The One Who Lives in Dreams

The first time I saw him, I was five years old.

It was one of those winter nights when the world outside my window had turned into a silent painting, all white and silver, glowing beneath the moonlight. I remember the shadows of bare trees dancing across my ceiling, and the way the frost etched delicate stars on the glass. I couldn't sleep, so I lay staring up at the sky through my window when I saw him.

He stood at the edge of the woods behind our backyard. No footprints in the snow, no sound of arrival. Just there. Tall, still, wrapped in a coat darker than the night, with a soft glow outlining him. I should have been scared, but I wasn't. There was something soothing about his presence—like I had been waiting for him without knowing it.

He raised his hand slowly and waved.

I blinked, and he was gone.

At breakfast, I told my mom, "I saw a man in the woods. He was glowing."

She laughed, brushing my hair from my eyes. "Probably a dream, sweetheart. You've got your father's imagination."

She always said that.

But the next night, he returned.

He came often after that. Never speaking, never moving closer than the edge of the trees. Sometimes he'd wave. Sometimes he'd just stand there, as if keeping watch. I began calling him "The Quiet One."

As I grew older, I stopped telling people about him. No one believed me anyway. And besides, it felt sacred—a secret only for me. He was never threatening. He was... comforting. Like an invisible friend made of starlight and old lullabies.

By the time I was sixteen, the sightings had slowed. High school, exams, heartbreaks, and stress clouded my mind, and the dreams faded.

Until one night, on the eve of my graduation, he came back.

This time, he was closer. Standing just past the treeline, his figure more detailed than ever before. Dark curls peeked out beneath a hood, his eyes glowing faintly blue, a small, melancholic smile on his lips. I stood at the window, breath held, heart racing.

"Why do you always come back?" I whispered.

His smile deepened. Not sad. Not happy. Just... present.

And then I woke up. In bed. The window closed.

But I knew he had come.

Years passed. I went to college, moved to the city, fell in and out of love, lost my father, started writing stories that no one read. Life pulled me into its current, swift and relentless.

But every now and then—on lonely nights, when rain tapped gently against the window or the wind whispered through alleys like forgotten songs—he would return.

Always silent.

Always watching.

Always glowing faintly.

It wasn’t until I was twenty-seven that I dared to ask him a real question.

I saw him in a dream that felt sharper than usual. We stood in a foggy field, under a navy sky where stars drifted like lanterns.

"Are you real?" I asked.

He looked at me with eyes like oceans before a storm.

"Real enough to be missed," he replied.

It was the first time I had ever heard his voice. Low, soft, like a memory you almost forgot.

"Why me?" I whispered.

"Because you remembered."

I woke up crying.

Soon after, I began to paint him. Write about him. Draw the glow of his presence on napkins, sketchbooks, margins of receipts. I wrote a story called The Quiet One, and posted it online. No one believed it was anything more than fiction.

But the dreams continued. Sometimes he would walk beside me through forests lit by golden moons. Sometimes he would watch from a distance as I wandered lost cities built from light. He always appeared when I needed him—during breakups, grief, failure.

His silence was never empty. It was full of understanding.

Then came the night of the accident.

I had been driving late, returning from a failed book signing three towns away. Rain hit the windshield like a thousand tiny fists. My phone buzzed on the passenger seat with a dozen unread messages. I looked down, just for a second.

A truck.

A scream.

Metal.

Darkness.

Then, silence.

And then…

Light.

I stood in the middle of a bridge made of stars. Everything around me was weightless. Soft music played in the distance, and on the other end of the bridge—he stood.

The Quiet One.

But this time, he looked different. More vivid. His coat moved with wind I couldn’t feel. His face… familiar.

"You," I said. "You’re here."

He smiled. "You know who I am now, don’t you?"

And in that moment, I did.

He was the part of me I lost as a child. The joy. The hope. The belief in magic. He was my father’s lullabies. My mother’s bedtime stories. He was every version of love that was never allowed to stay. He was not a ghost, not a memory, not a man.

He was all of them.

"Am I dead?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Not yet. But you came close."

"Can I stay?"

His expression dimmed. "You could. But then your story ends here."

I looked back. The bridge behind me began to fade. I could hear voices, faintly. A hospital. My name being called. A hand holding mine.

"Will I see you again?" I asked.

He nodded once. "Always. In dreams."

And then I fell.

Back into the world.

I woke up in a hospital bed with tubes in my arms and my sister weeping beside me. They told me I was lucky. I had been seconds from gone.

But I knew luck had nothing to do with it.

The one who lives in dreams had guided me back.

I never saw him quite the same again. Not like before. But every time I paint the night sky, or write a story about forgotten things that still breathe in the silence—he is there.

Sometimes in the curve of a shadow.

Sometimes in a face that passes by too quickly.

Sometimes in the pause between one heartbeat and the next.

Because some souls aren't meant to stay.

They are meant to visit.

To remind us.

That we are never truly alone.

Even when we dream alone.

Moral:

Some people, memories, or feelings never fully leave us—they stay alive in our dreams to guide us, comfort us, and remind us of who we are beneath the noise of the world. The unseen can sometimes be the most real of all.