The Timekeeper of Forgotten Dreams

A Tale of Erwan Garnier

A Creative Fiction Story

 

Prologue: The Last Clockmaker

Prologue: The Last Clockmaker

In the forgotten corners of Paris, where cobblestone streets whisper secrets of centuries past, there existed a peculiar shop that appeared only to those who truly needed to find it. Its wooden sign, weathered by time and rain, read simply: “Garnier – Horloger des Rêves Oubliés” — Garnier, Clockmaker of Forgotten Dreams.

Inside this remarkable establishment lived a man unlike any other. His name was Erwan Garnier, and he was the last of his kind.

 

Chapter One: The Inheritance Of Time

Erwan Garnier had always known he was different. Born on the stroke of midnight during the winter solstice of 1892, he entered the world between one day and the next, suspended in the liminal space where time held its breath. His mother, Céleste, had often told him that the church bells had rung backward that night, and the stars had formed patterns that no astronomer could explain.

From his earliest memories, Erwan possessed an unusual gift. He could see time — not as an abstract concept, but as shimmering threads of golden light that connected every living thing to its past and future. These threads, invisible to ordinary eyes, wove through the fabric of reality like an infinite tapestry, each strand representing a moment, a memory, a dream waiting to unfold.

His father, Baptiste Garnier, was a clockmaker of considerable renown. His workshop, tucked away on the Rue des Murmures in the Marais district, attracted clients from across Europe. Kings and queens, poets and philosophers — all sought Baptiste’s miraculous timepieces, each one said to possess properties that transcended ordinary mechanics.

“Time is not a river, mon fils,” Baptiste would say, his silver-rimmed spectacles perched on his weathered nose as he worked his delicate tools. “It is an ocean, vast and deep, full of currents we cannot see. Our clocks do not merely measure its passage — they listen to its song.”

Young Erwan would sit for hours watching his father work, mesmerized by the intricate dance of gears and springs, the gentle tick-tock that seemed to echo the very heartbeat of the universe. But what fascinated him most were the special commissions — the clocks Baptiste created for clients who came in darkness, their faces hidden beneath wide-brimmed hats, speaking in whispers of impossible desires.

“There are those,” Baptiste explained on Erwan’s tenth birthday, “who carry within them dreams they have forgotten, memories too precious or too painful to hold. Our family has served as guardians of these lost treasures for seven generations. The gift passes from parent to child, carried in our blood like the finest Swiss watchmaking oil.”

That night, Baptiste placed his hands upon Erwan’s temples and spoke words in a language that predated French, that predated Latin, that perhaps had been spoken by the first humans who dared to mark the passing of days. In that moment, Erwan felt the world shift around him. The golden threads of time became clearer, brighter, and he understood — truly understood — his purpose.

He was not merely a clockmaker’s son.

He was a Timekeeper.

 

Chapter Two: The Girl With Forgotten Eyes

The year was 1912, and Erwan had grown into a young man of striking presence. His dark hair, touched with premature streaks of silver at the temples, fell in waves past his ears. His eyes — one the color of antique bronze, the other a startling deep blue — seemed to look not at a person but through them, into the very essence of their being. The villagers whispered that Erwan Garnier had been born with one eye in the past and one eye in the future.

Baptiste had passed three winters prior, taken by a fever that even his mastery of time could not outrun. Death, after all, was the one force that refused to be measured or contained. Erwan now ran the shop alone, continuing his father’s work while slowly unlocking the deeper secrets of his inheritance.

It was on an evening in late autumn, when the leaves fell like tears from the chestnut trees, that she first appeared.

The door opened without the customary chime of the brass bell — the first sign that this visitor was no ordinary customer. She stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the gaslight glow of the street behind her, and Erwan felt time itself pause in recognition.

Her name, she said, was Amélie Beaumont, though her voice carried the weight of other names, older names, forgotten names. She was perhaps eighteen or eighty, impossible to tell, for her face held the freshness of youth while her eyes contained depths that spoke of centuries.

“I have lost something,” she said, her voice like wind chimes on a still day. “Something I cannot name, cannot describe, cannot remember. Yet its absence hollows me.”

Erwan studied the threads of time that surrounded her and felt his breath catch. Most people trailed perhaps a dozen strands of fate behind them, connections to memories and dreams. Amélie Beaumont was surrounded by thousands — no, millions — an impossible galaxy of golden light that spoke of a life lived outside the normal bounds of human experience.

“You are like me,” he whispered, the realization dawning like sunrise over the Seine.

