https://i.imgur.com/Dgknt16.jpeg [https://i.imgur.com/Dgknt16.jpeg]

Not knowing what to think, Ollie contemplated the strange figure.

He possessed a macabre elegance, his lean body enshrouded in a sinuous black cloak, his features equally concealed beneath an ominous white porcelain mask.

Ollie stared at the stranger, at the painted black lines that mimic a smile, an uncomfortable smile teetering on the border between mockery and joy.

"What is a Dream Merchant?" Ollie asked, breaking the silence.

The white porcelain mask moved almost imperceptibly, as if it heard but for some reason, decided it would not respond.

"I asked a question." Ollie insisted.

It's just a dream, he can't do anything to me.

With a slight nod, a voice crossed his unmoving lips.

A soft and ethereal voice.

"I am a merchant, I sell dreams and promises of happiness."

Ollie almost laughed, what an absurd and marvelous idea.

"I only see sweets and candies." Ollie spoke, admiring the treats around him.

"Free samples." The Merchant gestured. "Little delights to whet your appetite."

"Can I eat any candy?"

The Dream Merchant nodded.

Ollie stared at one of the many shelves, this one contained impeccably aligned cookies, all wrapped in colorful silk paper, all intricately decorated in golden icing. He wanted to try one, but didn't have the courage to tarnish such perfection.

"May I ask you a question, Ollie?" The Merchant placed his palms on the glass counter. "One that I ask all the customers who enter my shop?"

He knows my name, that's proof I'm dreaming.

Ollie shrugged. "Ask."

"Where does the promise of your happiness hide?" The Merchant leaned in subtly. "In what you have? Or in what you lack?"

Ollie felt a twitch in his eye. What a stupid question.

He didn't want to answer, he didn't even want to think about the answer. However, the silence of the Dream Merchant weighed on his resolve, he had to say something.

"Why can't it be both?"

"Why can't we have everything, is that what you want to know?"

Ollie felt a knot in his stomach, he wanted to say no, it was clear that one can't have everything, but now that the question was in the air, he wanted to know the answer.

"Yes." he inhaled. "If it's possible to have nothing, why can't I have everything, right?"

The porcelain mask shook.

"Why not?" Ollie asked again.

"Imagine that everything you want already exists, is a faraway place that you have to find." The Merchant leaned in. "But on your way, you find a crossroads. On one side, you leave behind what you seek. On the other, you leave behind what you have."

I have nothing, I aspire for nothing either.

"That's a silly question." Ollie answered honestly. "In real life, nothing is that simple, in real life you don't have a path nor choice, in life, others dictate what you have or lack."

"How fortunate for you then, because we are no longer in your real world."

Ollie laughed.

First a soft laugh, but then a forced guffaw.

The Dream Merchant remained still and indifferent.

"I dreamed of a coin I had lost." Ollie clenched his fist. "I knew it was a dream so I squeezed the coin with all my strength, I was sure that if I really wanted it, I would wake up and it would still be in my hand." he opened his empty hand, still marked by the force of his nails. "That's what you have to offer me."

"And if I told you that this dream, is not a dream?" The voice asked in a soft spectral tone. "What would you say then?"

"I'd ask where my house?" Ollie looked around. "How is it possible for you to change the world? And if you have all this power, what in the abyss do you want with me?"

The Dream Merchant remained immovable, as if within his dark figure, there was nothing and no one.

"You can't answer me, can you?" Ollie sighed, his disappointment tinged with a melancholic smile. "Dreams always stop making sense when you think about the details, don't they? Like fairy tales, enchanting only until you question the stupidity of the story."

Now that I know it's a dream, I'm going to wake up, I don't want to wake up.

"Your house remains in the same place, Ollie." The ethereal voice now had a spark of amusement. "Along with your bedroom and your sleeping body." he rose. "As for the reason for your presence, I am a merchant of dreams, and you possess one that arouses my covetousness."

Ollie shivered, with horror that it might be true, with terror that it might not be.

I have no dream.

