The Dream Archivist

Trigger Warning: Contains Suicide or Self Harm And Substance Abuse

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Talia had always been a lucid dreamer. From the age of seven, she could will her dreams into castles and creatures, storms and safaris, reshaping her unconscious world like clay. Her parents called it a gift. Her therapist called it a defense mechanism. Talia called it freedom.

But even she wasn't prepared for the dream that started on the night of her twenty-ninth birthday.

It began with a train.

Not the clunky, familiar kind that ran from her city’s downtown station, but a gleaming, ethereal one that floated inches above the tracks. It exhaled steam like cold breath in a snowstorm. She knew she was dreaming instantly—nothing in her waking life was ever that quiet or that blue.

She boarded without thinking, just as she always did in dreams. There were no passengers. Just an ornate brass plaque near the door that read:

“This car bound for The Archive.”

She sat by a window. Outside, the world blurred—glimpses of cities in the clouds, deserts on fire, oceans curled into rings like fingerprints. It made no sense. She loved it.

Then a voice crackled from a speaker above:

“Archivist, please proceed to Collection Room 43.”

Talia blinked. The speaker didn’t sound like a disembodied dream narrator. It sounded like someone talking directly to her.

She stood.

The train slowed, not at a station, but at a platform suspended in an endless twilight. The air outside shimmered as if stitched together with spider silk and smoke.

Inside the station, a grand corridor led to a door numbered 43. Talia opened it.

Inside was… her.

Photos of her childhood. A tiny, ragged elephant plush named Beppo. The dress she wore to her first school dance. Her grandmother’s glasses. A memory played across the wall like film: Talia at age twelve, sneaking out to stargaze on the roof with her best friend Micah.

Talia walked slowly, her hand brushing along a shelf. She could feel each item. The plush’s worn fur. The rough embroidery of her dance dress. Every detail was sharp, perfect, intimate.

“Welcome, Archivist Talia,” said a woman’s voice behind her.

Talia turned.

The woman wore a long coat stitched from black pages, each page covered in words too small to read. Her eyes shimmered like ink.

“I’m Curator Lys,” she said. “And this is your collection.”

Talia laughed. “Okay, this is good. Weird dream, but good. Are we doing the whole subconscious-exploration thing? Inner child, trauma unpacking?”

Lys tilted her head. “Not quite. You’re not dreaming. At least, not how you think.”

Talia narrowed her eyes. “Come again?”

The woman didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she snapped her fingers, and the room changed.

Now they stood in a memory Talia didn’t recognize. A man in a hospital bed. Machines beeping softly. A nurse wiping blood from the floor. Talia’s breath caught.

“Whose memory is this?” she asked.

“Yours,” said Lys. “But not from your current thread. This is from a divergent branch. One where your father lived.”

Talia’s knees buckled. Her father had died of a stroke when she was thirteen. She’d never been able to say goodbye.

She touched the bed. The sheets were warm. The air smelled of antiseptic and lavender. This wasn’t a dream. It was real. Or something like it.

“You see,” said Lys gently, “all dreams are real. Just… not always in your current timeline.”

“That’s not possible.”

“And yet here you are.”

Talia stepped away, shaking her head. “Okay. So what? This is like the multiverse? Infinite versions of me living out infinite dreams?”

Lys smiled. “Not infinite. Just enough to fill The Archive.”

“What is the Archive?”

“A collection of all your other selves’ dreams. You are the archivist now—keeper of forgotten roads and unlived lives. Chosen for your lucid dreaming talent. You’ve always been closer to the edge.”

“Edge of what?”

“Reality. Dream. Memory. Time.”

Talia swallowed hard. “I didn’t choose this.”

“Few do. But you’re here now.”

---

For the next seven nights, Talia returned.

Each time she slept, the train waited.

She explored memory rooms that didn’t belong to her waking self: A version of her that became an astronaut. A version who never met Micah. A version who married her high school art teacher. Some rooms were beautiful, others horrific. One showed her drowning in a flood. Another showed her building a sanctuary for rescued animals in northern Canada.

