Tonight,
Step into the realm where myth and dream entwine.
The twilight land of mist and silence,
Where poppies breathe their drowsy scent,
And rivers wind toward caverns of eternal sleep.
From ancient myth he rises,
Morpheus,
Winged son of the god of sleep,
Shaper of visions,
Entrusted to guide mortals through the gates of horn and ivory,
Where truth and mercy divide the path of dreaming.
Hello,
My dear friends.
My name is Jacob and I'm grateful to be here with you tonight for this mythical sleep story.
In this tale,
We'll follow a young boy named Lysander who wanders beyond his village under Nyx's starry veil and finds himself drawn along a river of mist into the very house of sleep.
There,
Morpheus appears to him,
Wise and cryptic,
To guide him across twilight plains and past the river of forgetting until they stand before the twin gates of dreams themselves.
And it's there,
At the world's soft edge,
That Lysander discovers the mercy of rest.
You've done enough for today.
Truly,
It is enough.
You're invited now to release your burdens,
To let the silence gather around you and trust the guiding presence of story.
As you listen,
Know that my voice will keep watch beside you and together we'll drift gently into the dream that awaits.
In the village where the sea breathed against the stones,
A boy named Lysander lay awake while night,
Whom the elders called Nyx,
Let down her starry veil.
Sleep kept its distance from the dunes of pale river of mist uncoiled,
Silver as fish scales gliding inland with a slow,
Certain pull.
The boy rose and followed.
The world softened as he walked.
Crickets quieted.
The moon slipped behind thin clouds.
The mist threaded vineyards and low walls,
Then entered a narrow cleft in the hills.
Poppies nodded at the mouth,
Dark as spilled wine.
The air grew thick there,
Sweet with drowsy scent,
And sound itself seemed to rest.
Lysander paused.
Feathers whispered.
A figure stepped from shadow,
Tall,
Winged,
And calm as deep water.
Hair like night,
Eyes dark and steady.
When he spoke,
The hush answered him.
You have come far for one so young.
I couldn't sleep,
Lysander said.
The words felt smaller than the pull that had led him.
This threshold belongs to my father,
Who keeps all sleeping things,
The stranger said,
Folding one great wing so that the feathers brushed stone like pages turning.
But it is I who shape what mortals see with closed eyes.
I am Morpheus.
Courage found the boy.
Why?
Why call me?
Because you listened,
Said Morpheus,
And the answer warmed like a blanket.
Come.
They entered.
Stone swallowed the world.
No drip of water,
No bat or hint of dawn.
Poppies grew from the rock as if the cliff itself were dreaming.
The way widened to a hall where shadows drifted like slow birds.
Sand lay underfoot,
Cool as a hidden shore.
The stillness pressed soft and complete as though the cave itself slept and invited them to walk within its breathing.
My brothers keep me company,
Morpheus said.
And as he named them,
Shapes stirred at the edges of sight.
Antlered and scaled,
Sleek and feathered,
Cloud and trees.
Phobetor visits as claw and wing.
Phantasos arrives as mountain and marble and rain.
I am interested with mortal faces and the words they would speak.
Do you carry messages from the gods?
Lysander asked,
Voice hushed by the velvet air.
When they ask,
Morpheus replied.
More often,
I bring what a heart most needs.
They passed through pillars ribbed with fossil light and into a chamber where the floor became ash-colored reeds.
A cool breath drifted across them,
Faint as a thought forgotten on waking.
Before them spread a twilight plane,
Neither night nor day,
Where the light seemed to come from far beneath the earth.
At its edge ran a slow,
Muffled river,
Whose surface remembered every step it had ever carried and then let the memory go.
Is this the underworld?
Lysander whispered.
It is near to it,
But not within,
Said Morpheus.
This is the borderland of forgetting.
Some call that river Lithi.
We do not cross tonight.
We walk beside it.
They crossed a narrow arch of stone,
Smooth as if worn by centuries of unseen travelers.
On the far side,
The plane rose gently,
And at its crest stood two gates.
One was horn,
Tinted like smoked honey,
Clear and dark in its depth.
One was ivory,
Pale as winter moon,
Softly aglow.
Symbols older than language shimmered across them like minnows turning in a hidden pool.
These are the gates of dreams,
Said Morpheus.
Through horn pass visions that carry the weight of truth,
Bright and unbending.
Through ivory pass gentler pictures that comfort and ease,
Shaped for rest.
Lysander gazed at them as a sailor gazes at the horizon.
How does one choose?
Choice is a kind of tide,
The god replied.
It turns toward what is asked and what is born.
Truth sleeps in the horn,
Yet it does not vanish at the ivory.
It waits like seed under winter.
The boy's breath grew slow in the silence.
The river murmured faintly behind them.
Poppies drifted down,
Their petals settling like red embers on pale stone.
Tonight,
Said Morpheus,
Your bones ask for mercy.
There will be seasons for the horn.
Let the ivory be your harbor.
He rested a hand on the boy's shoulder and the ivory gate opened like a curtain of soft light.
Together,
They stepped through.
On the other side lay a realm both familiar and strange.
Meadows unfurled without edge,
Silvered with dew that glowed like starlight.
Trees whispered without wind,
Their leaves drifting upward as often as down.
A gentle sea moved beyond the fields,
Its waves breaking into feathers instead of foam.
From above,
A kingfisher flashed sapphire,
Its wings stitching a bright seam across the fabric of quiet.
This is mercy,
Morpheus said,
Voice low.
It does not erase truth.
It soothes until you are ready to bear it.
The boy felt the truth of it in his chest,
Where the knots of restlessness had lived.
His eyelids sank,
Heavy with calm.
Morpheus knelt,
Drawing his great wings around the boy like a cloak.
You listened,
He murmured.
For that,
I give you rest.
Lysander lay down in the grass of that endless meadow,
The dew warm beneath him as though the earth itself had waited.
The kingfisher circled once more and vanished into the soft horizon.
His eyes fluttered,
Caught between waking and dream.
Will I remember this?
He asked.
Morpheus bent near,
His voice a hush of feathers.
You will remember enough.
The body keeps what it needs.
The rest becomes current and carries you.
The boy's eyes closed,
Breath deepened.
Dream claimed him.
When he was wholly asleep,
Morpheus lifted him with scarcely a ripple of the air.
Through the ivory gate,
They returned.
Across the silent plain and over Lethe's arch.
Through the hall where poppies nodded.
The cavern of sleep received them,
And the river of mist guided their steps home.
Morpheus laid the boy in his own bed.
The sheets cool and smooth as untroubled shore.
Beneath the pillow,
He tucked a single feather,
Light as a promise.
Outside,
Night gathered her cloak for her long walk home.
The sea breathed,
And in the gray before dawn,
A kingfisher flashed once across the harbor and was gone.
And so they remembered,
In that village by the tide,
How a boy followed the river that uncoils from sleep.
And how the god who shapes the faces of dreams led him through halls of silence to the twin gates at the world's soft edge.
Mercy opening like ivory light.
And how the boy slept,
And the sea kept her promise.