"I don't believe in you." Ollie took a step back. "I'm dreaming."

The Merchant leaned over his glass counter. "To whom does this dream belong?"

"What?"

"To whom does this candy shop belong?"

"It's just a dream, it belongs to no one."

"Dreams without owners are the owners of those who dream."

"What in the abyss are you talking about?"

"The details, Ollie." The Merchant rose, and the light danced on his mask. "When the details don't make sense, you are dreaming, but when these details are unnoticed, ignored, or not understood, tell me, does it change the place or does it change you?”

"I don't understand."

"Exactly."

I'm too stupid to know what's happening, but how can I be too stupid to understand my own dream? How can I imagine what I cannot conceive?

Ollie stared at the luxurious candy shop, he had never seen or read about anything similar. On the shelves were sweets he couldn't name, in the air were aromas he couldn't recognize.

He perked up his ears as he stared at the Merchant. "This candy shop doesn't belong to me."

"This shop belonged to a young female Gorilla." The ethereal voice spoke with traces of melancholy. "In her childhood, her father rarely had time for her, but when he did, he always brought her to this magnificent place. Despite being distant, he missed their meeting only once. The day he died."

"Am I in a girl's dream?"

"No." From the dark holes that were the mask's eyes, sparked a cold and yellow twinkle. "This shop belongs to me now."

"That's impossible." Ollie frowned. "You can't own memories, memories aren't places, and no one has the power to buy and sell dreams."

"My customers don't come to me in search of the possible." The Merchant gave a slight nod. "And the memories they cherish most, are the ones they are yet to possess."

"Are you telling me you're a god?"

"You don't believe in gods, do you?"

"There has to be an explanation."

"How about magic? Magic could explain everything."

"But it doesn't, not really. It explains everything by explaining nothing."

"What difference does it make?" He gestured carelessly. "My customers usually don't care about the how, only the what I have to offer."

"If you're lying you have nothing to offer."

"There's the truth, and there's what you want."

"I want the truth."

The Dream Merchant gave a soft, ethereal laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"That the power you seek to understand is the same one you refuse to accept."

"What do you mean by that?"

“In this world, nothing is impossible. Here, memories become roads, feelings bleed into colors, and desires are the bricks that build the edifices of your unspoken wishes.”

“You can do that?”

“Me?” The cold porcelain mask shakes softly. “In this world, you are the god, Ollie." He touched his chest. "I'm but a worm feeding on the crumbs of your power."

"What are you..." Ollie had a spasm of realization.

A monstrous idea conceived in his mind, one so absurd and sordid he almost vomited. A venomous idea that poisoned his reason and withered his skepticism.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Something so odious and repugnant, it couldn't be anything other than the truth.

"You're the centipede." Ollie spoke with a certainty he couldn't possibly have. "It wasn't a dream, you followed me, invaded my room, you're the centipede that entered my nose."

The Dream Merchant nodded his head just once.

Ollie perked up his ears. "What in the abyss are you?"

"You will never know that answer."

"Why not?"

"Because every answer opens the door to a new question."

"Them you tell me them all." Ollie spoke deadly serious.

“Diferente doors lead to different truths.”

“How can it be?”

“How can it be, that you don't believe in magic, yet you chased after a magic centipede?" The voice spoke with soft indifference. "How can it be, that you don't believe in gods, yet when you cry, you pray? How can it be, that you want answers, yet you belive in nothing."

"What do you mean by that?"

"That you don't believe you can have, the things you believe you can have."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"I'm not a centipede, I'm one hundred and thirteen centipedes." he waved his long black finger. "Yet I'm more than the hundred and thirteen pieces of me, I am the Dream Merchant."

"So, you are the dream of the centipedes?"

"I am their dream?" The lifeless voice asked. "Or are they mine?"

"If I don't know, how can I trust you?"

The mask remained motionless, empty and indifferent.

"You can't."

"Why don't you lie to me?" Ollie's voice came out in a whisper. "Why don't you tell me what I want to hear?"

"Because it doesn't matter." He tilted his mask. "You already accepted my offer."