She smiled, and in that smile was both terrible sadness and ancient joy. “I am the last of the Dreamkeepers, Erwan Garnier. As you are the last of the Timekeepers. And I believe… I believe we have been searching for each other for a very long time.”

 

Chapter Three: The Clock Of Reunited Souls

In the weeks that followed, Erwan and Amélie shared secrets that no other souls had heard. They spoke of the old ways, the ancient pacts between their lineages that dated back to the earliest days of human civilization.

Once, in the time before time was measured, humans had lived in harmony with both dreams and waking reality. The Timekeepers had maintained the balance of moments, ensuring that past, present, and future flowed in proper sequence. The Dreamkeepers had guarded the realm of sleep, protecting the visions and aspirations that gave meaning to human existence.

But then came the Forgetting — a cataclysm that Amélie spoke of only in hushed tones. Something had torn the veil between worlds, scattering the dreams of humanity like dandelion seeds in a storm. Most were lost forever. Others attached themselves to the wrong souls, creating lives built on borrowed aspirations. The world fell out of balance, and slowly, inevitably, both the Timekeepers and Dreamkeepers began to fade.

“We were once many,” Amélie said, her forgotten eyes staring into a past only she could see. “Now we are two. And without reunion, without completing the broken circle, we will be none.”

Erwan understood what must be done. He had known it, perhaps, from the moment she walked through his door. Together, they would create something never before attempted — a device that could bridge the gap between time and dreams, that could restore what had been lost in the Forgetting.

He called it the Horloge des Âmes Réunies — the Clock of Reunited Souls.

For seven years, they worked. Through the chaos of the Great War, through the Spanish flu that claimed millions, through the roaring aftermath when the world tried desperately to forget its sorrows, Erwan and Amélie labored in secret. She provided the essence of dreams — crystallized nighttime visions harvested from the sleeping minds of the pure and innocent. He contributed the mechanisms of time — gears forged from moments of pure joy, springs tempered in the fires of profound revelation.

The clock, when finally completed, was a masterpiece beyond description. Standing seven feet tall, its casing was carved from wood that had grown in the Garden of Eden (or so Amélie claimed). Its face displayed not hours and minutes but the twelve fundamental emotions of human experience. Its hands were made from the last tears of the first Dreamkeeper and the first laugh of the first Timekeeper, merged into an alloy that shimmered with inner light.

And at its heart, where an ordinary clock would house its mainspring, there beat something that was neither mechanism nor organ but something new — the first Soulmechanism, a fusion of time and dream given physical form.

 

Chapter Four: The Great Restoration

On the winter solstice of 1919, exactly twenty-seven years after Erwan’s birth, they activated the Clock of Reunited Souls.

The shop on Rue des Murmures became, for one impossible moment, the center of the universe. Light poured forth from the clock’s face, not merely illuminating but transforming. The golden threads of time that Erwan had seen all his life merged with silvery strands of dream that only Amélie could perceive, creating a tapestry of prismatic brilliance that expanded outward at the speed of thought.

Around the world, people paused. The busy streets of New York fell silent. The markets of Marrakech grew still. The rice paddies of Japan reflected sudden starlight despite the noon sun. Everywhere, humans felt something long forgotten stirring in the depths of their souls.

Dreams began returning to their rightful owners.

A widow in London remembered the face of the daughter she had lost in childbirth, and for the first time in decades, she smiled through her tears. A soldier in Germany, still shell-shocked from the trenches, finally dreamed of something other than mud and blood. A child in Argentina discovered within herself an ambition to paint that had belonged to her grandmother, passed down through generations of forgotten sleep.

But power of this magnitude always demands its price.

As the light receded and the threads settled into their new configuration, Erwan looked at Amélie and saw the truth written in her fading form. The Clock had worked, but it had consumed her essence in the process.

“No,” he breathed, reaching for her even as his hands passed through increasingly insubstantial flesh. “This was not the bargain. This was not the price.”

She smiled that ancient smile one final time. “Some dreams, mon cher, are worth more than the dreamers who carry them. I have given humanity back its stolen visions. You have given them back their proper time. Together, we have healed a wound that festered for millennia.”

“I cannot do this alone,” Erwan protested, tears streaming down his face. “The Clock requires both Timekeeper and Dreamkeeper to maintain. Without you—”

“Without me,” she interrupted gently, “you will find another way. You are more than a Timekeeper now, Erwan Garnier. When our essences merged to create the Soulmechanism, I gave you a piece of myself. You carry the dreams now, too. Not as purely as I did, perhaps, but enough. Enough to continue the work.”

