The Desert & the Dreamer.

The nights in Qamar Village had grown quieter since Layla returned.

The villagers said nothing, but she knew they still watched her. They would glance up from their work when she passed, their eyes full of questions they didn't dare speak aloud. No one understood what she had endured, what she had done.

And no one could hear what she heard now.

It began the first night she returned home.

She had gone to bed exhausted, her body heavy from her journey back through the desert. Yet as soon as sleep took her, she woke to find herself standing in her courtyard, staring up at the sky.

The stars above shimmered brighter than ever ... so bright, it seemed the heavens themselves had lowered, close enough to touch. The desert stretched out before her, silver under the moonlight, silent and endless.

Then came the whisper.

A soft voice carried by the night wind.

"Dreamer…"

She froze, her heart hammering in her chest.

"Layla…"

Her breath caught.

She knew that voice.

"Malik?" she whispered.

No answer — just the faint sigh of wind through the palm trees.

But the sound settled deep inside her, stirring something that had been waiting quietly since the morning she'd watched him disappear into the dunes.

She thought she was imagining it at first. Perhaps she missed him so much she was hearing things.

But the next night, she heard him again.

"Dreamer… meet me beyond the sand."

The words were soft, almost fragile, but they wrapped around her heart like silk.

On the third night, the whispers grew stronger.

"Follow the stars."

So she did.

That evening, she slipped quietly out of the house, walking barefoot across the dunes. The sand was cool beneath her feet, the air heavy with the scent of wind and moonlight.

Above her, the stars shimmered, brighter than any lantern. And one by one, they seemed to shift ... aligning, forming a faint path across the sky.

Layla followed.

The desert began to change around her.

The familiar dunes grew taller, sharper, glittering faintly as though dusted with crushed glass. The sky deepened to a shade of indigo she'd never seen, and a faint breeze carried the scent of something sweeter than dates or blossoms.

She stopped at the crest of a dune, breathless.

Below her stretched a vast, otherworldly desert. The sands shimmered like silver, the dunes arranged in graceful spirals. Strange white flowers bloomed where no water should have been, their petals glowing faintly.

And in the center of it all stood Malik.

His robe fluttered in the wind, his form outlined by faint golden light. His eyes ... those same warm, golden eyes ... found her instantly.

He smiled.

And then he spoke, his voice low and soft, yet carrying to her ears like a song:

"You came to me, Dreamer."

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as she stepped down the dune toward him.

"Malik… is this real?"

He shook his head slightly, though his smile never faded.

"What is real? The sand? The stars? Or the space between them?"

When she reached him, he took her hand in his ... though it felt like holding the breeze itself, warm but weightless.

"This is what I can give you," he murmured, his words falling into short, tender fragments.

"A land of our own… where the stars are near… and the world cannot find us."

Layla stared up at him, her heart aching with a thousand feelings she couldn't name.

And for the first time since that dawn when she'd watched him fade away, she let herself smile too.

They walked through the silver dunes together, their fingers intertwined.

Malik showed her the fantasy land ... the glittering oasis where water reflected the constellations above, the caves where the walls glowed softly like moonstone, the flowers that opened only when she touched them.

Everywhere they went, he whispered to her... soft and poetic lines carried on the wind:

"You are the whisper in every grain of sand."

"The stars burn because they envy you."

"You are my beginning, and my always."

And when she finally laid her head on his shoulder, beneath the endless starlit sky, she felt whole again.

For a while, she forgot the weight of the real world ... the watchful eyes, the quiet loneliness of her days, the emptiness she carried since his departure.

Here, in this fragile dream, nothing else mattered.

But even as she drifted into a quiet, blissful sleep in his arms, a faint unease curled deep inside her.

Because some part of her still wondered…

How long could this last?

When she woke the next morning in her own bed, the faint scent of the silver flowers still clung to her hair.

And she already longed for night to fall again.