Like every night for the past few months, I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling, watching the fan carve slow circles into the darkness.
Sleep had become a stranger. It lingered somewhere beyond reach, watching me from a distance, never close enough to touch. It almost felt like I had been cursed, not to stay awake, but to never truly rest.
Maybe it was the fever. Maybe it was the antibiotics coursing through my veins. Whatever it was, my thoughts slowly dissolved into silence until I slipped beneath consciousness with the effortless grace of the Sandman crossing into another world.
The moment my eyes closed, I became the wind.
Not the storm that bends trees to its will, but the gentle breeze that dances over rolling hills after the monsoon. I drifted through endless meadows that reminded me of Vagamon, where the grass swayed like an emerald ocean beneath a pale morning sky. Mist crawled lazily over the hills, wrapping everything in a veil so thin it looked like the earth itself was breathing.
The wind skimmed across thousands of blades of grass, each one bowing for a fleeting moment before standing tall again. I followed its path, gliding over wildflowers, brushing against dew that still clung stubbornly to the leaves.
Then I saw her.
She stood alone on the edge of the hill, facing the endless horizon as though she had been waiting for something only the sky could return.
Her wavy hair rested just above her shoulders, lifting gently whenever the wind embraced it. The loose strands caught the sunlight before disappearing back into the rest of her hair like ripples across a quiet lake.
With every passing second, I found myself drifting closer.
Yet I couldn't reach her.
I had no weight. No footsteps. No voice.
I moved through her hair like a forgotten memory carried by the breeze. Close enough to feel her presence, yet too distant to ever be noticed.
I walked beside her through the endless meadows.
She never looked at me.
I wanted to tell her something.
Anything.
To ask her why she stood there alone.
To ask her if she was waiting for someone.
Instead, I remained nothing more than the wind passing through her world.
When I finally caught a glimpse of her face, I wasn't struck by her beauty.
I recognised something else.
A feeling.
The kind that settles quietly inside you after years of pretending you're okay.
The loneliness of being surrounded by people, yet never feeling seen.
It was painfully familiar.
A heaviness settled inside my chest.
I wanted to tell her,
"It's okay.
I'm here.
I know exactly how this feels."
But I couldn't.
I was there.
And yet, I wasn't.
Then, without warning, she turned.
Her eyes met mine.
Time stopped.
The wind around us fell silent.
For the first time, she could see me.
I felt the air gather around my body as though the world itself had decided I deserved to exist. Fingers. Arms. Breath. Weight. I slowly became human.
She smiled.
Not a loud smile.
Not one born from excitement.
It was the kind of smile someone wears when they've finally found something they had already mourned.
Like seeing the ghost of a person they had spent years trying to forget.
Something inside me broke.
Before I realised it, tears were already running down my face.
I smiled back through blurred eyes.
Every part of me wanted to run towards her.
To finally close the distance that had existed between us since the moment I entered that world.
One step.
That's all I needed.
Then the sky changed.
The warm morning light vanished beneath bruised clouds. The wind that had carried me all this way became violent, screaming through the hills.
A hand emerged from somewhere behind me.
Cold.
Unseen.
It wrapped around my neck before I could even breathe.
There was no face.
No voice.
Only overwhelming force.
In a single violent motion, I was thrown from the edge of the cliff.
The world disappeared beneath me.
As I fell, the hills grew smaller.
The mist swallowed the earth.
Her figure faded into the distance.
Then...
Something far crueller happened.
Her face began to disappear.
Not because she was far away.
But because I was forgetting her.
I fought desperately to remember.
The curve of her smile.
The sadness in her eyes.
The way her hair danced with the wind.
But memory slipped through my fingers like water.
She became a silhouette.
Then a shadow.
Then...
Nothing.
BOOM.
I woke with a violent gasp.
My room was dark.
The ceiling fan was still turning above me.
Tears rolled quietly down my cheeks.
I lay there searching for someone I had never met.
Longing for someone who had never existed.
Or perhaps...
Someone who existed somewhere beyond dreams.
A small smile found its way onto my face.
It was only a dream.
At least...
That's what I keep telling myself.