Although my answer to him had been “Maybe,” I did intend to see him again, even if he would not know me when I did. I felt that I could do more for him, so after obtaining permission from an Elder I set about planning a more meaningful dream to draw him farther out of his shell. It would take a number of nights, to be sure, and not all at once — you need to spread meaningful dreams out, lest they lose their impact or, worse still, become addictive to the dreamer. But, given time and enough effort, I felt the right dream could truly move this interesting, trapped man.

So while I prepared something more substantive, I set about learning more about him. I sat in on another sylph’s dreams for him, and then wove some of my own. Nothing special, although I did experiment with the many places he crafted in his imagination. They were wonderful places to weave, full of misty valleys and sunlit peaks and vine-covered ruins.

This is where I made my second mistake. In my effort to better understand him, I felt I needed to talk to him, which is of course quite easy. Thus, in every dream, I approached him and struck up a conversation. Sometimes it was as a tour guide, sometimes as a friend he had never in reality met before, sometimes as a childhood playmate, sometimes as a random passerby. Each time he would welcome the conversation, smile, laugh, and opened up a little more than the last.

I thought I was making real progress before even getting to the challenging dreams, but I had overlooked something. You see, during his waking life, he was no more open than he had been. He still went through the day in silence, oppressed by the weight of his surroundings. He was not opening up in life, he was opening up to me.

This is what led, ultimately, to my greatest mistake: Opening up to him.