Beyond the waking world, just past the Veil of Slumber, there is a place known as the Somnus Archives. It is not a place one can find on any map, for its entrance is hidden behind a waterfall not of water, but of pure, undistilled sleep. To enter, one must simply close their eyes and drift. The Archives are a library, but they do not hold books. Instead, they house the world’s forgotten dreams.
The sole resident and caretaker of this infinite, silent place was a man named Alistair. He was old, but in the way a comfortable armchair or a beloved book is old—softened by time, not worn out by it. He had kind, crinkly eyes magnified by half-moon spectacles, and his tweed jacket, perpetually smelling of dust and lavender, had elbow patches worn to a soft sheen. He was the Librarian.
His life moved to a rhythm of gentle, quiet purpose. Each morning—or what passed for morning in that timeless place—he would rise from his small cot in the bell tower and begin his rounds. The library was a breathtaking sight. It was a series of vast, circular chambers connected by arching bridges, with shelves that spiraled up so high their tops were lost in a soft, misty gloom. And on every shelf sat the dreams.
Each dream was contained within a glass jar, bottle, or vial of a shape and size perfectly suited to its nature. Dreams of soaring through the clouds were kept in long, elegant decanters that swirled with captured mist. Silly, nonsensical dreams tumbled about in squat, round jars, bumping into each other like giggling children. Forgotten wishes were held in tiny, delicate perfume bottles, still radiating a faint warmth of hope. Each container glowed with a soft, internal light, and the combined luminescence of millions of forgotten dreams filled the Archives with a gentle, multi-hued twilight.
Alistair’s job was to care for them. He would walk the endless aisles, his soft-soled shoes making no sound on the polished wood floors. With a feather duster made from the down of a Gryphon’s chick, he would gently whisk away the dust of forgetting that constantly settled on the jars. He would check that the corks were secure, for a dream allowed to evaporate would be lost forever. He would catalogue new arrivals—dreams that had been dreamt and then completely forgotten by the waking world—labeling them with his elegant, looping script. “A child’s dream of a talking squirrel, circa 1982,” one label might read. Another, “An old woman’s recurring dream of her first dance.”
He loved the dreams, every one of them. He would often pause his work, pick up a jar, and give it a gentle shake. He would watch a dream of a perfect summer afternoon unfold in miniature, the tiny, captured sun warming the glass in his hands. He would smile at a dream of finding a secret door, its tiny, glowing key glinting within its bottle. He was the guardian of these small, precious moments of magic that the waking world had let slip away.
The library was organized with a logic all its own. The main hall housed the “Pleasantries & Pastimes.” Deeper within were the “Ambitions & Aspirations,” where dreams of becoming astronauts or artists pulsed with a bright, eager light. There were quieter sections, too. The “Whispers of Youth” held childhood memories, their light soft and pastel-hued.
And then there was the annex, connected by a long, echoing bridge, which Alistair visited only when necessary. This was where the “Anxieties & Apprehensions” were stored. The jars here were made of dark, smoky glass, and their light was muted, often a deep, troubled purple or a sickly grey-green. These were not true nightmares—those were housed in a much deeper, locked vault—but the small, fretful dreams: of being late for an important event, of saying the wrong thing, of a nameless sense of unease. Alistair treated these dreams with the same gentle care, ensuring their stoppers were tight, believing that even a fretful dream deserved to be remembered and kept safe.
One cycle, as he was making his rounds in this somber annex, he noticed something was wrong. A faint, cool draft, smelling of ozone and fear, seemed to disturb the still air. His eyes followed the strange scent to a low shelf. There, nestled between a dream of losing one’s keys and a dream of climbing a staircase that went nowhere, was an empty space. A single jar lay on the floor before it, tipped on its side. It was made of dark, almost black glass, and a jagged crack ran down its side. The cork stopper lay a few inches away. The label, written in his own hand, read: “A Child’s Fear of Being Forgotten.”
Alistair’s heart, for the first time in centuries, beat with a hurried rhythm. A dream was loose in the library. And judging by the chill it had left behind, it was a very frightened one.
