The One Where Sleep Looks for His Emissary

Sleep abided in a state of tranquillity. The dreams of mortals were taken care of, nobody wanted anything from him, and infinite time was dilated. Sleep needed nothing, lacked nothing, had no desires.

The loud creaking of the gates opening jolted him out of his stupor. He raised his head, turning his gaze towards the entrance. Something resembling a smile emerged on his face when he recognised the figure that had appeared in the doorway.

“Ah, Dziewanna, I haven’t seen you in ages,” he greeted the goddess of the forest, a young woman with long brown hair and a watchful gaze. Dziewanna walked confidently into Sleep’s hall, taking light, almost soundless steps that brought to mind a watchful doe.

“Greetings, Sleep. I thought I’d drop by and see how things are in your sleepy domain. Still sticking to the same old routine?” she asked with a slight note of snark, which - like all snark - bounced off Sleep’s ignorance like a rubber ball off a wall.

“Ah, yes!” he replied, perking up. “No changes, no complications. Just me, my mortals and my dreams. Eternity has never been so delightful!” He drifted into a good-natured reverie, ignoring the look on Dziewanna’s face, which made it clear that their interpretations of a good time differed on an elementary level. Someone else might have been put off by the dream god’s enthusiasm and decided that any attempt to manipulate his state would be futile, but not Dziewanna. The goddess had known him long enough to be aware that Sleep could be exceptionally susceptible to suggestion, if only he was properly encouraged, and she, in turn, had come to him with a very specific, cleverly hidden purpose, which made her ready to do anything to achieve it. She shed the look of distaste from her face and replied: “I’m very glad there is peace in your domain. I’d like to say the same goes for me, but my new addition has caused a great deal of commotion in my daily life.”

“A new addition? Have you borrowed one of Perun’s bows again?” asked Sleep, displaying what, in his case, was a certain form of phlegmatic interest, and for Dziewanna this was a subtle sign that the bait had been taken.

“No, it’s not a bow this time. I’ve got myself a new herald.”

“A herald? What do you need a herald for?”

“If you deigned to attend our regular meetings of deities, you would know that faith in us is fading. And as faith fades, our power wanes. Haven’t you noticed that your dreams have been getting repetitive lately and the castle is starting to fall into disrepair?”

“Nonsense! While you lot meet and party on Olympus, I work by the sweat of my brow.” Sleep took umbrage, but a grain of doubt had evidently been sown in him, for he addressed his next words to a figure hidden in the corner of the hall: “Drzemota, tell her that everything here runs as smoothly and flawlessly as ever.”

The assistant reluctantly got up from her chair and walked over to Sleep. She cleared her throat quietly and replied with a certain resistance, aware that her words would not please her superior: “Well, my lord, the Department of Dreams states in its regular reports that all indicators are consistently trending down. Both the statistics of the dreams themselves and their quality have worsened - they are less creative, often colourless, and the presence of auditory sensations has dropped almost to zero.”

“What? How is that possible? Why has nobody shown me these statistics? Where are they?”

“My lord, you had the last ones burnt. You said the font was an affront to your majesty and the colours of the tables were a disgrace to your sense of aesthetics.”

“Because they were. What lunatic combines black with yellow?” Drzemota didn’t answer, and the goddess of the forest listened to this conversation with mute satisfaction. So far, it seemed the true purpose of her visit would be achieved without much effort.

Meanwhile, Sleep seemed to be thinking hard about something. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean a decline in my followers. People are lazy, mundane, and on top of that they’re always rushing somewhere, it must be their fault.”

Sleep had a black belt in shifting the blame onto others with natural ease, but Dziewanna was alert: “Perhaps, but do people also affect the state of your castle?”