"You think so?" Ollie asked uncertainly. "You seem like a monster to me."

"Your room is behind you."

Ollie didn't turn his eyes, just the idea of waking back up in his world was enough for him to understand that the Dream Merchant was right, he had no choice.

"What do you have to offer me?" He asked, taking a step towards the counter.

The Merchant placed a glass dome on the table.

"I offer you this."

https://i.imgur.com/aJJdZv9.jpg [https://i.imgur.com/aJJdZv9.jpg]

Inside the dome rested a delicate red candy shaped like a heart.

"Is this it?" Ollie frowned. "A red candy?"

"No." The Merchant renewed the glass dome. "This candy is but your offering."

"My offering?"

"Dreams require sacrifices, sacrifices require offerings."

Ollie made a face of confusion. "Are you saying my dreams eat candies?"

"Your dreams are hungry, they will consume everything you have to offer."

"My dreams?" He frowned. "What dreams are those?"

"Do you see that door?" The Merchant pointed to a door to the left of Ollie.

"Where did that door come from?"

"A better question would be what awaits you on the other side."

Ollie felt a shiver run up his spine. "What's on the other side?"

"Everything." the ethereal voice spoke softly. "Everything that is missing."

The door was an ordinary door, an invisible ordinariness. Without details or adornments that could suggest its purpose or what was hidden on the other side.

But now that he knew there was something precious on the other side, the banality became mysterious, the simplicity exalted, and its frugality was a mere disguise for a treasure of riches and possibilities that could not be described or imagined, but still awaited and promised in the vague sensation contained in a single word.

My dreams.

Ollie turned to the Dream Merchant. "Are you for real?"

He waited for a response that did not come.

"Do I have dreams?"

More silence.

"Why would a candy make my dream come true?"

No response.

"What happens if I don't find any dreams?"

"Everyone has five." The ethereal voice spoke faintly.

I have none.

"I accept."

Ollie approached the glass counter, and extended his arm to take the heart-shaped treat.

"No." The Merchant spoke, closing the glass dome.

"Why not?" Ollie asked, unable to contain his desperation.

"Dreams are debts, Ollie, and debts must be paid."

"I don't have..." The words were lost in his snout, he turned to the candy shop, then stared at the merchant almost laughing. "You want the happy memories of my childhood?" he began to laugh, it was such a strange feeling, it was supposed to be something horrible, but precisely because it was so terrible it was so funny. "I don't have any good memories to sell you."

"One dream for another." The ethereal voice spoke indifferently. "That's the cost."

Ollie frowned, suddenly his amusement had turned into a storm.

"If you're in my head, then you know what I have and don't have nothing worth keeping."

"Sometimes we only know the value of what we have, when we give it away."

"Take whatever you want then." Ollie clenched his fist. "Give me what I want, something real, something good. I don't care what you want in return."

The Merchant pointed to Ollie's pajamas. "Put your hand in your pocket."

He obeyed.

His pocket should have been empty, but something metallic and cold met his fingers.

Something round and familiar.

Something that could only exist in a dream.

Ollie lifted the object before his eyes.

It was the coin.

Not a coin, but the coin.

The coin he had mentioned before. The coin he had lost. The coin he found in the dream, only to lose it again upon waking.

A white coin with the face of a Lion on one side and a crown on the other.

"This is my coin." Ollie spoke in a mix of astonishment and indignation.

"No, Ollie." The Merchant intervened. "This is how you pay for your what you want."

"You want my coin for the candy?"

"Not just the coin," The Merchant waved his white mask. "I want your story."

Ollie clenched the coin in his hand. "What story?"

"You know."

Yes, Ollie knew what the story was, a story he had forgotten, one that at the same time, no matter how hard he tried, he could never bury.

"This is not a good memory."

"I know it's not." The Dream Merchant gave a slight nod. "I know it is."

"I don't want the coin," Ollie offered him the White Lion. "you can have it."

"First," The Merchant lifted his long finger. "First, I want to hear the story."

