After a long night of work, Lunko had enjoyed a deep, peaceful sleep and felt well rested. He did his evening exercises, ate a proper meal, and packed two large sandwiches to take with him.
It was almost nine o’clock when Lunko stepped out of his workshop and into the night. The sky glowed softly with starlight. There were many little clouds drifting overhead, most of them bright white.
„A calm and quiet night“, Lunko thought.
He strolled along the arc of the sky, peeking here and there into the little clouds. In one, a young girl was dreaming of riding her bicycle down a long gravel road. The cloud was white, everything was fine. In another, an old dog dreamed of the days when he had been a small puppy, sleeping peacefully in his bed while a tiny hand gently stroked his fur. White as well. A boy was building a tower of snow that stretched all the way up to the clouds. Lunko smiled and continued on his way.
Then he stopped.
Among all the other clouds was one that did not glow.
It was neither white nor golden nor purplish-red. Lunko found it difficult to describe because he had never seen anything like it before. The cloud was simply gray and faintly transparent. Looking closer, he could see stars shining through it from the other side.
He gently patted the cloud and carefully peeked inside. Usually, he would immediately find some kind of dream unfolding there. But this time there was only emptiness.
The emptiness was vast. It stretched in every direction as far as he could see.
The cloud belonged to a little girl named Ella. Lunko knew her well. Ella normally dreamed colorful, noisy dreams. She played strange games with her friends, swam through seas of sand, and climbed along the windowsills of peculiar houses. Her cloud was one of the brightest and most beautiful in the entire sky.
But tonight, Ella was dreaming nothing at all.
Lunko pulled out his Memory Quill. Perhaps he could write the beginning of a dream for Ella, something from which a new story could grow. He touched the tip of the quill to the edge of the gray cloud.
No mark appeared.
He tried again, more carefully.
Nothing.
The quill slid across the emptiness as though there was nothing there to write upon. It was as if the dream were not merely empty, it simply did not exist.
That, too, was something Lunko had never encountered before.
For a long while, he stood beside the gray cloud, unsure of what to do. Around him, the other dreams continued glowing in soft shades of white and pink, just as they did on any ordinary night.
Only this one place in the sky remained gray and dreamless.
At last, he returned the Memory Quill to his bag. He could not repair Ella’s cloud – because there was nothing there to repair.
Then an idea came to him.
He beckoned a small star closer and sat upon it to keep watch over Ella’s sleep.
“Star, do you have a name?” Lunko asked.
“Of course I do,” replied the star. “My name is Lux.”
“I’m Lunko, the Dream Maker,” said Lunko. “There is a little child here whose dream world is filled with such great emptiness that I do not know how to fix it.”
“I know,” said Lux. “I noticed it about an hour ago. She went to bed very early today. She had a long and tiring day of travel. Let her sleep peacefully. After all, people do not have to dream every single night.”
“That is true,” said Lunko, “but something about this feels wrong.”
“Oh, Lunko,” Lux replied. “When a sleeper is too tired, the brain sometimes has no energy left for making dreams. Instead, it lets the sleeper rest completely.”
“Perhaps you are right,” said Lunko. “Still, I have decided to stay here and keep watch. If a bad dream appears after the exhaustion fades, I can fix it right away. What do you think about staying here with me and chatting for a while?”
“That sounds wonderful,” said Lux. “I’m always so far away from the other stars, and there’s rarely anyone to talk to.”
Then, in a brighter voice, Lux added, “Let’s chat until Ella wakes up.”
And so the two of them kept watch over Ella’s deep sleep together until she awoke happily and stepped into a brand-new day.
Good night!