Her final words were spoken directly into his mind, too sacred for mere air to carry: “Find the lost ones. Train them. Rebuild what was. And when you have done this, when the world is ready… create more clocks. One for every city, every village, every forgotten corner where humans dare to dream of better tomorrows. This is your purpose, Erwan. This is your gift. This is your burden.”

Then she was gone, leaving behind only a lingering scent of night-blooming jasmine and the faintest shimmer of silver light.

 

Chapter Five: The Century Of Searching

Erwan Garnier did not age.

This was the second gift of the Clock — or perhaps its curse. His body remained fixed at twenty-seven years, frozen in the moment of greatest power. He watched the twentieth century unfold with eyes that had seen too much and would see more still.

He traveled the world, seeking those who carried fragments of the old gifts. In Shanghai, he found a boy who could glimpse the future in the patterns of tea leaves. In Cairo, an elderly woman whose whispered lullabies could bring dreams to the dreamless. In São Paulo, twins who could slow time to a crawl when they touched hands.

Each one he approached, offered training, offered purpose. Some accepted. Most refused, frightened by the magnitude of what he proposed. The old ways had been forgotten so thoroughly that even those born with the gifts often wished only to suppress them, to live normal lives unburdened by impossible responsibilities.

Through two world wars, through the atomic age and the space race, through the birth of computers and the death of empires, Erwan persisted. He established safe houses across the globe — hidden workshops where the gifted could gather, learn, practice their arts in secret.

The Clock of Reunited Souls remained in Paris, tended by a rotating guard of his most trusted apprentices. Once a year, on the winter solstice, Erwan would return to stand before it, to speak to the lingering essence of Amélie that he sometimes imagined he could still sense within its mechanisms.

“I have found twelve,” he told her shade on the solstice of 1969, the year humans first walked on the moon. “Twelve new Dreamkeepers, scattered across six continents. Not enough to restore the old orders, but enough to make a difference. Enough to protect humanity’s ability to hope.”

The Clock chimed thirteen times — an impossibility — and Erwan smiled, taking it as acknowledgment.

But the world was changing faster than he could adapt. Technology was weaving new threads of connection that mimicked the old golden strands. Television and telephones, computers and eventually the internet — humans were creating their own networks of time and dream, mechanical imitations of the organic webs that had once connected all souls.

Some of this was good. The artificial connections amplified human empathy, allowed people separated by oceans to share dreams and memories instantaneously. But it also fragmented attention, scattered focus, made it harder for the young to listen to the deeper rhythms of existence.

Erwan watched his potential apprentices become harder and harder to reach. The quiet patience required for his training could not compete with the instant gratification of the digital age. The subtle gifts he offered paled beside the flashy promises of technology.

By 2000, only three of his original twelve Dreamkeepers remained active. The others had drifted away, choosing ordinary lives over extraordinary burdens.

 

Chapter Six: The New Apprentice

The solution, when it finally came, arrived in the most unlikely form.

Her name was Sophie Chen, and she was nineteen years old when she stumbled through the door of Garnier – Horloger des Rêves Oubliés on a rainy evening in 2023. She was not seeking magical assistance or mysterious repairs. She was simply looking for a dry place to wait out a thunderstorm.

“The bell didn’t ring,” she observed, glancing up at the brass fixture above the door. “Is it broken?”

Erwan, who had been examining a particularly challenging timepiece at his workbench, felt his heart skip in a way it had not for over a century. The golden threads surrounding this girl were unlike anything he had seen since Amélie. Not as numerous, perhaps, but woven in the same impossible patterns.

“The bell rings only for ordinary visitors,” he said carefully. “You are not ordinary, are you, Sophie Chen?”

She startled at the use of her name. “How did you—”

“You dream of flying,” Erwan continued, watching the threads dance. “Not in airplanes, but truly flying, on wings of starlight over cities that do not exist. You wake each morning with melodies in your head that you cannot reproduce, because they come from a place beyond normal music. And sometimes, when you are very still and the world is very quiet, you can almost hear what people are going to say before they say it.”

Sophie’s face had gone pale. “I’ve never told anyone about the dreams. Not even my therapist. How can you possibly—”

“Because I have been searching for someone like you for a very long time.” Erwan removed his spectacles, allowing her to see his mismatched eyes clearly for the first time. “You are a Dreamkeeper, Sophie. Perhaps the most naturally gifted one I have encountered in over a century. And if you are willing to learn, I can teach you to use your abilities in ways you cannot imagine.”

He expected fear. He expected denial. He expected the same rejection he had faced countless times over the decades.