“What are you talking about?” asked the god of dreams, with a genuine look of surprise, which was Drzemota’s cue to chime in: “My lord, look around.” Sleep turned his head towards her, still in a state of astonishment, and perhaps it was this alone that made him do something that was not in his nature - without a word, he obeyed his assistant and, for the first time in decades, actually looked around. And what he saw froze the blood in his veins (or rather, it would have, if, firstly, he had veins and, secondly, if any blood flowed in them). The walls, once covered in beautiful mosaics, were now disfigured only by falling grey plaster. The wooden doors to his throne room, once carved, were now covered in a network of small holes, which clearly indicated that they had been taken over by termites. When he raised his head, he spotted holes in the ceiling, and when he looked at his own robes, he noticed that they too were frayed and stripped of their former glory. His own throne, the one from which he had always ruled the dreams of mortals, looked more like a privy seat than a throne worthy of the god of dreams. Surprise turned smoothly into a state of horror as Sleep’s gaze focused on Drzemota once more: “How did this happen? Since when? Why?”

“For a long time now, my lord. Gradually, imperceptibly, your domain has been falling into ruin. And why? I’m afraid the only answer lies in Dziewanna’s words - without followers, your power weakens.” Sleep let out a sound. Something like a scream of horror combined with holy indignation. What? His power weakening? No followers? HIM? Such things happened to other deities, those fools, but not to him. If he had a few human feelings in him, Sleep might even have shed a tear over his fate, but instead he turned his gaze towards Dziewanna, and a look of new determination appeared on his face.

“This whole herald thing. Tell me how you get one.” One of Sleep’s few virtues was that he didn’t wallow in his fate for long, but acted. Rarely sensibly, rarely deliberately, but he acted. Now, too, he was determined to restore his domain to the level of majesty he was due as quickly as possible.

“According to the established procedure, each god recruits their representative from among people who are talented in their field. The recruitment interview is conducted through a revelation. In your case… well, it should be someone connected with sleeping?” replied Dziewanna with a slight smirk, taking a certain spiteful satisfaction in the fact that one of the most powerful gods would have to rely on people whose greatest talent was sleeping.

“I see. So I have to choose someone worthy of me and reveal myself to them in a dream. Simple. Thank you, Dziewanna!” replied Sleep, smiling broadly, blind to the goddess’s meaningful smile. “And now, if that’s all, allow me to get straight to work.”

“Of course. Remember to familiarise yourself with procedure HO.LY 1.2 revision 3 before starting the process,” the goddess instructed him, then said goodbye and left Sleep’s castle, pleased that she had managed to complete the task entrusted to her by Most High Management.

When Sleep was left alone with Drzemota, she asked, though she already knew the answer to her question: “My lord, shall I bring the procedure?”

Sleep waved his hand. “No, it’s a waste of time, I know perfectly well what to do.” He was filled with faith in his own abilities, not necessarily with knowledge of recruitment procedures. “Leave me now, and I shall search for my new emissary.”

Drzemota obeyed her lord, silently retreating towards the lonely chair in the corner, and Sleep leaned back more comfortably in his throne, ready to begin his journey into the world of dreams in search of his first emissary.

The Department of Dreams probably had a suitable procedure, written specially for Sleep, which clearly set out the rules, permissions and competences required to correctly complete the process of visiting human dreams. The procedure had probably even found its way into Sleep’s hands at some point. And had most likely ended up in the fireplace, like other documents that reached him. Sleep didn’t need procedures. The world of dreams was his playground, and he ruled it with the confidence of that one kid from primary school who always knew who was easiest to scrounge sweets from and which neighbour didn’t wear knickers. And here we have to give him some credit - when it came to wandering through dreams and bestowing dreams on people, he truly had no equal. The problems began when other activities came into play. Such as communicating with people, or applying the procedure on revelations, HO.LY 1.2 revision 3, in practice. But blessed with ignorance, Sleep strode proudly between dreams, stubbornly searching for a person he would deem worthy of the role of his emissary. He searched until he finally found him.

“Drzemota, I’ve got him!” The cry of the god of dreams, which shook the hall, jolted Drzemota out of her nap; she straightened up in her chair, opened her sleepy eyes and quickly stood up, showing her lord genuine interest. “My lord, I’m so glad, who is it, how did you find him?”

