Fantasy

They told Mira the world was made of stone and laws—that gravity could not be cheated, time could not be tricked, and imagination was just a passing daydream to be outgrown.

But Mira knew better.

She had seen the sky open like a page torn from a book. She had spoken to wolves that read poetry in their sleep. She had once followed a shadow into a mirror and come out the other side with silver in her hair and a question in her heart.

At twelve, she was labeled "sensitive." At fifteen, she was “troubled.” At twenty-two, she was simply dismissed.

By twenty-five, Mira stopped trying to explain.

Her world was different—tilted, blooming, unfinished. She worked in a library tucked into the belly of an ancient city, and on weekends, she wandered the park behind it, where the statue of a forgotten king stood half-swallowed by ivy. Children played there, but Mira wasn’t watching them. She was waiting.

Because every seventh full moon, the statue blinked.

Not everyone could see it—only those who still believed stories were more than lies told in beautiful clothes.

And tonight, the moon was perfect.

She arrived at dusk, the park emptying under the weight of sleep and streetlights. The statue loomed in the clearing: a warrior of stone, sword at his side, gaze fixed on the distance. At his feet, the ivy quivered like breath.

Mira approached.

"I’m ready," she whispered, as she had whispered for years.

Nothing. The wind stirred. A leaf somersaulted across the stone path.

Then, a blink.

The statue’s stone eyelids fluttered once, and the sword cracked like thunder. A line of light split from the hilt to the base, and the ivy unraveled in coils of silver thread. The ground beneath her shook, and the world tilted—not metaphorically, but truly. The stars swirled. The sky peeled open.

And Mira fell.

She fell not down, but inward.

She landed in a field of glass trees.

Above her, the sky was painted in brushstrokes—violet, crimson, gold—shifting as though the air itself were dreaming. The trees shimmered when she moved, singing a song she didn’t recognize but somehow remembered.

She stood slowly. Her boots crunched over grass that wasn’t grass, but tiny hands of light reaching toward her soles.

A figure approached—tall, cloaked, bearing a staff carved from what looked like moonlight itself.

"You finally came," the figure said. The voice was neither male nor female, neither young nor old. It was the sound of a page turning.

"You know me?" Mira asked.

"We know all Dream walkers. You are born from the seam between truth and tale."

"I don’t understand," she said.

"You do," the figure replied, gesturing behind her.

She turned.

There stood every story she had ever imagined.

A wolf with stars in its fur, a boy with a lantern that swallowed lies, a girl who wept feathers instead of tears. They looked at her not with surprise, but with recognition.

"You created us," said the feather-girl. "And now we need you."

"Why?"

"Because the world of imagination is fading. Reality grows hungrier every year, devouring wonder, choking magic in red tape and steel towers. Our lands shrink. Our skies dim. If no one dreams us, we disappear."

Mira’s breath caught.

"I didn’t know," she whispered.

"You did," the cloaked figure said. "But now you remember."

"So what can I do?"

"You must reign. Imagination needs a queen."

The coronation took place under a sun woven from words.

Mira stood before a mirror not of glass, but of memory. Her reflection wore not her old jeans and cardigan, but a cloak stitched from constellations, boots of cloud-leather, and a crown of ink and fire.

"You are not a ruler of lands," the figure said. "You are a guardian of dreams."

As the crown touched her brow, the world around her deepened. Colors grew truer. Songs harmonized with silence. Every thought birthed a new reality, a new tale waiting to be told.

And with a step forward, Mira rewrote the sky.

She returned to the real world not with fanfare, but with quiet.

The park was unchanged. The statue still stood. The moon still watched.

But Mira was not the same.

In her pocket, she carried a silver quill.

At work, she shelved books that whispered to her. At night, she wrote not with ink, but with belief.

And those who read her stories—really read them—felt something stir.

A leaf dancing the wrong direction. A flicker in a shadow. A voice in the wind that said You’re not alone.

Because Mira understood now:

Fantasy was not an escape from reality. It was a doorway. A rebellion. A promise.

A place where imagination reigns—and reality, when wise enough, bows.