The Sea of Stolen Dreams - endlessm/threadbare GitHub Wiki

Name: The Sea of Stolen Dreams Type: Sea (small, inland) Also Known As: The Morning Sea, the Sea of Almost Location: Within the Drowsy Downs, cradled in the lowest hollow of the hills, where every slope of the Downs gently tips towards it Core Thread: Imagination, with a strong vein of Memory Patron: If, the Spinner of What Might Be Notable Inhabitants: NightMares, Snoozles, Nightlights, visiting Noddlings Notable Places: The Shallows of Almost, the Tip of the Tongue, the Forty Winks, the Deep End Themes: Dreams, Forgetting, Remembering, Rest, Wonder

"You haven't lost it. It's only gone for a paddle." -- Reverie RestWell, to a Threadling who could not remember her dream

Every Threadling knows the feeling. You wake from the most wonderful dream, and by the time you have sat up in bed, it is gone. You remember that it was wonderful. You remember that there was a boat in it, possibly, or a hat. But the dream itself has slipped away.

In Threadbare, it has gone somewhere. Every dream that is forgotten on waking rolls gently out of its dreamer's head, tumbles down the soft hills of the Drowsy Downs, and settles in the Sea of Stolen Dreams.

It is a small sea, as seas go, and a very quiet one. Its water is warm, deep indigo, and smooth as satin, and it glitters all over with tiny points of light. They look like reflected stars. They are not. Every one of them is a dream.

Why "Stolen"?

Nobody steals anything, exactly. Dreams simply prefer to run downhill. But every Threadling who has ever lost a good dream feels as though it was taken from them, and the name has stuck.

Over the years, the blame has fallen on almost everyone. The Noddlings are the most common suspects, and they are very offended by this. Noddlings stitch dreams into the Quiet Quilt, they will tell you, with some dignity. They do not pinch them.

The Water and the Tides

The Sea of Stolen Dreams has only one tide a day, and it runs backwards to every other sea in Threadbare.

  • The Morning Tide comes in at dawn, when sleepers all across the world wake up and their forgotten dreams come rolling down the hills. By breakfast, the sea is brimming and bright.
  • The Evening Ebb goes out at dusk, when the dreams begin to drift back up towards the Waking Edge in the hope of being dreamed again. Some of them make it. That is why Threadlings sometimes have the same dream twice.

The surface is so still that the sea is said to be the only water in Threadbare that has never made a splash. Stones skimmed across it do not sink. They simply bounce very slowly to the far shore, and are usually found there next morning, fast asleep.

Geography

The Shallows of Almost - The warm, glowing shallows along the shore, where the most recently forgotten dreams float close to the surface. Wade in up to your knees, and you may find the edge of your own dream brushing past your ankles. Many a Threadling has stood in the Shallows at dusk and suddenly said, "Oh! It was a giraffe!"

The Tip of the Tongue - A long, narrow headland that reaches out into the middle of the sea. It is the best place in the Downs to almost remember something. Standing at the very end of it, Threadlings say, you can feel a forgotten dream right there, just about to arrive.

The Forty Winks - A scattering of exactly forty tiny islands that blink in and out of sight, each one there for no longer than a wink. No one has ever seen all forty at once, and the Noddlings' favourite game is trying to land a boat on one before it disappears.

The Deep End - The dark, velvet-soft middle of the sea, where the oldest dreams in Threadbare settle. Some are dreams whole peoples have dreamed together, over and over, for longer than anyone can remember. The tellings say that if these dreams are dreamed often enough, they stop being dreams at all, and become myths, and walk off to live in the Mythical Meadows. This is why old travellers say the long way to the Meadows lies across the Sea of Stolen Dreams.

Reverie and the Sea

Each dawn, Reverie RestWell walks the Waking Edge gathering unfinished dreams for the Quiet Quilt. Each dusk, he walks down to the Sea of Stolen Dreams to gather the ones he missed. He fishes them gently from the Shallows of Almost with a long-handled net made of old pillowcase, and carries them back up the hill in his pockets, which is why he always sleeps so well.

Not every dream can be brought back, and Reverie says that is as it should be. Some dreams are only meant to be dreamed once. But the ones that want to be remembered usually find their way into his net, and from there into the Quilt, where they are kept safe.

The Noddlings help, in their own way. They sail out across the sea in Dreamboats, tiny boats made from walnut shells and slippers, trailing their paws in the water to feel for dreams worth stitching. They do all of this fast asleep, and have never once capsized.

Creatures

NightMares - Silver-maned sea horses that gallop across the surface of the sea at night, their hooves never quite touching the water. Despite their name, the NightMares are gentle and kind. It is their work to carry bad dreams away from the Knotted Knolls and out to the middle of the sea, where the water slowly unties their knots. By morning, a bad dream carried by a NightMare is usually just a strange one, and sometimes a funny one.

Snoozles - Round, whiskery seals who spend their whole lives asleep, floating on their backs in the warm water with their flippers folded on their tummies. Their snores ripple across the sea in slow, soft rings. A Snoozle who is disturbed will open one eye, look at you with great disappointment, and go back to sleep.

Nightlights - Tiny, softly glowing jellyfish that bob in the Shallows of Almost. They keep lost dreams company until someone comes to find them. Children of the Downs say that every Nightlight is keeping watch over a dream for someone special, and that if you find one glowing near you, it is keeping watch over yours.

The Sea and the Void

Where The Void touches the Drowsy Downs, the Dreamfrost follows, and the Sea of Stolen Dreams feels it too. On the far side of the sea, a thin sheet of silver ice has begun to creep across the water. It glitters in the moonlight and makes no sound at all. Beneath it, the dreams stop shining, and the Nightlights grow dim and still.

A dream trapped under the Dreamfrost cannot drift back up to the Waking Edge, and can never be dreamed again. The Noddlings are very worried about it.

Reverie believes there is a cure, and it is a simple one. When a Threadling remembers a dream and tells it out loud to someone else, a tiny crack appears in the ice, and one dream slips free. He has asked every Threadling in the Downs to tell each other their dreams over breakfast. It has become a Drowsy Downs tradition, and the ice has not grown for a whole season.

Narrative Function

The Sea of Stolen Dreams is the small, quiet sea at the heart of the Drowsy Downs, and the place where every forgotten dream in Threadbare comes to rest. It turns a feeling everyone knows, the dream lost on waking, into a place a StoryWeaver can visit.

In gameplay, the sea suits gentle, exploratory quests: wading the Shallows of Almost to recover a lost dream, chasing the Forty Winks, helping Reverie and the Noddlings recover dreams for the Quiet Quilt, or thawing the Dreamfrost by gathering dreams to be told aloud. It builds naturally on the Downs' waking and dreaming layers.

For Contributors

  • Every dream in the sea belonged to someone. A quest here can begin with a single lost dream and ask the StoryWeaver to find out whose it was, and why it matters.
  • A home for dream stories. The sea welcomes StoryQuests of dream lore, lullabies, and bedtime tales from cultures around the world. As with all cultural material, research carefully and represent it respectfully.
  • Sleep always means rest. As with the rest of the Drowsy Downs, sleep must never be used as a euphemism for death. No one is ever lost in the sea, sinks into it, or sleeps forever. See Content Guidelines.
  • Bad dreams stay gentle. Bad dreams belong in the Knotted Knolls, and when they reach the sea, they are being untied. Keep them unsettling at most, never frightening.
  • Creatures are cared for. The sea's creatures may be sleepy, mischievous or mysterious, but they are never harmed.

Connections