I knew what was about to happen as soon as I opened his mind that night. And I should have been relieved. It was my opportunity to undo the wrong I had wrought — he had given me the means to escape the snare.

There would be punishment meted out if my sin became known to others, but it would be comparatively light if no harm were done to him. Indeed, I had succeeded at what I had set out to do, which would mitigate how the elder sylphs would view my actions. Perhaps, I reasoned, I could convince them that it had all been intentional.

I resolved, as I wove the dream, to let him reject me as nothing more than a figment of his subconscious, congratulate him on his development, and never return to his slumber again. It would take but a moment.

And yet, when I approached him at his desk at work — I felt the reality of the location would give him confidence in his decision — my heart was heavy as I have never felt it before.

Lucidity came ever easier to him, and he recognized it as a dream just as I reached him, in the guise of a co-worker he disliked.

He looked at me with displeasure, then with a smile when he noticed my eyes, then with a kind of sadness, sighing and sinking into his chair as if the air had been let out of him.

“Hi. I’m sorry, but I can’t keep… okay, this seems so stupid now. You’re just my subconscious playing games with me. Why am I even talking to you.” He spoke not to me, but to himself, stood and walked past me as if I were a piece of furniture.

This was not the person I had fallen in love with, had broken a sacred pact for, had risked all that I have for. Rejection, I was prepared to accept. But for some reason I cannot explain, his belief that I did not exist, that my love had not been real, was too much to bear.

“Wait, please do not say that. I will tell you who I am.”

He stopped and hesitated for a long moment before turning back to me. He appeared terribly confused. “Why now? I don’t get it.”

“Because I am not a figment of your imagination. I am as real as you are.”

“No, this is a dream, I’m sure of it. You’re not real.”

“My name is Yuzora. I am a dream sylph. We live on the far side of sleep and weave the dreams you see here.” My fate was sealed. I had broken the final covenant of sylphs, and there was no turning back. “I have violated a most sacred rule in telling you this, but please believe me. Ask any questions you have, and I will answer them truthfully.”

“Dream sylph? Like, what, you live in dreamland and make people’s dreams?”

“In essence, yes.”

“So all this isn’t just in my head, I’m in dreamland.”

“Call it what you will, this is the land of sleep, where dreamers go.”

“So if I walk through that door there, I’m going to walk into someone else’s dream?”

“It is not so easy to pass from one dream to another, but yes, there are other dreams near this one. Please do not ask to see them — I have broken enough rules tonight as it is.”

“Fine then, but if that’s true, how do you know what my office looks like?” He gestured around. “Or what the fifth floor receptionist looks like? I suppose you’re a little fairy who floats around watching me.”

“No. As you sleep, we read through your memories, from which we weave the world you see. We draw sustenance from the fragments of yourself that you leave behind as you live out a dream, while you find solace or answers to the waking day’s questions.”

“Wait, you read my mind? That’s… that’s not right. Everything?!”

“It is simply the way things are, and the way they have always been. It is why we are strictly forbidden to reveal ourselves.”

“If it’s against the law, why would you be telling me this?”

“I… because I want you to know what I truly am, to know that everything you have felt while dreaming my dreams was real, and that wherever you go in the waking world, you will not find me. Please, believe me when I tell you this.”

I could not glean from his rational mind what he was thinking at that moment, but his face flickered between happiness and confusion.

“Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you read my mind and write my dreams. All of them?”

“Most. Those true dreams that are more than insubstantial shadows created by yourself.”

“So you make everything here? Everybody?”

“Save those few things a dreamer might will into being, yes, we do.”

“Even my uncle? The night that he died, that was just you messing with me?”

His hurt tone stung. “It was not, I vow to you. While I might take the form of someone you know, that was your uncle himself. When a human dies while in a dream, they sometimes remain for a time in our world before moving on. We will on occasion let them intrude into the dream of a loved one so they might say a final farewell.”

“So it really was him. Did he go to heaven?”

“We sylphs know no more of what lies beyond our world than you do. He seemed a good man, so I would think he is somewhere fitting.”

“That’s good, I guess. How long have I known you, though? Have you always been there making my dreams?”

“No, I first wove a dream for you not so long ago, here, in this form.” I showed him the place of his imagination, and made myself appear as the woman he had spoken with there. “There are countless other sylphs, and we normally flit from one dreamer to the next.”

“Yeah, I remember this. But why don’t other people notice like I did?”

“There is a barrier between the waking world and the land of dreams that we cannot cross, and your rational mind can only cross with the greatest difficulty. It is what prevents you from entering our world with your wits fully about you, while you are awake, and why dreams fade so readily from memory after you leave them. It is normally quite impossible for a dreamer to recognize a sylph as such. Truth be told, I do not understand how you came to recognize me — I have never heard of such a thing happening.”

“Forget that. You’re saying that all those different women I’ve been seeing, those were all you, pretending to be other people.”

“As it were, but I was not pretending, it was—”

“Yes, you were! You’ve been stringing me along pretending to be a dream and… and messing with my mind. Manipulating me, because you knew what I wanted. I had sex with you! I fell in love with you! Were you trying to screw up my life?”

“Never! I could never do anything to hurt you.”

“Then why did you play with me like that? Didn’t you think about how I’d feel? Never mind, this is too much. I want to wake up. What do I do, pinch myself?”

In this moment of clarity I understood why loving a dreamer was forbidden. “I can break the dream and send you back to the waking world, if you wish.”

“Do it. I want out of here.”

And so I let him go, wishing so desperately that my final taste of him might be something other than his anger.

His suffering was finished, but mine had just begun. As soon as I broke the dream I learned that I was not alone; the elder sylph who supervised me had been watching. There would be no escape. I was glad, in a way, for the punishment that awaited me would perhaps distract from the pain that my heart felt at what I had just lost.