Chronicles of Lost Dreams🔊

In the heartland of the kingdom of Erlon, there was a small village named Tarnen. This quaint village was far from the typically insipid mundanity of rural life. Something about Tarnen was enchantingly different, and that difference was a young man named Cornelius.

Corneilus was not the typical farmer boy, nor was he a dashing prince or fearless knight you'd expect in a typical fairy tale. He was a dreamer. Nothing enthralled him more than the world of his dreams filled with arcane tales, enchanting realms, and enchanting personalities beyond the grasp of the ordinary human mind. But his dreams were not mere figments of a fanciful imagination. They bore some inexplicable resemblance to reality, perhaps a reality yet undiscovered, or a reality that had been forgotten by time.

It was on an ordinary day, under the blue Erlonian sky, while passing through the market, that Cornelius stumbled upon an old artisan selling antiquities. Among all of the artefacts, a peculiar locket perked Cornelius's interest. As the artisan narrated, it was believed to have powers to materialize anything locked inside it. Fascinated, he bought the locket, transforming his ordinary life into an extraordinary adventure.

That night, Cornelius carefully placed his most cherished dream – a kingdom of unity and prosperity – inside the locket and drifted off to sleep. Suddenly, he was woken up by a flash of shimmering light, and the next moment, he discovered he was standing at the entrance of a King's court. The grandeur stunned him. The court was buzzing with people, all seeming to be in exuberantly high spirits. Struck by the realization, Cornelius understood his dream had taken the form of reality.

The Kingdom was indeed a haven of unity and prosperity. People of different races, tribes, and cultures were living together harmoniously. They were opulent, yet grounded, and their hearts resonated with love, compassion, and contentment. Every day, Cornelius would awaken in his small cottage in Tarnen, dream a dream inside the locket, and proceed to live out that dream in the realm of his creation.

But over time, the Kingdom began showing signs of trouble. Relationships began to strain, prosperity declined, unity wavered, and contentment ebbed. Even dreams with the greatest intentions were faltering within this seemingly surreal reality. Perplexed, Cornelius realized that while he can design the exterior of the world with his dreams, he can not control the behavior of its inhabitants, their feelings, ambitions, or desires. The realm created by the locket was real indeed, far too real from the make-believe he had initially thought it to be.

Overcome with despair, the heavyweight of the failing kingdom weighing down on his heart, Cornelius decided to put a different dream in the locket; the dream of undoing everything he created. But it was too late. The locket refused to acknowledge his dream. That’s when he realized, that the kingdom was no longer a dream, but reality and that actions in reality cannot be merely undone with a wish.

In the end, Cornelius, the dreamer, had to bid goodbye to Tarnen, to live in the kingdom he created, to face the consequences of the dreams he once cherished. He spent the rest of his life trying to revive his once perfect dream, living with the irony that he had become a part of the reality he had dreamt.

Cornelius’s story serves as a melancholic reminder of our inability to control everything around us, even in the world of our dreams, and that our actions often have irreversible consequences. It teaches a profound lesson that dreaming is beautiful, yet it is reality where lessons are learned, relations built, consequences met, and life truly lived.