Have you ever wondered who writes your dreams?

We dream sylphs do. Humans dimly aware of our existence have at one time or another called us many things: Baku, Oneiroi, Fetch, Wekufe, Ayami. Today is a different era, one where our existence is no longer acknowledged outside myth and legend. Yet our work remains the same: when you humans sleep, a portion of your mind crosses over into our world, and into our hands.

The world of dreams is a place of potential, where what you see and what you are is what we create for you. You might think this means the weaving of dreams is all fantasy and nonsense, but to us it is an entirely serious affair.

Some dreams merely pass the time, and others do no more than soothe the mind; inexperienced sylphs and those lacking in talent most often weave these. A dream cleverly woven by a skilled sylph, however, can change a person’s life — tell them things about who they are or who they might be, unravel mysteries they’ve written within themselves, show them things that they want to see but cannot, or reveal things that they do not want to know but must. Even nightmares can serve a purpose.

We are not physical beings like humans, but we are intimately connected to your culture and ways — we must be to tailor your dreams. The place where I gather with others to weave dreams, for example, appears not unlike an office building in the city whose dreamers we serve. You might think this lacking in imagination, but the eldest sylph here, a strict sort, feels it appropriate to what we do. Our “offices,” of course, are not so mundane — an array of places as diverse as the sylphs who inhabit them.

There are, as you might imagine, limits to what one can glean from the second-hand nature of our exposure to the waking world. This is why familiar places visited in your dreams often look different than they should. The veil of sleep and the air of familiarity are sufficient to maintain the dreamer’s comfort, so this is rarely an issue.

What you might not imagine is that our world is not one composed entirely of whimsy. While the world of dreams is what we create, our raw materials come from that same second-hand exposure. Steeped as you are in external sensations, it might be difficult for you to realize how daunting a task it is to conjure the flavor of something with no point of reference. Describing the sting of sleet on the face is one thing; weaving it convincingly into being, never having drawn a memory of it from one who has experienced it, is another entirely. Such it is that the warp and weft of the dreams we weave are, far more often than not, made up of threads extracted from memories of the waking world.

Just as our world is not a place of undiluted imagination, so are there rules among us sylphs, things that must and must not be done.

It is a sensitive relationship, that of a sylph and a dreamer. To weave a dream, we need to delve into the memories that are exposed when you cross into sleep. We pore over your day’s experiences, your thoughts, your hopes, your ambitions, your secrets, where we unearth the nuggets of knowledge that we use to weave that night’s dreams.

This might seem invasive to you, but it is a necessity, and it is the way things have always been. One of the most sacred rules of sylphs is what you might call a sort of doctor-patient confidentiality — the secrets of one person’s dreams should never find their way into another’s.

Long ago, when dreams held powerful sway over the waking world, this rule was not as it is now. Even today it is bent on rare occasions; a sympathetic sylph aware of a tragedy the dreamer is not might reveal it or hint at it. You yourself may have had such a dream at one time or another, and thought it a premonition. The punishment for such infractions is strict, but fair, and rarely meted out.

For this same reason it is considered proper for a sylph not to spend too many nights with the same dreamer. This rule, in contrast, is regularly overlooked — when weaving important dreams, after all, the better you know a dreamer, the more able you are to guide them as they sleep.

Another rule that differs from ages long gone is the one that conceals our existence from the dreamer. There was a time, we sylphs are taught, when dreamers spoke openly to sylphs. But their world is not now what it once was, and ours has changed to suit. Revealing oneself to a dreamer is now strictly forbidden, and the punishment for doing so harsh.

Fewer are the rules of sylphs that have existed since before your history, or ours, was recorded, immutable and guarded steadfastly to this day.

One such rule is that a dreamer must never come to harm in a dream, nor a dream lead them to harm upon waking. Whatever mortal terror you might experience in a nightmare, you will wake unharmed.

Another sacred rule you might consider the opposite, though it is not: We must never fall in love with those whose dreams we weave.

Of all the rules I have broken, that is the one I regret most.

For sylphs and dreamers share a symbiotic relationship, but are of different worlds, and such affairs can only bring pain, and end in heartbreak.