Instead, Sophie Chen laughed — a bright, clear sound that made the clocks throughout the shop chime in spontaneous harmony.

“I knew it,” she said, wonder replacing her initial shock. “I always knew there had to be more. Everyone told me I was crazy, that I needed medication, that my ‘vivid imagination’ was a symptom to be treated. But I knew. I could feel it, like pressure behind my eyes, like a song just out of hearing range.”

Erwan allowed himself something he had not felt in many years: hope.

 

Chapter Seven: The Digital Dreamscape

Sophie proved to be not merely gifted but revolutionary. Where Erwan’s understanding of dreams and time remained rooted in centuries-old traditions, Sophie brought a native fluency in the digital world that allowed her to bridge gaps he had never known how to cross.

“The internet isn’t replacing the dreamworld,” she explained one evening, her fingers dancing across the screen of her laptop. “It’s creating a parallel one. Look here — social media, streaming platforms, virtual reality — these are humans building new kinds of dreams, new ways of connecting across time and space. The challenge isn’t to fight the technology. It’s to infuse it with the old wisdom.”

Working together, they developed techniques that neither could have achieved alone. Sophie learned to navigate the ancient pathways of dream, to harvest crystallized visions, to speak the old languages that predated human speech. Erwan learned to see the digital realm not as an enemy but as an extension of the networks he had always tended.

They created apps that delivered subliminal healing to those who needed it. They established online communities that attracted others with dormant gifts. They found ways to embed tiny fragments of the Soulmechanism’s essence into viral videos and popular music, spreading whispers of the old magic to millions who would never know its source.

The new Dreamkeepers they recruited were different from the old ones — comfortable with screens and algorithms, able to work in ways that would have seemed like pure sorcery to Amélie’s generation. But at their core, they carried the same essential spark, the same connection to the vast ocean of human aspiration.

By 2025, they numbered forty-seven. Not enough to transform the world, but enough to protect it. Enough to ensure that no matter how technology evolved, the fundamental human capacity for dream would never be fully mechanized.

 

Chapter Eight: The Anniversary

On December 21st, 2027 — the 135th anniversary of Erwan’s birth and the 108th anniversary of the Clock’s activation — something extraordinary happened.

Sophie was the first to notice. She had been conducting routine maintenance on the Clock of Reunited Souls when the Soulmechanism at its heart began to pulse with increased intensity.

“Erwan!” she called, her voice carrying notes of alarm and wonder. “Something’s happening!”

He arrived to find the Clock glowing brighter than it had since that first night in 1919. The golden and silver threads were becoming visible even to ordinary eyes, filling the workshop with prismatic light that spilled into the streets outside.

Around the world, their network of Dreamkeepers reported similar phenomena. In Tokyo, Yuki felt dreams flowing through her with unprecedented strength. In Lagos, Chidinma’s timekeeping abilities suddenly extended to perceive events days in the future. In Toronto, Marcus found himself floating three inches above his bed, lifted by the pure force of imagined flight.

The Clock’s face, which usually displayed the twelve fundamental emotions, began cycling through all of them at once — love and fear, joy and sorrow, hope and despair, wonder and contempt, anger and peace, trust and disgust. Around and around, faster and faster, until they merged into something new, something that had no name because it encompassed all names.

And then, from the center of the Soulmechanism, a voice spoke.

It was Amélie’s voice, though changed, expanded, grown over a century of existence beyond physical form. But it was also Erwan’s voice, and Sophie’s voice, and the voices of every Timekeeper and Dreamkeeper who had ever lived and died in service to humanity’s highest aspirations.

“The circle completes,” the voice said. “What was broken is healed. What was scattered is gathered. The great wound of the Forgetting is finally, fully, eternally closed.”

Light exploded outward once more — not the light of the original activation, which had merely restored lost connections, but something far more powerful. This was light that created new connections, that established bonds between souls that had never been linked before.

Every human being on Earth, in that moment, felt themselves as part of something larger. Not in an overwhelming or frightening way, but as gentle recognition — the understanding that their individual dreams were notes in an infinite symphony, their personal moments were seconds in an endless day.

When the light faded and the Clock returned to its normal gentle ticking, Erwan found himself weeping for the first time since Amélie’s passing. Not from sorrow, but from a joy so profound it could find no other expression.

“It worked,” Sophie whispered, her hand finding his. “After all this time, all this effort… it actually worked.”

 

Chapter Nine: The Future Of Forever

Erwan Garnier did not know if he would ever die. The Clock’s magic had frozen him at twenty-seven for over a century, and there was no reason to believe this would ever change. Perhaps he was truly immortal now, bound to walk through time until the sun itself burned out.

