The Dream Beneath Our Pillows

In the village of Morrowind, dreams were never private things.

Each night, as the moon crested the hills and the wind died to a hush, the villagers would fall asleep—and enter the same dream.

They would walk a forest path dappled with golden light. Birds sang songs no one could remember upon waking, but everyone knew the tune was the same. The trees whispered secrets that felt familiar, and ahead lay a glass house with no door, where shadows danced like memories.

Each morning, at the bakery, the inn, the well, someone would say, “Did you see the girl again? The one in the blue dress?”

And someone else would reply, “She was standing by the glass house. She waved at me this time.”

They had all seen her. A girl who belonged to no one, who aged as they did, year by year, yet never appeared outside the dream. No one knew her name, but everyone felt she mattered.

No one found it strange anymore. The dreaming had been happening for generations.

Until Ayla dreamed something else.

Ayla was fifteen when it happened.

She was restless, even in waking life. She wanted more than bread-making and sheep-herding. She asked questions no one liked answering.

“What’s outside the valley?”

“Why can’t we leave?”

“What if the dreams are warnings, not gifts?”

People shook their heads. “The dreams are tradition. They bring peace. They keep us safe.”

Ayla didn’t feel safe. She felt watched.

That night, she lay beneath her quilt, heart pounding, unsure what she hoped for.

When sleep took her, she was not on the forest path.

She stood on ash.

The sky was cracked like glass. The trees were burned stumps. The glass house lay in ruins, its shards bleeding light into the ground. And the girl in the blue dress was crying—real, silent sobs.

Ayla awoke screaming.

She told no one.

But the next night, it happened again.

And the next.

And the next.

She stopped seeing the shared dream. No birds. No golden forest. Just ashes. A girl who grieved. And, sometimes, whispers that begged her to “remember.”

It was then that Ayla started to notice: things in the village were changing too.

The baker’s fire wouldn’t light some mornings. The well tasted like metal. Babies cried at strange hours. The moon sometimes flickered like a candle about to die.

And no one seemed to notice.

Terrified, Ayla confided in her grandmother, Mara, who had long been considered half-mad by the village.

“You see it too?” Mara whispered. Her eyes, once clouded, sharpened with purpose. “The dreams have always been a cage, child. A beautiful one. But a cage all the same.”

Mara led Ayla to the attic, where a hidden book lay in a chest wrapped in silver cloth. The cover bore no title, only the image of the glass house.

Inside were pages written in many hands. Descriptions of other dreams, dreams that deviated from the golden path. People who once dreamed freely—and then disappeared.

“The girl in the blue dress,” Mara said, “was the first to break the dream. She tried to warn us. But the village... it silenced her. It made her part of the dream.”

“She’s real?” Ayla asked.

“She was. And she may be again. If you’re brave enough to wake us.”

That night, Ayla did not sleep. She prepared.

She mixed herbs whispered about in old stories. She wore silver under her clothes. She carried a mirror from her grandmother’s attic, etched with runes.

When she finally closed her eyes, she entered the ash-dream once more.

This time, she did not watch the girl cry.

She walked to her.

“Who are you?” Ayla asked.

The girl turned. “I was once called Lira. I broke the pattern. They made me forget.”

Ayla held out the mirror. “Remember.”

Lira looked into it—and screamed. Light burst from her eyes, her hands, her chest. And suddenly, the ash fell away. The forest returned—but not golden. Real.

The glass house rebuilt itself. And this time, it had a door.

Morning came.

And the village awoke silent.

No one spoke of dreams. Not because they hadn’t had one—but because they didn’t know whose dream it had been.

For the first time in centuries, everyone had dreamed something different.

Some dreamed of oceans they had never seen. Others of flying. Some of nothing at all.

And Ayla?

She dreamed of possibility.

The spell had broken.

The glass house stood empty now, but Ayla visited it each night in her sleep, a guardian of forgotten truth.

She would never let them forget again.