Dream Generator

You are standing in a forest where the trees remember everything. You're in the space between waking and sleeping.

There is a cartographer mapping places that exist only in dreams. They look at you as if they've been waiting, though not impatiently. Time works differently here. They gesture toward a leaf from a tree that grows between waking and sleeping.

"This belongs to you," they say, or perhaps they don't say it—perhaps you simply understand. "It always has."

You realize you've been speaking a language you don't know.

Time hiccups, and you're in a different moment.

Now you find yourself in a theater where the audience is the play. The a cartographer mapping places that exist only in dreams is here too, or perhaps they never left. In dreams, presence is not about location.

You realize you are still holding a leaf from a tree that grows between waking and sleeping. It feels right in your hands—the exact weight of something important, the precise temperature of truth.

The a cartographer mapping places that exist only in dreams smiles—or maybe the light changes in a way that means the same thing.

Endings are just beginnings wearing different clothes

You open your eyes—

But did you?