Chapter 90: The You in my Dreams: Folklore in the Dragon’s mythology

Long before mortals learned to count the stars, before calendars had been invented to measure the patience of the heavens, there were two worlds who knew how to dream.

They lived impossibly far apart.

Not merely across distance, for distance was a small thing to celestial beings, but across dimensions—separated by laws of existence so ancient that even the oldest comets had forgotten who had written them.

One world was blue.

From the outside, it appeared like a sapphire pearl floating in an endless black sea, wrapped in pale clouds and streaked with oceans deeper than memory. It was a world of rain and forests, of mountains wearing snow like crowns, of rivers that whispered to one another beneath the moonlight. It was alive in a way no mortal understood. Every tide was one of its breaths. Every storm was a thought passing through its mind. Every earthquake was a restless movement beneath its skin.

The other world was golden.

It floated in a different dimension where the darkness itself seemed to glow, a magnificent sphere of amber deserts, shining mountains, and rivers that flowed like molten sunlight. Its skies were permanently painted in shades of gold and crimson, and its nights were filled with enormous luminous flowers that opened only when the world slept.

The golden world was proud.

It had always been proud.

It believed its mountains were the tallest, its rivers the brightest, its skies the most beautiful. It loved looking at itself in the reflection of its own golden seas.

And yet, despite having everything a world could possibly desire, it was lonely.

So was the blue world.

Neither knew the other existed.

Not at first.

The first meeting happened in a dream.

There was no moon that night on the blue world, only clouds wandering lazily across its sleeping oceans. Deep beneath those clouds, something ancient stirred.

The blue world dreamed.

And in its dream, it found itself standing beneath a golden sky.

It did not understand what it was seeing.

There were no oceans beneath its feet. There were no familiar mountains. Instead, golden grass stretched endlessly toward a horizon painted orange, and enormous flowers glowed among the hills.

Then someone spoke.

"You are not from here."

The blue world turned.

There stood the golden world.

Not as a sphere in the heavens, but as a person.

He had hair that shimmered like sunlight on water, eyes the colour of warm amber, and a strange, almost arrogant smile upon his face.

The blue world stared at him.

"Who are you?"

"I could ask you the same."

"I am this world."

The golden one laughed.

"What a coincidence."

The blue world frowned.

"You are lying."

"I am not."

"Then prove it."

The golden one stretched out his hand.

The moment their fingers touched, the entire dream trembled.

The sky cracked with light.

For a heartbeat, they saw each other as they truly were.

Two enormous worlds suspended in separate dimensions.

Two living celestial beings who had somehow reached across the impossible walls between their realities.

Then the dream shattered.

The blue world awoke beneath its clouds.

The golden world awoke beneath its glowing flowers.

Neither could forget.

After that, they met every night.

Sometimes the dreams lasted only a few breaths.

Sometimes they lasted centuries.

Time behaved strangely in dreams.

The golden world liked to show the blue world his mountains.

"Look," he would say proudly. "I made these."

The blue world would look at the enormous golden peaks and reply, "Mine are taller."

"They are not."

"They are."

"You cannot even see them from here."

"I know my mountains."

The golden one would roll his eyes.

The blue world would smile.

They argued about everything.

Whose oceans were deeper.

Whose storms were stronger.

Whose skies were prettier.

Whose sunsets were more magnificent.

They argued so often that eventually the arguments became their way of saying hello.

And somewhere between one argument and another, affection quietly took root.

Neither noticed when it happened.

The golden world began waiting for dreams.

The blue world began counting the hours until sleep.

When one failed to appear, the other became restless.

The golden world began creating beautiful things specifically for the blue world to see.

He planted fields of luminous flowers because the blue world once mentioned liking flowers.

He carved valleys into the mountains because the blue world had said valleys looked peaceful.

He painted his skies blue one evening just to see whether the blue world would notice.

It did.

"You changed your sky."

"Do you like it?"

"It looks ridiculous."

The golden world stared at him.

Then the blue world smiled.

"I love it."

The golden world spent the rest of that dream pretending he had not been pleased.

The blue world did much the same.

He showed the golden one thunderstorms.

He showed him forests.

He showed him snow.

He showed him the ocean at dawn.

The golden world had never seen water behave like that.

"It looks alive," he whispered.

"It is."

"So are you."

The blue world looked away.

Neither spoke for a while.

That silence became their favourite conversation.

Years passed.

Then centuries.

Mortals were born and died beneath the blue world’s skies.

Civilizations rose.

Kingdoms fell.

Languages changed.

Songs were forgotten.