“I knew straight away it was him. If you’d seen his dreams!” he began dreamily, ready to launch into his account, but Drzemota knew how to steer him onto the right subject.

“Yes, my lord, tell me how you managed to reveal yourself to him and convince him. Did he resist?”

“Resist? Perhaps… I don’t know,” he replied, surprised by the very concept. In truth, even if any human had put up active resistance, it would have bounced off the wall of Sleep’s holy conviction of his own infallibility. “He didn’t say much, he mostly listened while I delivered my message.”

“What message, my lord?”

“When the day breaks, lead the people of all nation to me, or at least I think so. No, I definitely said that…” he replied, with a slight note of uncertainty, which he heroically nipped in the bud.

“Are you sure that’s what you said, my lord?” asked Drzemota, aware that Sleep could not communicate in the language of humans.

“Absolutely. He understood at once. As befits a musician!”

“A mu… musician?”

“Yes, I gathered from his dreams that he’s a musician. Whatever that means. Probably something to do with the muses, ideal for my emissary, wouldn’t you say?”

“My lord, Dziewanna mentioned that according to the procedure it should be someone connected with your domain.”

“EVERYONE who dreams is connected with my domain. And from that boy’s dreams I could see that with my help he is capable of achieving great things. I can’t wait for him to start proclaiming my name…” Sleep went on with the enthusiasm of a child describing his favourite stick, but Drzemota was no longer listening. Her attention was caught by a quiet beep coming from the desk by the wall. Sleep ignored the sound, treating it like irritating background noise, but she knew what it meant. A message from Above. Most High Management. Or MHM. Call it what you will. Probably related to Sleep’s new emissary. She sighed quietly and headed for the desk, aware that Sleep, absorbed in his own perfection, would continue his monologue without paying the slightest attention to whether she was listening.

When she picked up the message, her thought processes briefly went into a state of system hang. It wasn’t a report on the revelation. It wasn’t an official memo from the Omniscient Representative for the Heavenly Organization for Standardization. It was a nonconformity. A major one. Drzemota folded the sheet into quarters and slipped it under the fabric of her robe, intending to read it later. She knew Sleep wouldn’t care about the nonconformity and would laugh at the corrective actions. And she probably wouldn’t have admitted it even to herself, but part of her didn’t want to spoil the joy he took in a mission performed perfectly (in his own estimation). She quietly returned to the god of dreams, who was continuing his story, approaching the finale.

“Admittedly, the look on his face was strange at first, as if he couldn’t quite hear everything I was saying, but in the end he smiled, nodded and said something I didn’t understand, but he certainly agreed with me.”

“An incredible story, my lord. It looks like all we have to do now is wait until the first fruits of your emissary’s work are ready for harvest.”

When the conversation came to an end and Sleep set off to the land of dreams to bestow his gifts on people, Drzemota returned to the chair in the corner, pulled the sheet out from her bosom and began to read. The words, one after another, finally gave her a real picture of what had happened.

“Procedure HO.LY 1.2 revision 3 ‘Revelations and Recruitment of Emissaries’, in clause 1.1, requires that a god, before his first revelation, complete training in communication with mortals, including practical language learning and non-verbal forms of communication.

Description of Nonconformity: The auditee did not complete the required course. During his first revelation he spoke the words: ‘When the boy breaks, bread the noodle on the Fields of eel nation’, which demonstrate a lack of knowledge of human language. In addition, the auditee’s tone of voice and intonation made these words difficult to comprehend, so even the Omniscient Representative does not know what the auditee actually wished to convey, let alone what the candidate for emissary may have heard. The breach of procedure constitutes a major nonconformity.”

Drzemota sighed, knowing that identifying the causes of the nonconformity and describing and implementing corrective actions would be her job. She should have used the 5 Whys method, but there was little point - there was only one answer to each why. And the answer was Sleep.

Meanwhile, somewhere on Earth, a certain musician woke from his sleep. Words circled in his head like a mantra. When the bough breaks. Thread the needle. Fields of elation. In his veins circled a new, powerful inspiration that seemed almost unnatural.