UNOWN

“You know that gunk in the corners of your eyes that’s there when you wake up?”

“Sleep? Yeah.”

“Well…have you ever really noticed that whenever you have an impossible dream, whether or not you can remember it, there always seems to be more of it?”

Trunks considered this for a moment, then nodded uncertainly. “Sometimes, yeah.”

Pan got quiet, then smiled privately to herself.

“It’s not ‘sleep’ that’s in your eyes. It’s really tears—petrified tears cried over impossible dreams, impossible wishes. Dreams and wishes that you know can never come true,” she whispered. “You can’t cry them because you’re not awake, and you don’t know that you’re crying. But they have to come out. So they become petrified, fossilized, and gather in your eyes, where they blind you from the hopelessness of reality so that you won’t stop dreaming those dreams, or wishing those wishes. When they’re wiped away, they fall and become sand, one grain of sand for every impossible dream and hopeless wish, and the dream fades into a restless and half remembered memory.”

Trunks parked the motorcycle and climbed off the seat, turning and facing her with wonder and solemnity as she swung both legs onto one side.

“I haven’t heard that before.”

“I’ve never told anyone that before.”

He smiled, slipping his hand beneath the curtain of her hair, sliding his fingers between the strands and against her scalp. “But you’re wrong, I think.”

She blinked, looked up at him with startled wonder.

“How? I—I don’t understand.”

“Maybe, they’re not petrified because the dream is an impossible wish,” he whispered, tilting her head up to look at him, smiling down at her. “Maybe they’re petrified because the dream is so beautiful that the dreamer can’t believe it possible. And when they turn to sand, they’re not there to remind the world of the fruitlessness of dreaming, because without dreams, there is no hope. And without hope, happiness can’t exist, and no one is ever really alive. Maybe, just maybe, they turn to sand so that they can show the world just how beautiful one single person can be, no matter how ugly they are on the outside; that they can show just how many beautiful and wonderful dreams that there have been in the world, no matter how hopeless they really seem.”

Pan blinked back tears at his words, lowering her face, determined not to let him see her cry. His thumb glissed across her cheek, smudging away a tear, lifting her face again so that he could look into her eyes.

“Never give up on your dreams, Panny. Because no matter how dark the world can be, no matter how dismal or dreary, they light up the darkness. Because when the world turns its back on you, they’ll still be there for you, until you turn your back on them, giving yourself up to the monotony of it all and the nightmares that lurk in the shadows that those dreams keep at bay. Dreams are hope, Panny. And without hope, what purpose is there in living?”

Her eyes clouded over, and she threw herself into him, clinging to him, sobbing silently. His arms gathered her to him, and he murmured into her hair, soothing her even though they were already half an hour late.

“No dream is hopeless, Panny. Real tears fall and fade away forever, joining the oceans and rivers into one writhing mass that eats away at the world. But petrified tears stay forever, for all the world to see, each tear individual of all the others, for any one person to stumble upon and pick up, and cherish forever.”

from http://www.fanfiction.net/s/240038/56/