Where the Dream Fell

Every night since his twelfth birthday, Adeel had dreamed of the same place.

A field. A single tree. And the voice of someone he couldn’t remember.

The dream was always the same. He walked through a meadow at dusk, the golden light brushing his face like a familiar hand. At the center stood a massive tree—its bark dark silver, its leaves whispering songs only the wind understood. He never reached the tree. Just as he stretched out his hand to touch its trunk, he would wake.

For years, the dream followed him like a shadow. Through school, college, hostel life. When he was stressed, the dream felt distant. When he was calm, it came back strong and vibrant. By the time he turned twenty, he had stopped telling people about it.

It was just a dream.

Wasn’t it?

One late summer evening, after academy and classes, Adeel took a walk through the fields behind the hostel. He often did that to clear his head after studying Computer Science and Math. The fields were quiet, the sky dimming into that same rose-colored dusk he knew so well.

He kept walking.

And walking.

Until he saw it.

The tree.

He froze.

It stood exactly where it had always been in his dream. The same bark, shimmering as if soaked in starlight. The same broad arms reaching into the sky. The grass around it bowed, though there was no wind.

Adeel rubbed his eyes.

Still there.

Step by step, he approached. His heart raced. The closer he got, the more the air seemed to shift—like it knew him.

And then he saw it.

Etched into the bark of the tree, faint but clear: “ADEEL.”

He stepped back, stunned. It hadn’t just been a dream.

Suddenly, a voice—soft, kind, familiar.

“You finally came.”

Adeel turned.

No one.

He spun again.

Still, no one.

The voice came again. Not from the air. From within the tree.

He placed his hand against the trunk.

The world melted.

He stood inside a memory.

Not his. But someone’s.

He was in a room filled with drawings—sketches of the same tree from every angle. On a desk, a journal lay open. He picked it up.

“One day, someone will come to the tree.

He will have dreamed of it, like I did.

This is how the tree finds its keeper.

I hope he’s brave. I hope he’s kind.

I hope he understands.”

Pages and pages. Written by a girl named Laila. Her drawings matched his dreams. Her handwriting trembled with hope and sorrow. Her last entry:

“I planted the seed in my dream. But I won’t be there when it grows. I hope someone finds it and remembers me.”

The room faded. The tree returned.

Adeel was crying.

He didn’t know who Laila was. But her dream had somehow planted the tree—not just in her world, but in his.

The next day, Adeel returned to the tree with his sketchbook. He sat under its vast branches, drawing it over and over. Then he began to write.

Every evening, he returned. The tree began to change.

One day, a flower bloomed on its lowest branch—a vivid blue rose.

The next, a book appeared at its base.

Then, a girl.

She stood quietly beneath the tree, watching him. Her eyes were soft, the color of the sky before rain.

“Did you dream of it too?” he asked.

She nodded.

The tree had found another.

From that day forward, the tree became a quiet legend among a few people. A place where dreams left seeds. A place you could only find if it had already found you.

Adeel never stopped returning. Over the years, he wrote stories, poems, songs beneath its boughs. He became a writer. A good one. People asked him where his ideas came from.

He never told them.

He only smiled and said, “From a dream.”

And under the tree, in the place where the dream had once ended, it now began again—for someone else.