensitive to which souls carried a beautiful scent, I had also become sensitive to which ones radiated color.

Your melancholy was noble—it wasn’t something you had fallen into, but something you had chosen. You were attentive to it as a friend might be, eyes and ears present, and in return, it offered you dreams as gifts, which you watched with delight, like watching a film. But you were not a passive spectator; on the contrary, you were the lead actor, because the film presented to you was the work of the director you had trained: yourself.

You were an artist, celebrating your own work with no need for any audience but yourself. That is why I was drawn to you. I did not want you to feel as if nothing had happened. I wanted you to know that even your nothingness had witnessed another nothingness, and that both of these “nothings” were in fact true existences. That is why you are reading this now. But I did not want to leave without leaving something behind.

There was always a central theme in your dreams: a capable companion. I could have been that, but at most, I can be a companion for the journey rather than a loyal friend. So I needed to find another companion for you. What could it be? Something that would always be with you, yet never completely surrender to you…

I had a tiny terrarium in my hand for the small spider I carried. Pet, you say? I cannot call her that, because even without biting, she knows how to keep to herself, to ignore people. But she does not ignore those like you and me. She senses which ones have spirit and which ones carry only a simple body, and recoils from the latter in disgust. 

I placed her, along with her tiny home, among the pen holders on the desk beside your bed. She will not escape, because she understands our language. You need not speak to her; merely signaling that you are present is enough. She bites no one but liars. Every day, you can offer her a piece of leaf for food. She has no appetite for excess. Carry her in your pockets if you wish, in your hands if you wish, or let her wander in your hair like releasing her into a forest. Yet she will never spin her web there, because even she understands that these spaces belong to you, and respects them.

After placing her, I returned your dream journal beneath your pillow. And while you slept—likely receiving your first kiss, including from your family—I pressed a kiss soft enough on your forehead not to wake you, turned toward the balcony, and flew toward the home of another spirit whose scent I had caught.

A.