Dreams Don't Sleep

It was almost midnight when Meera opened the bedroom window. The outside world was calm - the roofs rested in the moonlight, the trees flowed slowly in the air, and the stars were spread like a glow across the sky. The wind was calm, peaceful. But inside Meera's heart there was a little stir.

It has been three weeks when she and her mother went to this city. For Meera, everything felt foreigner - unknown roads, new schools where no one talked to her, the silence in the lunch room where she sat alone. At home, his friend. Here he had loneliness.

"It would be better," said the mother every night, always with a tired smile.

Meera didn't quarrel, but inside she wasn't sure.

At school she barely spoke. She poured like a shadow in the hallway. His notebooks were not from homework, but with pictures - with stairs floating in the sky, in magical forests and weird, with glowing creatures that looked more real than anything around him.

But at night everything changed.

First dream

That night, Meera slept with her head with rest on the sketchbook. His last drawing stars had a glowing ladder.

When she opened her eyes, she wasn't in her room.

She stood in the leg of that ladder - one from her sketch. It is slowly tweet in the moonlight, each step made of soft shiny light. Over the danced sky in colors that he never saw - purple, dark blue, golden fog.

A soft voice whispers, "This is where dreams begin."

Meera hesitates and then climbed.

Each step felt lighter than the final. At the top, the world came out of an adventure. The huge flowers were swept away for music in the rhythm, which she could not hear. The rivers shone like diamonds. Clouds swim very little to touch, shape themselves into animals dancing and disappearing.

Meera was not invisible here.

Here he ran barefoot through Stardust's field.

She laughed, and her laughter echoes in the air.

The stars felt it wherever she went.

A friend named Lumi

The next night Meera returned. And this time she wasn't alone.

A small creature with glowing fur, big ears and kind eyes congratulates him.

"I'm Lumi," he said. "You made me."

"Me?" Meera nap.

"From your photo. From your heart."

Since then, Lumi became his partner. Together they discovered Dreamland:

A library made of clouds, where books whispered stories;

A garden with mirrors that do not reflect the face, but courage;

A hill that reminds dances in the sky that lanterns.

"You're not lost," Lumi told him one night. "You just stay."

Shadow in daylight

Back to the real world, things remained difficult.

Meera forgot her homework one day. His teacher sighs. The students prayed.

He put his eyes down and his heart closed.

That night, when she returned to Dreamland, it felt a dimber. The rivers are no longer removed. The sky was gray.

"What happened?" Asked Meera.

Lumi said softly, "You've got sadness with you." "But that's okay. Sadness means you live."

They sat from a quiet lake that reflected the stars.

"You are stronger than as much as you think," Lumi whispers. "But your light is not just here. You have to take it in your days too."

A new beginning

The next day a few small ones moved.

When another girl, Sara dropped her books in the hallway, bent Meera for help. It was only a moment - but it matured. The little gesture turned into a conversation. Towards the end of the week, Meera shared a secret with a laugh, a snack and even two classmates.

She was still not the most talkative. She was still nervous. But she wasn't alone.

And that night Dreamland shone again. The stars twisted. Rivers sang.

"Do you see?" Lumi smiled. "Dreams do not live here. They live wherever you take them."

Hall of Mirrors

On his seventh night, Lumi took him to a place called the Hall of Mirrors.

Each mirror showed a version of Meera - not deformed, but possible.

One showed him confident in front of a group.

Another painted his painting a huge wall on a city wall.

One reflected him sitting alone, crying - so smiling.

One showed him to hold his mother's hand and laugh.

He looked at them all - every version of herself - and for the first time she wasn't scared.

"Your dream," Lumi said softly, "not to avoid your world.

It's all about changing it - by changing yourself. ,,

Goodbye — For Now

One morning, Mira woke to find her sketchbook full of drawings she didn’t remember making — drawings of staircases, glowing rivers, and a smiling creature with kind eyes.

That night, the dreamland was brighter than ever.

Lumi stood at the base of the staircase.

“I won’t see you for a while,” he said.

“Why?” Mira asked.

“Because you’ve begun.”

She hugged him. “Will I ever come back?”

“Anytime you need to,” he said. “Dreams don’t sleep. They live in your kindness, your art, your courage. Wherever you carry those… you carry me.”

Dreams are not sleeping

Month passed.

Meera wasn't the most popular girl at school - and she didn't want to be.

Now he was his friend. She joined the art club. That laugh.

One day he painted a mural in the school - a glowing ladder occurs in the sky filled with stars.

The students stopped staring.

The teacher smiled.

A girl whispered: "It sounds like a dream."

Meera just smiled.

Because he went there.

Because she knew:

> When we sleep, dreams do not begin.

They begin when we believe in ourselves.

And they live - quietly, slowly - inside those who still believe.