The First Dream

The room was wrapped in hushed tones—soft as moonlight and warm as a lullaby. A nightlight pulsed faintly in the corner, casting golden halos on the crib rails. And there, bundled in a swaddle stitched with little stars, slept the newborn. Only three days into the world, she had yet to see the petals of a rose, the blue of a sky, or the shimmer of tears.

But in her sleep, she dreamed.

No one could have guessed it—least of all her parents, who whispered in baby talk and worried over feeding schedules. But deep behind her fluttering eyelids, something ancient stirred. The newborn’s name was Alia, and though her lungs had only just tasted air, her soul was already on a journey.

In the cradle of her first dream, Alia floated.

She was neither body nor breath, but a hum of awareness, like a single note in a symphony not yet composed. Around her, the dreamscape shimmered like the inside of a seashell—soft pinks, glowing blues, and endless space.

“Welcome back,” a voice whispered. It was not in words, but in warmth, the kind that wraps itself around your spine and makes you feel remembered.

A figure emerged from the mist, shaped like a woman and yet not bound by skin or time. Her eyes were galaxies. Her presence—familiar.

“Who are you?” Alia didn’t speak, yet her question pulsed into the air.

“I am the Keeper of First Dreams,” the being replied. “And you, little one, are just beginning again.”

In her dream, Alia traveled not forward but inward. The Keeper guided her through the tunnels of memory—not hers, but echoes left behind in the amniotic hush. She floated past a heartbeat she knew better than her own—her mother’s—and listened to the song of life inside a womb.

There were moments from before the world. Glimmers of light. Sounds muffled like secrets. A father humming softly while painting her nursery. A grandmother’s voice telling stories to her growing belly. Each vibration had soaked into Alia’s forming bones.

In the dream, those sounds turned into shapes—dancing ribbons of light, curling and bending through the sky.

“What are these?” she asked.

“Gifts,” the Keeper said. “Memories you haven’t made yet but will recognize when you do.”

Alia drifted further, past the pulse of her own forming heart, into another place—a memory not of the womb, but of somewhere older.

She stood suddenly in a field of silver grass under a sky stitched with stars. There, a little boy waited, no older than five. He looked like her, with the same tilt to his eyes and the same dimple in his cheek.

“Are you me?” she asked.

The boy smiled. “No. I was before you. I am the life you had once, a long time ago. I was born during war and died young. But I loved once, with all my heart. That love still echoes inside you.”

“Why do I remember this?”

“Because love,” he said, “is never lost. It only changes shape.”

And just like that, the boy dissolved into a flock of doves, lifting toward the dream sky.

The Keeper appeared again. “Now,” she said gently, “it’s time for your Whisper.”

“My what?”

“Every newborn hears it in their First Dream. A message from the stars, to help them remember what matters when the world gets too loud.”

Alia floated quietly, and then the stars above began to pulse—like breaths, slow and sure. One drifted down, touching her forehead.

A voice not male, not female, but everything in between, poured into her.

“You are not a blank slate,” the Whisper said. “You are a book being written across lifetimes. You will forget this, as all must, but traces will remain—in your curiosity, in your fears, in the people you love without knowing why.”

The voice continued:

“When you feel alone, remember that you once stood in fields of silver grass. When your heart breaks, remember it once beat in many bodies before. And when you laugh—laugh freely, because you carry joy older than memory.”

Alia absorbed every word. Not with her ears, but with something deeper.

The dream began to dissolve like sugar in warm milk. The Keeper’s face grew dim.

“Will I remember you?” Alia asked.

“Not clearly,” she said, “but sometimes in your dreams, in your stories, in the quiet moments—you’ll feel me.”

“And when I cry?”

“I will hold the edges of your tears, so they do not spill forever.”

Alia, no longer a soul but a child again, began to drift back to her crib. Her breath returned. Her chest rose and fell. The dream thinned into air.

Morning light crept through the curtains. Her mother stirred awake and leaned over the crib, eyes blurry with sleep and wonder. She whispered, “Good morning, Alia.”

Alia blinked, her pupils wide and unseeing, yet... something shimmered behind them. As if she knew her name not from being told, but from having always carried it.

Her tiny hand grasped her mother’s finger.

And far above the Earth, one small star pulsed faintly—just once—as if nodding.

Epilogue: The Forgotten Remembering

Alia grew. Like all children, she laughed and cried and feared the dark. She drew stars on her notebooks without knowing why. She listened to music and swore some melodies felt like déjà vu. And once, when she stood in a field of silver grass on a family road trip, she wept without reason.

Years later, she became a storyteller.

She wrote of children who dreamed of galaxies, of voices in the womb, of souls who remembered being born. Editors said her stories were imaginative, fantastical, strange.

But deep down, Alia knew she wasn’t imagining.

She was remembering.