Maybe the Dreamer realized this mistake just a little too late. He continued telling Echo: "But that moment when I wished for nothing to change, everything suddenly did. My pool floated still. The wetness of the pool became the wetness in my eyes. And they opened – my eyes opened to this new world."

The Dreamer looked at the pool. He didn’t cry just then, although he wanted to.

"A voice spoke to me," he continued. "The voice said: ‘Do not be frightened. I can give you what you have wished for, Dreamer. I can make your world become forever. In short, I offer you your dreams.’"

Looking into Echo’s pool, for a moment the Dreamer thought about that voice that had ended his dreams. The voice must have been that of the Dreamkeeper, but the Dreamer couldn’t have known it. He explained to Echo, "It was a calm voice, a lonely voice, but it did not seem dishonest." The Dreamer hadn’t seen anyone; he had just heard an empty sound. Reader, isn’t it hardest to trust people when you cannot look them in the eyes?

The Dreamer grieved: "Instead of dreams, though, I received this. Oh, Echo! I was born into reality. I woke up to this eternal nightmare, a world that never changes. This was never my dream."

And Echo repeated in sympathy: "This was never my dream."

The Dreamer frowned. His naïve face reflected back from Echo. Her concern consoled him because she, too, was trapped in a world that was not her own. She, too, felt imprisoned. The Dreamer stared in Echo’s pool. He wished on her smile, dreaming of sleep.

When people lay down to sleep, it’s the most marvelous thing. Their eyes close, and some kind of peace comes to them. The Dreamer hadn’t slept since he woke up to reality. Sleep hadn’t been invented yet. But at this very moment somebody must have come to help him.

Maybe from Echo’s pool, sleep came. A new image in the pool emerged from behind her. What must it have looked like? I imagine this image as a kingly figure, an ancient man, with a head of one thousand combed white hairs. He stepped out of the water, towering above the Dreamer.

"Dreamer," said the old man, "I am the spirit of sleep, the Judge of dreams. You have opened your heart, but you must be careful now that it spills no blood." Despite these solemn words, the Dreamer was not afraid. In the Judge’s eyes, where you can see people’s true nature, was a softness and generosity that lacked in the hollow voice from before. Certainly this was an entirely different voice than that of the Dreamkeeper, that wretched creature who had taken away his dreams.

The old man boomed: "If you wish to argue your fate, you may do so properly." And then, carelessly, with the blink of an eye, the world disappeared.