Once, this prospect would have filled him with despair. To watch everyone he loved grow old and die, to persist alone through endless ages — it had seemed the cruelest possible fate.

But now, standing in his workshop with Sophie and looking at the softly glowing Clock, he understood that he would never truly be alone again. The connections forged in that final activation were permanent and unbreakable. He was bound to Sophie, to all the Dreamkeepers, to every human being who ever dared to dream of tomorrow.

“What happens now?” Sophie asked.

Erwan smiled — not the cautious, guarded smile he had worn for a century, but the full and unreserved smile of a man who has finally found peace.

“Now, ma chère, we begin the real work. The Clock has given us tools we never had before. We can teach anyone to touch their dreams, to sense the threads of time. We can create more clocks, as Amélie charged me to do. One for every city, every village, every forgotten corner where humans dare to hope.”

He gestured at the workshop around them, at the countless timepieces that filled every shelf and surface. “All these years, I thought I was keeping the old ways alive, fighting a losing battle against forgetting. But perhaps that was never the true purpose. Perhaps we were always meant to evolve, to merge the ancient wisdom with new understanding, to build something that neither pure tradition nor pure innovation could achieve.”

Sophie nodded slowly. “A new age of Timekeepers and Dreamkeepers. Not hidden in shadows, but working openly, helping humanity remember that they are more than their daily struggles.”

“Precisely.” Erwan walked to the window and looked out at the lights of Paris, glittering like earthbound stars. “The world is troubled, Sophie. Climate change, political division, technological disruption — there are many who say humanity is approaching its end. But I have lived long enough to see other moments of apparent apocalypse. The Black Death. The World Wars. Times when it seemed impossible that hope could survive.”

He turned back to face her. “And yet, here we are. Not because humans are particularly wise or kind or strong, but because they dream. They imagine better futures and then build them, despite every obstacle. That capacity for dream is our true gift to humanity — not prediction, not manipulation, but simply the protection and nurturing of hope itself.”

Sophie joined him at the window. Outside, the winter solstice night was giving way to the first hints of dawn. Somewhere across the city, people were waking, stretching, preparing for another day. Most of them would never know what had happened during the night, would never understand the gift they had received.

But perhaps, in small ways, their lives would be different. Perhaps they would be slightly more inclined to believe in possibility, slightly more willing to pursue the desires that stirred in their sleeping minds. Perhaps the world would become, inch by inch and dream by dream, a bit more like the one humanity had always imagined it could be.

“I think,” Sophie said softly, “that this is going to be a very interesting century.”

Erwan Garnier, last of the old Timekeepers and first of the new, laughed with genuine delight.

“My dear Sophie,” he replied, “I believe you are absolutely right.”

 

Epilogue: The Clockmaker’s Legacy

In the forgotten corners of Paris, where cobblestone streets still whisper secrets of centuries past, there exists a shop that appears only to those who truly need to find it. Its wooden sign, lovingly restored but still carrying the patina of ages, reads: “Garnier – Horloger des Rêves Oubliés” — Garnier, Clockmaker of Forgotten Dreams.

But now, the sign continues in smaller letters below: “Et École des Nouveaux Gardiens” — And School of the New Guardians.

Inside this remarkable establishment, a man with mismatched eyes and silver-streaked hair works alongside a young woman with laughter in her voice and starlight in her dreams. Together, they train the next generation of those who will protect humanity’s most precious gift — the capacity to imagine that tomorrow can be better than today.

The Clock of Reunited Souls ticks softly in its place of honor, its Soulmechanism pulsing with the combined essence of time and dream. Sometimes, late at night, those with the gift of perception can hear a woman’s voice speaking from within its gears, offering wisdom from beyond the veil of ordinary existence.

And Erwan Garnier, who was born between one day and the next, who saw golden threads when others saw only empty air, who loved and lost and found purpose again — Erwan Garnier smiles as he works, finally at peace with his endless journey through time.

For he has learned, after 135 years of life, the truth that Amélie knew from the beginning:

We are all dreamers, dreaming the world into being.
We are all timekeepers, measuring moments that matter.
We are all connected, past to present to future, in an endless web of hope and possibility.

And as long as there are those who remember this truth, who nurture it and protect it and pass it on to future generations, humanity will never truly lose its way.

This is the legacy of Erwan Garnier, the Timekeeper of Forgotten Dreams.
This is the gift he gives to all who enter his shop.
This is the story that never ends.

THE END

 

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