"Why?" Ollie asked agitated. "What difference does it make?"

"All worlds, above or below, have their rules, rules that sustain the illusion of what you call reality." he pointed downward. "Rules that here, determine that I can only receive, what you are truly willing to part away."

Ollie contemplated the white coin. The small coin that weighed with the memories of the past, memories he wanted to silence, but his silence wept, tears of pain and lament in the sad parts, unbearable sobs of agony in the cruel memories of moments of joy.

The words came out, bleeding through the silence of his crying.

"A few years ago, when my father lived with us, he took us to visit Skhargora." Ollie let out a sigh of lamentation. "There I met a girl..." the words choked in his throat. "I met a girl who gave me this coin."

Ollie stared at the Dream Merchant, that was enough, there was no need to continue.

But his silence told him that his story had just begun.

"The Hegemony created Skhargora, their great achievement, a vertical city built inside the largest mountain of Morserus." These were the same words the Rat tour guide had told him years ago. Words he had forgotten, but that were now fresh in his mind as if he had just heard them. "At the end of the Era of Shadows, the Hegemony had to abandon Skhargora, abandon their empire, their cities, their Domesticated Species. They fled to the Eternal Desert and left us to die in an endless winter." This part of the story didn't hurt him, even though it was the part where his world almost disappeared. "Skhargora became the cradle of our civilization, where various species survived together during the Hermitage until..."

"I don't care about the story of your world, Ollie."

"I don't want to talk about it." he lowered his ears. "I don't want to remember it."

"Remember so then you can forget." The Merchant extended his skeletal gloved hand. "Tell me your story so it ceases to exist, offer me the tears and places, the longings and disappointments, suffer one more time, and I will take all this suffering with me."

Ollie lowered his eyes to his bare feet. "Her name... Her name was Seffia." he spoke under the immeasurable weight of his melancholy. "She was too good for me..."

"Continue." The ethereal voice spoke with palpable longing. "Continue my story."

"Seffia was my age, she was a Pig like me, but nothing like me, she was prettier, smarter, more confident." he arched the lips of his snout. "I was ashamed of her, but she had no shame in me. She took my hand, and led me everywhere. While our families attended the lectures of the Merchant Houses, we were forgotten, free to explore an unknown world."

"Yes, precious moments filled with adventure and excitement," he said, as his mask moved with a delicate and harmonious fluidity. "Times when everything seems imbued with purpose and the future gleamed with the celestial light found in the promise of infinite possibilities."

The smile evaporated from Ollie's face.

"She took me to the Giants' Bank, where we found this coin, a replica of the first coin minted by the Pigs, made to serve their new masters at the beginning of the White Lion Dynasty." Ollie opened his mouth, but nothing came out. This was the part that would hurt him even more.

"Don't stop now. Not so close to the end." The darkness covered the Merchant's porcelain mask, simulating a smile of shadows. "Please, finish my story."

"On the Gods' Balcony, the world was so small." Ollie spoke in a distant whisper. "On our last day, was when she kissed me, my first and last kiss." He squeezed the coin, not with attachment, but with resentment. "She lived in the Nation of Cats, and I in that of Rabbits. I said this was the end, that we would never see each other again." he shook his snout. "I cried, I already knew I would lose her the first moment I saw her, yet I cried."

"Yes, yes" The empty voice spoke full of enjoyment. "Please, continue."

"That's the end of the story."

"No" The white porcelain mask shook vigorously. "The coin is the end of the story."

Ollie looked at the coin frowning. "I hate this coin." he stared at the Merchant with grief and mistrust. "If you already know everything, why do I need to speak?"

"What you don't tell me, is what you keep for yourself." in the black void of his eyes, faint yellow stars twinkled. "What you speak, is what you offer to me."

"I don't want to remember."

"Then remember to forget." The Merchant leaned over the glass counter, with the fire of the lanterns shining on his white porcelain face. "Remember to say goodbye."

Ollie hesitated, imagined how the Dream Merchant would use his memories, could he meet Seffia? Would he be in his place, laughing and crying by her side?