She began cataloging the rooms. Naming versions of herself like characters in a novel. Astronaut Talia. Widow Talia. Revolution Talia. She grew protective of them, grieving and celebrating their choices. It was addictive.

Lys taught her how to navigate cross-dream links, how to follow emotional resonance to find new threads. Talia learned that nightmares were unstable doorways, that déjà vu was leakage between lives, that dreams were the Archive’s attempt to communicate.

“But why me?” she asked one night, standing in a desert full of mirrors.

“Because you’re ready,” Lys said simply.

---

Then came the glitch.

It happened on a Thursday. Talia boarded the train as usual. But this time, the voice from the speaker stuttered.

“Archivist… Error… Room 88-A is… corrupted.”

Talia frowned. She’d never heard of corruption before.

“What does that mean?”

Lys appeared, uncharacteristically pale.

“It means a part of your Archive has collapsed. A memory is unraveling across threads.”

“Can that happen?”

“Rarely. And only when something… significant is forgotten.”

Talia felt a chill. “What did I forget?”

Lys looked away. “You must go to 88-A and remember.”

The room was locked. She forced her way in.

It was a bedroom. Hers. From college. Sunlight spilled through gauzy curtains. A guitar leaned in the corner. On the bed: a boy with silver-threaded locs and a constellation tattoo across his shoulders.

Talia’s heart stopped.

“Micah.”

She hadn’t thought of Micah in years. Her best friend. Her first love. The boy who vanished sophomore year without a trace.

The Archive flickered. The edges of the memory hissed and tore like burning paper. Micah turned to look at her, eyes hollow.

“You forgot me.”

“No. I—”

“You buried me.”

Talia dropped to her knees.

The truth surged up like a geyser. Micah hadn’t vanished. He’d jumped. Off the bridge near campus. After a fight. After Talia told him she couldn’t be in love with him.

“I was scared,” Talia whispered. “I didn’t know who I was yet. I was trying to protect myself.”

Micah’s image shimmered. “And so you erased me.”

The Archive room cracked. Walls crumbled into dust. Lys appeared beside Talia, holding her upright.

“You must choose,” she said. “Let the memory die. Or take it back. Fully.”

Talia closed her eyes. She took the memory in both hands, and she remembered. Every detail. Every regret. Every ‘what if’.

The room sealed.

And for the first time, Talia woke up crying.

---

After that, the Archive changed.

It was richer, deeper. Talia saw not only the choices she’d made but the *cost* of them. The pain that rippled through all her other selves. She saw versions of Micah too—lives where Talia had told the truth. Where they’d kissed on rooftops and grown old together. It hurt like healing. It felt like love.

Eventually, Lys brought her to a final door.

“This is where your path ends,” the Curator said.

Talia blinked. “Ends?”

“You’ve learned what you needed. This is the exit door. The only real one.”

“What’s on the other side?”

Lys smiled sadly. “Waking.”

“But… wasn’t I already waking?”

“No, Talia. You’ve been in the Archive ever since your heart stopped. The night you overdosed on pills. After Micah’s anniversary.”

Talia stepped back, her breath gone.

“No. That was… That was just a dream.”

Lys placed a hand on her shoulder. “All of this was.”

---

Talia stood before the door for a long time.

On the other side, a beeping. A voice calling her name. A hand squeezing hers.

She turned back once, to see all her other selves watching her. Micah too, smiling through tears.

Then she opened the door.

And woke up.

Two Years Later

Talia now runs a dream therapy practice. She tells her patients that dreams are more than stories—they’re maps. Mirrors. Sometimes warnings. She never mentions the train. Or the Archive. Or Lys.

But every now and then, when she’s falling asleep, she hears a distant voice whisper from the dark:

“Archivist… please proceed to Collection Room 1.”

And she smiles.

Because some dreams never really end.