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Nonoy drifts through a field of golden flowers that rustle with the guiding hand of the wind. She is like a migrating bird, she thinks, following the compass of her heart until it sings: Here, here, here! Here is where she's meant to be! Here is home, here is comfort, here she can let her fears float away with the breeze because everything is right. She lets the tip of her finger graze a petal, shivers as it hums back at her a song of hope and want.
A voice rings out from behind her. “Do you know what it means?”
He does not ask it in words that can be understood by the human ear. His voice is made of music, a melody that reverberates through her bones until she knows its meaning intimately.
“Here is where our wishes go,” says Nonoy.
His laugh is the plucking of a lyre. Nonoy blushes. “What is a wish, if not the desire of a soul?” he sing-speaks to her. “What is a soul, if not the root of a being’s life; what is a life without wishes? An ant, looking upon a human, will say: look, a shoe! And so your people have deemed me the gardener of dreams, and this is not untrue, just as the shoe is a part of its wearer. But were the ant to climb the shoe, it would soon find something far greater than the single piece it had initially observed.”
A browning flower stands discordant against yellow harmony. The longer she stares at it the more the song of the other flowers falls apart, disjointed notes losing all sense of rationality. “My mother,” Nonoy suddenly remembers. Panic floods her veins. “My mother, do you know what's happening to her?”
The god places a comforting hand on her shoulder. “The strength of a person's desires, the very core of their soul, torn from them and bottled; it would be too much for anyone to handle. I am so very sorry, my child, that I cannot be there to help.”
Already her fear is fading, the strands of her thought coming undone until she can no longer grasp at them. “Help with what?” she asks.
The wind mournfully slows its dance through the plants until only an unnatural silence remains. Without it the god’s robes fall still, obscuring his features. “It is time for you to return home,” he says.
“This is home,” Nonoy insists. She can sense him smile.
“And you will always be welcome here, but you belong with the people you care for the most.”
Nonoy jolts awake to sunlight pouring in through her window. Nothing remains of her dream but a faint sense of loss. She can feel a familiar melody begging to be released from her throat; she hums to herself lightly as she jumps out of bed, not noticing the single golden petal which falls from her chest to rest on the floor.