The Painter Who Stole Colors From Dreams

The Painter Who Stole Colors From Dreams

From the Archives of the Somnus Institute of Nocturnal Studies

In the town of Veloria—where the fog lingered just a breath longer than necessary and shadows seemed to observe rather than merely exist—there lived a reclusive painter named Aurelian Vance. He was known for two things:

1. His extraordinary murals that glowed without illumination, and

2. His habit of appearing in public only at the hour when dreams were dissolving into morning.

Aurelian rented an attic perched above the abandoned apothecary, where the glass bottles still whispered with old remedies. He lined the walls with canvases so vivid that even the dust motes paused mid-air to admire them. People claimed the paintings changed colors depending on who viewed them, but no one could explain why.

The First Clue

One day, the town physician, Dr. Selas, began to notice something peculiar. A wave of patients reported waking from sleep feeling something missing—not pain, not fear, but color.

A woman described a dream of her childhood garden where all the roses were suddenly grey.

A child said that his flying dream, once brilliant with cobalt skies, had turned the shade of wet concrete.

An elderly man cried because his late wife, who visited him in dreams nightly, had appeared colorless… “as if fading from memory.”

All of them, by chance or instinct, wandered near Aurelian’s shop the following morning.

And each time, the painter emerged onto his balcony, sleeves stained with hues no one had names for: “mourning-lavender,” “unspoken-yellow,” “almost-forgetting-blue.”

Dr. Selas, who had an affection for the scholarly and the strange, began to suspect something impossible.

The Discovery

Late one night, under the pretense of delivering herbal tea, Selas entered Aurelian’s attic. What he found was not the clutter of an ordinary painter but a studio that resembled a laboratory of stolen worlds.

Rows of glass vials pulsed faintly—each holding swirling colors that behaved like living things. Some glowed softly. Some throbbed like quiet grief. Some shimmered like laughter trying to escape a sealed jar.

Pinned to the walls were charcoal sketches annotated with clinical precision:

Subject 12: vivid memory loss upon extraction

Dream pigmented with fear—color unstable

Joy-dominant dreams yield brightest tones; handle carefully

And across the largest canvas was a mural so astounding that Selas involuntarily stepped back: a panorama of Veloria itself, but not as it was—as it dreamed of becoming.

Aurelian’s Confession

Aurelian finally spoke without turning around:

> “I do not steal,” he said.

“I borrow what people no longer notice. Their dreams fade because their waking lives offer no color to hold onto. I merely catch what slips through.”

His voice was quiet but carried the weight of sleepless decades.

> “The world is growing monochrome, Selas. If I do not take these colors, they vanish altogether. I preserve what they forget.”

Selas, torn between awe and horror, whispered, “But you are draining them.”

Aurelian finally faced him, eyes ringed by sleepless nights.

> “Dreams regenerate, doctor. But only if one learns to dream consciously.”

The Reckoning

The town council, upon discovering the truth, expected a confrontation. But the people surprised them. Dreamers from every corner came forward—not to punish the painter, but to understand him.

A woman whose nightmares had turned brilliant red realized her fears were finally visible to her.

A child who dreamed in silver for the first time said it helped him sleep without crying.

Even the elderly man, who feared losing his wife’s memory, found comfort that her color now lived somewhere, preserved on Aurelian’s canvas.

Aurelian’s gift, they decided, was dangerous—but perhaps essential.

And so they struck an unspoken pact.

The Covenant of Color

The painter would no longer take from unwilling dreamers. Instead, the townspeople offered their dreams voluntarily on the nights when they felt emotionally burdened or creatively starved.

They slept, and Aurelian listened—his brushes capturing fragments that would otherwise be lost to time.

The murals he created from these donated dreams began to draw scholars from afar. Some called him a thief; others, a savior of the subconscious. The Somnus Institute recorded his work under the classification:

“Chromatic Dream Extraction—Intangible Cultural Preservation.”

Epilogue: The Dream-Giver

At dawn, Aurelian still stands on his balcony overlooking Veloria.

Sometimes, a vial glows in his hand.

Sometimes, a new color spills into the sky.

Sometimes, a dreamer wakes with more color than they fell asleep with.

For even a painter who steals dreams eventually learns that the rarest pigment is not the one taken from another—

—but the one returned with intention.

Just tell me!