The golden world watched entire generations bloom beneath its sunlight and vanish like sparks.

Yet every night, he returned to the same dream.

And every night, the blue world was there.

Their love became a secret written nowhere.

No god recorded it.

No star witnessed it.

No priest sang of it.

It existed only in dreams.

Perhaps that was why it became so powerful.

For dreams have no boundaries.

Love, unfortunately, does.

Eventually, the two worlds began to desire something neither had dared to say.

They wanted to meet.

Not in dreams.

Not as visions.

Not as distant consciousness.

They wanted to touch.

The golden world was the first to say it.

"Come to me."

The blue world fell silent.

"Just once," he continued. "Cross into my world."

"I cannot."

"You can."

"No."

"You are afraid."

"I am sensible."

"You are afraid."

The blue world glared at him.

"And you are arrogant."

"I have been called worse."

"I am not coming."

The golden world smiled sadly.

"Then I will come to you."

"You cannot."

"Why?"

"Because our worlds do not belong to the same sky."

The golden world looked toward the dream’s horizon.

"Then perhaps we should make a new sky."

Neither understood how dangerous that sentence was.

Love had already begun pulling at the fabric of their dimensions.

Their thoughts reached across impossible distances.

Their dreams overlapped.

Their gravitational fields, though separated by dimensions, began answering one another.

At first, the heavens trembled only slightly.

A star vanished.

A comet changed its path.

A moon somewhere in a forgotten corner of existence began orbiting nothing.

Then one night, the blue world dreamed of the golden world so intensely that the dream did not end when morning came.

And the golden world dreamed of the blue world so deeply that his dream refused to disappear either.

The two dreams collided.

Space screamed.

Across dimensions, gravitational waves erupted like invisible oceans.

The fabric separating their realities bent.

Then tore.

A portal opened between them.

For the first time, the blue world could see the golden world without dreaming.

And the golden world could see him.

There was no dreamlike softness now.

No illusion.

No beautiful distortion.

They were real.

Terrifyingly real.

The golden world stood on one side of the portal.

The blue world stood on the other.

Neither spoke.

After centuries of dreaming, they had finally reached the moment they had imagined countless times.

The golden world extended his hand.

"Come."

The blue world looked through the portal.

He saw the golden mountains.

The glowing rivers.

The endless amber skies.

He saw the world he had loved through dreams.

And yet—

He did not like it.

Not truly.

The colours were too bright.

The air was too dry.

The golden rivers were beautiful, but they were not his oceans.

The mountains were magnificent, but they did not smell of rain.

The sky was dazzling, but it did not feel like home.

The blue world slowly shook his head.

"No."

The golden world froze.

"You don’t like it?"

"I don’t."

"Then come anyway."

"I cannot."

"But you loved it."

"I loved the world I saw in my dreams."

The golden world stared at him.

"The dreams were real."

"They were."

"Then I am real."

"You are."

"Then why won’t you come?"

The blue world looked at him for a long time.

"Because I loved the version of you that lived in my dreams."

The golden world’s expression changed.

The words hurt more deeply than either expected.

The portal trembled.

The golden world lowered his hand.

"Then perhaps," he whispered, "you never loved me."

The blue world closed his eyes.

"Perhaps."

Neither crossed.

The portal remained open for a little while longer.

Long enough for them to look at each other.

Long enough for both to understand that some dreams were beautiful precisely because they were impossible.

Then the gravitational waves weakened.

The tear in spacetime began to close.

The golden world could have crossed.

The blue world could have crossed.

Neither did.

When the portal finally disappeared, the heavens became silent.

Afterward, both worlds pretended nothing had happened.

They returned to their dimensions.

They stopped speaking of the portal.

They stopped speaking of the moment they had finally seen one another.

They told themselves it had only been a dream.

A strange dream.

A foolish dream.

A beautiful dream.

And every night, when sleep came, they continued meeting there.

The golden world still showed the blue world his mountains.

The blue world still showed him his oceans.

They still argued about sunsets.

They still mocked one another.

They still sat together beneath impossible skies.

And neither ever mentioned the fact that they had once met beyond the dream.

Perhaps this was cowardice.

Perhaps it was wisdom.

Or perhaps some loves are meant to remain exactly where they were born.

In dreams.

So the blue world continued loving the golden world he knew from sleep.

And the golden world continued loving the blue world he knew from dreams.

Neither crossed over.

Neither tried again.

They simply watched the stars between their dimensions and pretended they had never touched.

For there are some stories the universe refuses to let become happy endings.

And there are some lovers who are separated not because they stopped loving one another—

but because they loved the versions of each other that could only exist in a dream.