The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued

Page 153

The baskets below were not just containers but archives; each apple a sealed scroll of dream fragments, waiting to be deciphered by the Bureau of Dreams to be Continued. Charlie, its elusive director, had dispatched these two agents under the guise of gardeners. Their mission; to retrieve the dream-seeds embedded in the orchard’s yield before the Equinox Reset, when all unclaimed dreams would revert to myth.

Behind them, the timber framed buildings housed the Department of Unclear Intentions, where bureaucrats debated whether dreams harvested in daylight were admissible in nocturnal court. The stone tower, half hidden by trees, was rumored to be the archive of dreams that refused to end; those looping visions that defied closure and leaked into waking life.

But something was shifting.

The clouds above began to rearrange themselves into glyphs. The apples grew heavier, not with ripeness but with unresolved narratives. One fell and cracked open; not with juice, but with a whisper; “He never climbed down.”

The ladder stood empty.

The pole was still.

The baskets trembled.