There was a young child by the name of Timothy, whose mind would be filled with wondrous dreams as he slumbered each night. He dreamed of miracles, of distant lands beyond the seven oceans, and of beasts which were long vanished, or which were yet to be, or which never existed. The dreams of the young boy were unending in their variety and so limitless in scope that such a thing as a horizon did not exist for them.

Each dream was unique, for one dream would contain a whole world’s stories, and each story was a world unto itself, and each world was a dream within a dream. But when young Timothy awoke, he would find the rainbow spectrum of brilliance slithering through the grasp of his memory. He would recall a glimpse of landscape, a phrase from a story, or the feather of a bird, and nothing more. Each of these memories he fixed in his head, and as Timothy grew from a boy to a man, tiny fragments of endless dreams became a part of his mind. The dreams did not cease, but grew in their endless variety.

As a youthful man, Timothy set out to find the worlds in his dreams. He traveled to every land upon all the oceans. Yet he found no birds with plumage to match his dreams. No libraries held the vast stories written in his mind’s eye. No jungles held the beasts which stalked his nights. No flowers bloomed as those he dreamed, and no city on earth matched those in his visions. He saw all the world had to offer, and nothing was the equal of the world in his heart.

Timothy grew to a man, and he set out to build a new city. The foundations of his city were built from all the dreams in the scrapbook of his mind. It took on the aspects of those countless cities he had dreamed, twisting and winding its way into a new shape. Every night, as he dreamed another world, he fashioned each building in the city from his dreams. Each part of the city was a part of Timothy’s dream, and as the city began to grow, he sometimes would find himself catching a glimpse of a bird or a small cat from his dreams.

The new city grew up around Timothy and, as it grew, he did as well. Timothy did not build anything but dreams, and his dreams were only the buildings. He wandered the streets of the vast new city, its solitary inhabitant, and he would see paradise birds and jeweled insects in flight and the blooming of prismatic flowers. He would find himself wandering through libraries of his own invention, taking books from the shelves, therein to read at last all the stories whose fragments he had but glimpsed.

Timothy was never able to remember just when men and women began to take up residence in his new city. Perhaps their echoes had always been a part of the city, for as cities are built, so they shall be inhabited. Other cities in the world were no more or less dreams than Timothy’s new city, but they were dreamt by every man and woman living in them. The men and women who came to live in the new city discovered it was the city which dreamed of them, and their dreams were inside it, and not the reverse. They dreamed, and in dreaming built the new city up to greater heights, and all the dreams of Timothy found their way into the men and women who lived in the new city.

Timothy searched the city’s streets and byways each day, its labyrinthine buildings and parks growing ever larger as the dreamers in the city grew in number. He had taken all his passion, all the currents of his soul, and he had let them out into the world. The city was his heart, but within the city he could never find the heart of himself. The city would grow ever after, the new city, the greatest city, the city of dreams where all manner of creatures would live. The city herself became a living and breathing thing, a woman whose touch Timothy felt on his shoulder when he walked her streets and on his cheek when he slept. He saw no one when he turned to look, and never knew why he woke in the darkness before dawn. Only in the city’s embrace would he find his heart, but as to whether or not he has learned this truth, no one can say. The new city still stands, and still dreams, and that is the whole of its story.