"No." He spoke with the fire of indignation. "This belongs to me."

The Dream Merchant remained unchanged. If he were offended, dissatisfied, or annoyed, nothing in his rigid posture or his empty mask would betray his intention.

"My kiss." Ollie spoke trembling. "Will I forget my only kiss?"

The Dream Merchant nodded once.

"No, this isn't right, this memory is bad, but it's part of me."

"Offer me the dream you abandoned." The Merchant placed his hand on the glass dome. "And I will give you in exchange, one of those you seek."

Ollie stared at the heart-shaped candy and nodded with a smile devoid of joy.

In life, you don't always have a choice.

"When I cried, Seffia smiled." The words came out with the relief of someone letting go of an unbearable weight. "She placed the coin in my hand." He looked at the White Lion. "I said I had bought it for her, but she refused, she told me this coin would be our wager, that I should keep it with me and that if I was right, if we never saw each other again, then the coin would be mine forever."

The words seemed suspended in the air, he took a deep breath, trying to contain the emotions that wanted to flee from his chest and escape through his eyes.

Ollie managed to imprison his pain.

"However," he continued, "if our paths crossed again, I would lose the bet. The coin would be hers. Her reward for believing that our destinies were intertwined."

A long silence took over the room. Ollie waited for the Dream Merchant to break it, but it was he who suddenly resumed speaking.

"I won the bet, but months later I lost the coin." Ollie forced a laugh devoid of joy. "I am not the king of idiots?"

"Very well." The Dream Merchant extended his hand. "You can offer me the coin now."

Ollie looked at the heart-shaped candy, his prize for his sacrifice.

He stepped forward. "Seffia has surely forgotten about me, forgotten she made that silly bet." he placed the white coin in the Dream Merchant's left hand. "I want to do the same, I want to forget about her too."

The Merchant closed his gloved hand over the coin and with his other hand he opened the glass dome that contained the red candy shaped like a heart.

Ollie took the candy, expecting something magical to happen. "I still remember her."

"When one of your dreams consumes this candy, then our transaction will be completed."

The small candy was light and warm, with a pleasant and familiar fragrance.

The Merchant walked around the counter and approached, placing one hand on the young Pig's shoulder, with the other he gestured towards the simple door.

"Your journey begins," the Merchant said, awakening him to what was to come. "And your dreams await you."

Ollie didn't move, but the Merchant pressed his shoulder, inducing him to walk.

In front of the ordinary door, a terrible notion crossed his mind.

You're accepting candy from a stranger, and following him to a strange place.

What if there were no dreams waiting on the other side, what if after crossing that door, no one ever knew of him again, what if the Dream Merchant was just a centipede devouring his mind, while he hallucinated a happy ending?

What difference does it make now?

Ollie touched the round metal doorknob.

A voice inside him screamed for him not to continue, that once the door was opened, there would be no return. He looked over his shoulder at his room at the end of the shop, there was still time to give up, he could run from this place, he could forget the coin and the dreams.

All he had to do was not open the door, all he had to do was run back to his room.

Ollie lowered his head not knowing what to do.

"Your dreams wait for you, Ollie." The Merchant said softly.

Ollie turned to the impassive porcelain mask. "Are you going to hurt me?"

A silence passed between them.

When it became clear that the Merchant would not respond, his ethereal voice was heard.

"I will not hurt you." The empty voice spoke with traces of tenderness. "But that doesn't mean you can't be hurt here."

"A nightmare I can't wake up from, is that it?"

"Yes."

"Can you at least tell me what awaits me on the other side?"

"Dreams and consequences."

Ollie lowered his ears disappointed with the answer.

He stared at the door, the unimaginable dangers that awaited him on the other side.

But he didn't have to look back to know the dangers of returning.

On one side, the false promise of joy, on the other the certainty of true unhappiness.

Sometimes there is no choice, sometimes life makes the choice for you.

With a long sigh of courage, Ollie opened the ordinary dark door.

And crossed into the unknown in search of something real.