“You,” Kael whispered. “What are you?”
The Yumeost nodded once—a small, almost human gesture. Then it picked up its broom, turned, and walked into the fog. Before it vanished, it looked back over its shoulder.
“Then I’ll stay until that day,” Kael said. yumeost
“Because if you sweep it away, I’ll forget the way she laughed. I’ll forget the smell of her pancakes. I’ll forget…”
For three hundred nights, Kael had come here. He knew the cobbled streets of the Dream Quarter, the taste of the silver milk from the Fountain of Regret, the way the sky turned lavender and bled into rose when a dreamer was about to wake. Yumeost was his refuge, his second life—a place where his legs worked (in the waking world, they did not), where he could run until his lungs burned, where the scars on his face from the accident faded like old paint. “You,” Kael whispered
Very well, it said. But understand. The city of Yumeost is made of dreams. And dreams are made of things you will lose. If you keep every residue, every leftover wish… the city will grow heavy. It will sink. One day, you will come here and find only gray fog. No streets. No clock tower. No mother.
He wrote her name. And then he began to build something that even the Yumeost could never sweep away. Before it vanished, it looked back over its shoulder
Kael looked down at the pile. One of the reels caught his eye: a woman with dark hair, laughing, reaching out her hand. His mother. She had died when he was twelve. In his dreams, she still made him breakfast. In the waking world, he hadn’t visited her grave in years.