The Color of Asaland

In the city of Veloria, a shimmering metropolis carved into the mountains of Asaland, where rain sang like wind chimes and the moon glowed like liquid crystal, lived two souls fated to find each other—again and again.

John was a dreamsmith—he crafted artificial memories for clients who wanted to relive joy, forget pain, or experience something they never had. His studio overlooked the skytrain rails, a place filled with silver light and silent, gliding transit. He lived quietly, sculpting dreams for strangers, but always haunted by a memory he refused to edit—her laugh. The sound was both music and ache.

Angelina was an archivist of emotion—a rare job in Asaland. She worked at the Department of Sentient Records, where moments with intense feelings were stored, replayed, and studied for their psychic resonance. She wore gloves made of neural silk and could sift through grief like sand, sort through love like petals in wind. But there was one record she could never bring herself to rewatch: File 23R—labeled “John.”

They had met five years prior, when emotion itself seemed brighter. At a memory exhibition, where John's lucid dream “The Garden of Stars” was on display, Angelina wandered in. He saw her standing in the artificial dreamscape under a digital constellation he’d coded with his childhood hopes, and she was crying—silently, beautifully, without shame.

“I’m sorry,” she’d said when he approached.

“For what?”

“For knowing this isn’t real… but still wishing it was.”

That was how it started.

Their love unfolded in vivid color. They explored every strange part of Asaland together—the mirror lakes of Atriess, the floating bazaars of Aeonlight, the forgotten tunnels under Veloria where people once whispered to the wind and swore it answered back. They were young, curious, and wrapped in each other like sunlight through stained glass.

But perfection, even in Asaland, never lasts.

John had a past—a real one—not just the dreams he made for clients. One day, a woman appeared at his studio: a former client. She claimed a memory implant John had made for her years ago caused her to confuse a fantasy love with a real man. Lawsuits followed. Public trials. Angelina stood by him…until she found out that part of the memory that triggered the confusion was inspired by her. John had modeled pieces of that dream—her smile, her gaze—on Angelina without her knowing. To him, it was love. To her, it felt like theft.

“You used me,” she whispered one night, standing in the dreamscape garden he made for her, now hollow.

“No,” he pleaded, “I saved pieces of you. Because I was afraid of losing you completely.”

And she left.

Years passed. Veloria kept spinning.

John withdrew, rejecting all clients, refusing to sculpt any dream not rooted in harsh truth. He believed beauty had betrayed him. He turned his garden of stars into a desert of silence. He once built dreams. Now, he dismantled them.

Angelina tried to move on. She dated others, traveled to the colder hemispheres of Asaland, and archived foreign emotions like wonder from the frost festivals and longing from distant pilgrims. But every time she touched those moments, a whisper of John's warmth would sneak in—uninvited, unwelcome, unforgotten.

Then came the Synapse Event.

One spring, Asaland experienced a rare anomaly: a surge of dream energy that crossed into waking life. People’s memories leaked into the sky, colors danced unnaturally, and strangers wept at scenes they didn’t live. The Dream Grid broke. The government called on the best dreamsmiths and archivists to repair reality.

They called John. They called Angelina.

They were assigned to the same team. The reunion wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet, awkward. They exchanged glances, not greetings. In the first meeting, Angelina handed him a file labeled “Static Bloom”—a corrupted dreamscape they had to fix together.

Inside that world was…a garden.

Their garden.

But twisted, decayed, vines strangling stars, fountains cracked.

“This isn’t my coding,” John muttered.

Angelina’s voice was barely a whisper. “No. It’s mine.”

She had archived his dream… after their break. She’d wanted to preserve what they had before it dissolved. She tried to cleanse the memory, but her own feelings infected it—grief, guilt, longing. It became a ghost version of what once was.

Now they had to enter it… together.

The moment they stepped inside the corrupted dream, everything felt like a mirror of their old love—except wrong. The stars flickered with doubt. The paths bent away from each other. The air whispered all the things they never said aloud.

In the center of the garden was a sculpture: their silhouettes, holding hands—but fractured. A crack split them right where their palms met.

To fix the dream, they had to reconnect the neural coding.

“I never wanted to be a piece of your work,” Angelina said, touching the fracture.

“I never wanted to lose you so badly I froze you in a dream,” John replied.

They stood in silence, the wind filled with their old voices. Then John stepped forward.

“I don’t want the perfect version of us,” he said. “I want the broken one. The real one. The one who fought and left and regretted it. I want you, not a memory.”

Angelina smiled through tears. “I archived everything… except that.”

And she reached out.

Together, they rewrote the dream.

When the grid was repaired, and Asaland’s skies calmed, their old garden was restored—but different now. The stars weren’t symmetrical. The flowers grew in odd patterns. But it was alive, and it was theirs.

Months later, they opened a new exhibition together: “Fractures and Flames”—a joint dreamscape of imperfect love, sorrow healed through time, and joy that chose to return.

At the opening, a child asked Angelina, “Is this based on a real story?”

Angelina glanced at John, standing under a crooked tree whose blossoms flickered like memory.

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “It’s still happening.”

End.