Reader, I can tell that your heart is an honest one. You don’t seem to mind reading these forgettings, even when the outcome is uncertain. So you will not be afraid when I tell you that there is a part of the heart that is empty, a part that we are born with incomplete. Like all holes in the heart, we must fulfill our wishes to plug them closed. One of these holes is in the unmistakable shape of love. This is the gap that unites people. While it was easier before when lovers were born in pairs, even today, once the pair is united, it is nearly impossible to separate. Once filled, if only for a moment, it remains permanent – even through dreams.

The Dreamer felt himself breaking at this very hole in his heart. Echo had already filled this part of him. He could no more part with her than he could with his eyes. The Dreamkeeper was trying to tear at the border between reality and dreams. (I think, sometimes, that this is also what the Doctor is attempting with me. She promises me, though, that she is trying to do just the opposite.)

Unable to give in, the Dreamer must have found some words to speak to his judges. When your dreams have been exhausted, there’s nothing left to use but words.

I imagine he said the easiest thing: "I am the Dreamer. I don’t have any true shape, just like my dreams had no shape. The Dreamkeeper created my dreams in order to take them away. I am being tortured by my very wishes. I have continued in this new world with nothing more than my feelings."

He paused and coughed, but continued. "But even this feeling you now want from me. Like eyes closing in sleep, my world of dreams fell into reality. Then, even those broken dreams found a new life – all in an Echo. She is like an echo of those past dreams. You want to take away this feeling of love? I don’t think you can, because now I am without feeling. All of me is imparted in her. You may do away with my world – my worlds. Without Echo, in reality or dreams, I will have neither."

This, Reader, is what the Dreamer said. And in tandem, from the farthest reaches of reality, came a whisper, a voice that echoed his words.