“Between Two Worlds”

Between Two Worlds

By [Ali Rehman]

Lena had always lived between two worlds.

By day, she was grounded in the familiar rhythms of reality: the hum of the city, the blur of faces rushing past, the sharp click of keyboard keys in her small office. But by night, everything changed. When sleep claimed her, she slipped into a realm where reality twisted and stretched, where dreams painted scenes more vivid than any waking moment.

At first, the dreams were simple — soft memories and fleeting images, like whispers from her past. But gradually, they grew more intricate, more demanding. In these dreamscapes, she wandered through cities of crystal towers and forests that hummed with ancient magic. She met people who felt more real than the colleagues she passed every day, shared stories that lingered long after she woke.

But the lines began to blur.

One morning, Lena woke feeling displaced, her mind tangled in fragments of a dream that refused to fade. She found a folded note on her pillow — written in delicate, looping script:

“You are not just a visitor here.”

Puzzled, she traced the words with trembling fingers. The handwriting was unfamiliar, yet somehow intimate.

As days passed, more clues appeared — a pressed flower on her desk, a melody humming softly from nowhere, a scent of rain and jasmine that transported her back to that other world.

Lena realized the dream realm was reaching out, bleeding into her waking life.

She began to question everything. Was she truly awake when she was awake? Or was reality itself a dream she could not escape?

One night, as she lay between sleep and consciousness, she found herself standing at a crossroads. On one side, the familiar streets of her city glowed under the moonlight, quiet and unchanging. On the other, a shimmering portal pulsed with iridescent light, inviting and mysterious.

The voice came again — soft and clear.

“Choose, Lena. Which world will you belong to?”

Fear and longing wrestled inside her.

In the dream world, she had freedom, magic, and connection. The people there understood her in ways no one in her waking life ever could. But reality offered roots, the tangible, the possibility of change through effort and time.

Could she live fully in either world, or was she doomed to drift between, a ghost caught in the in-between?

Days turned into nights, and nights blurred into days. Lena’s grip on reality loosened, and her presence in both worlds became fragile.

Then, one evening, beneath a sky splashed with stars both familiar and strange, Lena met a figure who held the answer.

He was neither dream nor human — an ethereal guide with eyes like galaxies and a voice like the wind through leaves.

“You are not lost,” he said. “You are awake in both worlds. The truth is, the worlds are not separate, but layers of the same reality. Your soul dances between them because it seeks wholeness.”

He reached out, and Lena felt a warmth spreading through her — a merging of dream and day.

“You must stop fighting the boundaries,” he continued. “Embrace the space between, for it is where creation lives. Here, you can shape your own path, weaving dreams into your waking life.”

With newfound clarity, Lena opened her eyes the next morning and saw her city with fresh vision. The colors were richer, the sounds deeper. The dream world had not vanished — it pulsed beneath the surface, a hidden current of possibility.

She began to carry pieces of her dreams into reality: the courage to speak her truth, the willingness to believe in magic hidden in small moments, the connection to others through empathy and imagination.

Lena was no longer trapped between two worlds. She had become the bridge.

And in that space between, she found freedom.

Because sometimes, the most profound reality lies not in choosing one world over another, but in living fully in the space where both collide.