One day, when the world was still very young, the God looked down and saw a magnificent bird. The bird was beautiful and had shimmering feathers. They were bright red and golden in colour and shone like the sun himself. The beautiful bird danced about and caught the attention of God. Allured by its beauty, the God exclaimed, “Glorious bird! You should reside with me in Heaven and be my messenger!” The majestic songbird bowed its head and said, “If that is what you desire, oh holy one,” in a voice of solemn submission.

From thereafter the songbird lived in heaven and took her place as God’s messenger. In return she was rewarded with food and drink of her choice. One fine day, after having just delivered a message to the moon Goddess, the bird was resting its wings when God strolled in clothed in shimmering gold robes and turned to her.

“Oh songbird, while you are here, from now on, you are forbidden to drink wine.” The graceful songbird, though greatly perplexed and bumfuzzled, agreed.

The next morning, while taking her usual warm-up flight, the songbird spotted a glint of gold amongst the trees with her sharp eyes. Upon following in that direction, she found a grove with trees that looked as strong as the very lions that pulled God’s chariot. In the centre was a shiny, golden goblet with a snake engraved on the handle. Intrigued, the bird went closer.

“What is this? And what is that red liquid inside?” it mused to itself. Suddenly, the snake on the handle came to life and hissed menacingly.

“Hello beautiful bird. You look tired, why don’t you drink some refreshing, seraphic-tasting and delicious wine?” it hissed smoothly with a voice as cold as the snow from the north pole that the bird had felt during her travels.

The songbird eyed the wine cautiously and, entranced by how welcoming it looked, tentatively took a sip. Overcome by how wonderful it tasted, the bird gulped down the rest as fast as lightning and emptied the goblet.

However, something lay at the bottom of the goblet. Something dark and murky. It shot up and out of the goblet and descended toward the Earth that lay below the clouds of heaven. It had been too fast for the bird to get a good look, but the experience ate at her nerves.

The next few days, God thought the songbird looked troubled and hadn’t been doing her work as efficiently as usual. He decided to send for her.

“Oh, wise one, you wished to see me?” the bird enquired. When God asked if something was wrong, she felt she could not lie to a being as supreme as Him, and relayed all the events of the day at the grove to him.

“Oh dear! This is truly dreadful!” God cried in anguish. He then explained that the cloud was the essence of nightmares and that it would torture all humans when they slept by haunting their slumbers.

“Is there nothing that can be done to capture it?” the songbird asked fretfully. God simply said, “No.” as he contemplated the situation with a grave face.

Desperate to make up for her mistake, that night rather than sleeping, the elegant songbird flew to the peak of the highest mountain on earth and sang through the roar of the biting wind and the numbness from the freezing cold. Her song was so powerful and potent that it instilled dreams into the minds of all the humans on earth as they slept. These dreams where unpredictable as they were sometimes unusual, sometimes confusing, sometimes glorious, sometimes appalling and so on. But always, they distracted the complex minds of the humans from the awful, cruel and horrendous nightmares, letting them sleep peacefully.

From then on, the songbird never again got even a wink of sleep, as every night she flew to the mountain and sang into the night, her heavenly voice ringing through the air and being carried by the winds to all the corners of the vast world. So is the story of how dreams came into existence.

The End.