The Boost

It was one of those dreams, rare it would seem, where he found someone, a woman he had never seen in real life, and within a very short span of dreamtime it was obvious that they were in love, he with her and she with him, so completely that it consumed every corner of awareness and it was like nothing that the waking world had ever come close to.  The little laughs and the intimacy of the understandings were powerful and permeated all that followed.

And it was one of those dreams where the dreamer knew that it was a dream while within it, aware that eventually he would wake to find that there was no such vessel for the feelings that lingered. But it didn't matter, it was not sad, for he was glad to know that feeling and to have it carry him through the rest of his day for as far as it would take him.

He'd learned lessons in all of these years of sleep. He knew that pining for what the other world had to offer was pointless, that the dream held more than a glimpse of something real, it was actually enough to give him life in the waking.  These things gifted in dreams are of their realm and that is the way of it, but that was fine.  If he could still feel them as time went on, as hope died, it was a chance to capture solace and renewal in the face of the worst that this world had to give.  And for that he was forever grateful and worshipped the sleep afforded him as it came, never questioning its worth, and in fact would fight to the death for the privilege of laying down to it, the best lover.

To love to dream or to dream to love.