The River slept, and Vale began to dream.
No one noticed at first. The night seemed ordinary — mist clinging low, lanterns flickering, doors half-closed against the chill. But just before dawn, light began to seep from the cracks in the cobblestones, as if something underneath had remembered color.
When morning came, the streets were painted.
Not with ink, not with chalk, but with dreams — entire scenes brushed onto brick and plaster. The bakery's wall showed loaves rising without fire. The chapel's door glowed with rivers of gold that turned to blue when touched. And across the bridge, a mural of faces shimmered in motion — the townspeople themselves, smiling, laughing, alive in hue and memory.
The River's canvas had spilled upward.
Leona woke to the smell of linseed oil and rain. Her cottage walls were breathing again — faint ripples of color moving beneath the paint, soft as heartbeats. She rose and stepped outside.
The world had turned into a gallery.
Children stood in clusters, their fingers stained with shades they didn't remember touching. Women pressed palms to murals that changed color with their mood. Men stared at fences painted with fragments of their pasts — weddings, work, the faces of those who'd left but had never quite gone.
The River wasn't asleep. It was dreaming through them.
Nia found her near the square, her shawl already spattered with blues and golds. "It's everywhere," she said breathlessly. "Every wall. Every street. Even the trees — look!"
Leona followed her gaze. The bark of the old sycamore was alive with painted birds that fluttered when the wind touched them. "The River's painting the town," she murmured.
"No," said Nia softly. "It's teaching us how."
At the chapel, Pastor Ellison was on his knees, his collar undone, weeping quietly. The front doors had been repainted in pure white — but beneath the light, faint script shimmered, changing with every blink.
Jonas crouched beside him, camera poised but shaking. "It's not staying still," he said. "Every photograph comes out different."
Leona ran her hand over the door. The words rearranged themselves under her palm.
The painter does not rest. The dream continues even when the brush sleeps.
"Is this the River?" Nia whispered.
Leona shook her head. "This is Vale. The River dreamed, and the town remembered it could, too."
By noon, everyone was painting without realizing they were painting. Footsteps left trails of light that faded after minutes. Laughter hung in the air as ribbons of color. Even the bells in the tower left halos where sound touched sky. The town was alive, but it wasn't chaos — it was choreography.
Leona stood at the fountain, watching as the water, now clear, reflected not the sky but the murals themselves — each reflection slightly different, as if the River were remixing every story into new art. She smiled. "The River's remixing mercy."
Caleb's voice came from behind her. "Or mercy's remixing us."
He stood there, his hands streaked with white dust and gold pigment. "I was repainting the clinic sign," he said, "and the brush started moving before I did. It finished the word 'Healing' before I touched the wood."
"That's because healing never waits," Leona said. "It just needs a willing hand."
That evening, Vale gathered again by the bridge, as they always had — not to watch miracles this time, but to participate in them. Lanterns floated down the River, each carrying a brush dipped in color. The brushes never sank; they drifted, leaving streaks of moving light behind them.
Leona lifted one and let it hover above her palm. The bristles glowed faintly blue, pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
"Maybe this is how the River dreams when it's awake," she said.
Jonas nodded. "Or maybe this is how we wake when the River dreams."
The crowd fell quiet as the murals on the opposite bank began to shimmer, as if waiting. Then, slowly, they began to change — not randomly, but intentionally, forming a single massive painting that spanned from the bridge's edge to the town square.
At the center was Leona.
Not as she was — but as memory saw her: holding a lamp in one hand, the other outstretched toward the River, light spilling from her palm like forgiveness.
Beside her stood her mother, Miriam, the woman in white, Caleb, Nia, Jonas — every name the River had written back into grace.
Above them, written in flowing silver script, seven words formed and held:
We remember, therefore we remain.
But then the painting began to fade.
The colors dulled, edges softening. People gasped, reaching out, trying to hold the hue with their hands. Leona didn't move. She understood.
"It's not vanishing," she said. "It's finishing."
As the last light dissolved into the air, only a faint outline remained — enough to prove it had once existed, but not enough to cage it.
"Dreams don't need witnesses," Leona said. "They need heirs."
Nia smiled, wiping her cheek. "Then Vale's the heir."
Night settled slowly, the kind that hummed instead of howled. Leona returned to the cottage, weary but luminous. The portrait of her mother no longer glowed — it rested. The lamp burned low, and in its faint circle of light, a new mural shimmered across the far wall: Vale itself, asleep, peaceful, painted in the River's own hand.
She approached it and saw something impossible — the mural was still moving, slow as breath. In one of the tiny windows, a figure at a desk bent over a book. She recognized herself.
"I dreamed this," she whispered.
No, said a voice she didn't hear but knew. You painted it.
She closed the ledger. The walls sighed — a sound of contentment, of completion.
Through the window, she saw Vale flickering faintly with color again, the town dreaming itself into another dawn.
By morning, the murals were gone.
The streets were plain stone again, the houses quiet. Yet the people woke lighter, smiling without knowing why. Children said their dreams smelled like paint and rain. And when they spoke of what they remembered, each description was different — as if the River had personalized every miracle.
Leona walked through the square and felt no loss, only fullness.
Every brushstroke that had vanished was still moving somewhere beneath the surface, alive in the town's pulse.
Caleb met her by the fountain. "It's over, isn't it?"
She looked up at the morning light on the steeple and shook her head. "No. The River just handed us the brush."
That evening, as Vale settled into ordinary peace again, a faint shimmer ran down the center of the River — a thin silver line, drawn from horizon to horizon.
It wasn't a reflection. It was a reminder.
Leona smiled, lifting her lamp one last time.
"Rest now, old friend," she said softly. "We'll keep painting."
The River answered not with sound, but with color — a single droplet of blue rising from the current, hanging in the air, then falling gently into the lamp's flame. The light turned azure and stayed that way.
And for the first time in generations, Vale slept without fear of forgetting.