There was once a boy that used to dream. Circumstances beyond his innocent infant comprehension forced his family through difficult moments, going from one place to the next, switching schools, and starting anew a handful of times. The boy became a solitary child without friends and with not even a bed of his own at times, but he always had his dreams.

He unleashed the full power of his imagination across many lonely days and nights to enact the wildest fantasies — some based on heroes and worlds from television and video games, while others were entirely brand new. An old towel became his heroic cape, and a rolled and taped piece of poster board became his ‘sword.’
He travelled through numerous worlds, all full of wonder, adventure, and excitement. 

The fearsome enemies he fought and vanquished were countless; some foes were so powerful and dangerous that the boy had to wield logic-defying powers to triumph over evil. These illusory adventures gave comfort to that lonely boy as everything around him changed, and not for the better.

The boy died one day, killed by the crushing weight of reality — his dreams, however, survived.

Years later, a lost teenager found the shattered remains of the boy’s dreams and held onto them deep within himself as if they were the greatest treasure in the world. Like the boy, the troubled teenager lived through an atypical life: always feeling out of place, alone, and with no friends beyond a group of strangers he shared online spaces with. The boy’s broken dreams accompanied the teenager across many dark, cold, and lonely nights, offering a bit of light, warmth, and comfort.

The teenager grabbed some of the broken shards and unsuccessfully tried to build something with them — life demanded that he reluctantly pursue other paths in which there is no room for dreams.
To the surprise of no one, the troubled teenager became a flawed adult; a melancholic man that does not amount to much and who is his own prison, his own worst enemy.

One day, as he walked through the darkest days of his life, the broken man retrieved what the teenager tried to build. He distilled it down to its basic elements and found that which he thought was lost, the essence of the boy’s dreams.

The man took that essence and combined it with the only things he had: his large list of woes, sins, vices, losses, and tears. He also put in what few virtues and triumphs he had to his name. Everything that encompassed the broken man bonded with the boy’s spark, creating a new illusory universe — an escapism from all the entropy and tragedies that surrounded him as he ultimately failed to save his mother.

The boy’s dreams would end up giving a small glimmer of hope to that hopeless broken man, even to this day.