I Want You to Remember Me

The sea of stars within the Spirit Realm bore little resemblance to its counterpart in the waking world. It lacked the deep, ancient weight of the cosmos, but possessed a dreamlike wonder all its own.

If the cosmic star sea was an ancient myth, the dream star sea was a dreamlike tale.

The dream spirit drifted freely through the highest reaches of the dream star sea, circling close to the dream moon as she read one dream after another.

Every dream in that highest layer was newly born.

Each remained bound to the trilobite man dreaming it, its story still unfolding.

She had come to meet certain people in their dreams and seek certain answers.

Before long, she found the one she was looking for.

The dream spirit slipped inside and found Stan Tito within.

Stan dreamed of an ancient stone palace. Inscribed slabs lined the walls, while graceful verses flowed down the pillars.

At the foot of one wall, Stan crouched with a tool in hand and chiseled a poem into the stone.

It was a pity that he was only a craftsman and not a poet.

Again and again, all he could do was carve another man's verses and tell another man's story.

The dream spirit stepped closer. "So you're the lucky one who found Tito's Travelogue? Are you the one who started all this strife?"

Stan Tito turned his head and saw the dream spirit Hila.

"They say fate chose me. Truth is, I don't even know if that's true."

"But if it is true, I wasn't the one who started this strife. Fate was."

As Hila watched Stan, she saw nothing that felt truly alive. He seemed more like a marionette dangling from its strings.

He had inherited the Tito family title and the glory of a saint's descendant, yet he possessed no self of his own.

He could only let others pull his fate this way and that.

"Long ago, your ancestor Tito came to the temple and offered the divine his faith and his verse."

"Then God asked him a question."

"Do you still believe in fate?"

Stan Tito rose and turned to the dream spirit.

"And how did the great poet answer?"

Hila answered, "He said that fate lies in our own hands."

"I no longer wait for fate to descend upon me. With my own hands I carve out the fate that is mine."

The words jolted Stan Tito, plunging him deep into thought.

The instant his thoughts began to turn, however, the dream shattered and he woke with a start.

Hila emerged from Stan Tito's dream and flew along the curve of the dream moon until she found another nearby.

This trilobite woman's dream could not have been more different from Stan's. It showed the Sacred Mountain of the God-Servant City, but differed from the waking world in one striking way. High above the mountain, a gate stood open onto the Spirit Realm.

Mounted on a Sky Beast, she carried crowds of her people toward the gate in the sky, intent on passing through it into the Kingdom of God.

The dreamer was Star Luo Queen.

Star Luo Queen flew!

On and on she flew!

Yet no matter how far she flew, the hall of the divine drew no closer. Deep in her heart, it seemed, she did not believe she could ever stand before the divine.

At the height of her desperation, a voice reached her from behind.

"Why are all of you doing this?"

"What are you truly after?"

Star Luo Queen turned, answering in a daze.

"All we seek is an answer from the divine."

"We only... we only want to go home!"

Lost in thought, the dream spirit withdrew from this dream as well.

Late that night, two figures woke with a start in separate rooms of the God-Servant City, one after the other.

Star Luo Queen rose from her stone bed and walked quickly outside.

She hurried between the colonnades, searching the darkness as if for someone's shadow.

"What kind of dream was that?"

"There was someone there. A woman."

"No. She was not human."

"Who could she have been?"

Elsewhere, Stan Tito had also woken with a start. He lay staring blankly into space. "Did someone just tell me something important? The great poet Tito, speaking with the divine..."

"No, that's not right!"

"Why would I dream about something like that?"

Both retained faint memories of what they had seen in their dreams.

Only dreams that reached their end remained in the Spirit Realm.

Dreams cut short midway or interrupted from without scattered and faded within the Spirit Realm. That was why a trilobite man might still remember a dream after waking.

Yin Shen regarded the dream spirit kneeling before him. Before she could open her mouth, he gave voice to her thoughts.

"You still mean to grant the trilobite men the power of dreams."

"Don't you?"

Hila knew that neither her thoughts nor her actions could ever be hidden from the Great God. She had never wished to hide them.

"God, You need the Spirit Realm to grow. And the trilobite men need the power of dreams, and they need Your guidance."

"Perhaps that could change their civilization."

"And perhaps it would let You descend into this world one day sooner."

Either way made little difference to Yin Shen. Sooner or later meant nothing to him. He wanted only a method that worked, and he had no taste for unnecessary effort.

More than extra effort, it was upheaval and surprise that he disliked.

Yin Shen looked down at her. "Is all this only about making up for your mistake?"

Hila lowered her head and searched her own heart for the answer.

For a long while, she remained lost in thought. Then a smile suddenly touched her face.

Still smiling, she raised her eyes to God.

"It is not only that. The truth is, I am afraid too."

God asked, "Afraid of what?"

The dream spirit recalled the centuries Yin Shen had once spent asleep. "God, do You know? Time is so terribly long!"

"To You, more than two hundred years pass in the blink of an eye."

"Before You, time is a breeze slipping through Your fingers. For us, it is a great wave, surging and roaring."

The spirit tipped her head back to look at Yin Shen, her eyes curved in a smile.

"To Hila, two hundred years are a great part of a lifetime."

"For all those long years, I could only wander before the temple, time and again, waiting and hoping for You to wake."

"I fear I will wait and wait, only for You to wake and find that I have already vanished into time."

No sooner had the words left her than the dream spirit rejected them, her voice turning certain at once.

"No!"

"This is not fear. It is what is destined to happen."

Lowering her head, the dream spirit clasped her hands together.

"O divine being, You once said that to the stars, the rise and the passing of a civilization is no more than a fleeting instant."

"The birth and death of a single life is a glimpse slighter still, and counts for nothing at all."

"So I cannot stop wondering. In a span of time that is less than an instant to You, might I still leave behind some trace before I am fated to disappear?"

"At least let me do something for You, in the years I am given!"

She rose and stepped forward to the foot of the altar.

"God, I want You to remember me as well."

"The way You remember King Redlichia and Lord Polo."