Now this story take place in a world similar to our own.

So similar that the only difference would be: the Sandmen.

Everyone knew of their existence but due to their magic, no human had ever seen one.

Happily for you, I shall explain how the Sandmen look like and how they go about their business.

They are small creatures, about the size of a child and that no matter what age they are. Their eyes are black and their ears are pointed, which gives them a begrudged image of a pixy or a fairy.

As for their hair, it ranges between dark blues, blacks and reds. As if the colors of the rainbow were being seen in the night. Some even like to boast that you can see the stars sparkling in their hair.

The sandmen, being creatures of the night and dreams, weren’t seen by humans. They travel in the shadows that come at night and during day they went and slept in the clouds.

You may ask how on earth they slept in the clouds.

What we may see as clouds are in fact the Sandmen’s homes. They could enter the fluffy white floating houses through a door only they knew of.

Everything inside was white and fluffy too. The beds were so soft you would understand that the only thing Sandmen did after putting their people to sleep was to sleep themselves till it was their time to go on their job again.

This is also how they collected their Sand and energy for the human dreams.

The clouds moved often as we all know, but the sandmen could always find their area of duty as quick as you could say “Good night~”

With them being a small, magical, quiet and unseen folk they didn’t communicate by talking. No talking was too loud for them, that was also partly the reason why they slept in the clouds, far away from the talk and chatter of humans.

They could speak but they chose not to. Instead they communicated through thoughts. If they’d look each other in the eye , they could ‘talk’ -more precicely think- into one another minds. This was a much softer form of communication and not loud at all, slightly melodic and just right for the ears of the Sandmen.

That is why no human had ever heard a Sandman either.

Now since there wasn’t one but many Sandmen, they had split up their jobs, well the world is pretty large for just one sandman to handle.
They are given an area for example Seoul and then an age group of which they had to take care of.

The less experience they have, the younger their people are. With them being almost immortal they would spent a tenth of their life working on different age groups: children ten years, teenagers, young adults, parents and so on and so forth.

Now we get to our main character, Leo.

Leo was a new Sandman, Sandmen weren’t really born, they just ‘woke up’ when it was time to fill in a slot as another Sandman got promoted.

The Sandman of the children of Seoul, Ravi, had just finished his 10 year duty and was moving on to look after the teenagers. Therefore it was Leo’s turn to take care of the children.

He was small, just like any Sandman. His jet black hair wasn’t uncommon amoungst the Sandman folk. Also his quiet nature didn’t seem out of place.
As Ravi took him around his first night, his eyes shone in silent excitement at the sight of human children.

They were slightly bigger than him, him still being a very young sandman.
And he got awfully distracted by what was in their rooms: toys, lego, barbies and a skip rope. Never had he seen anything like it, all he knew was the inside for the clouds which were simply white.
Get moving! Ravi insisted glaring at the youngling sternly, our only duty is to put them to sleep! You can look but don’t linger and don’t touch anything!

Nodding obediently, Leo followed the other around, being taught how to travel from shadow to shadow and how to put the perfect Sand in the children’s eyes. The Sand had to contain the correct dream and the correct length that the child should sleep.

Since Ravi had been doing this job for 10 years, he knew exactly how to tell what dream goes with which child. Leo however struggled a bit, and as Ravi told him to try.

He accidently gave a boy, with thousand soccer posters in his room, a dream about ponies and unicorns.

Ravi shook his head in disappointment; he couldn’t change it, once the Sand was in a child’s eyes no one could change it.
As they had finished their job they headed back to the clouds.

How was he? One of the head Sandmen of Seoul asked upon their arrival.

Distracted, nervous, Ravi said immediately, Leo deflated slightly, he had been so excited about getting his first job but it hadn’t been as successful as he had hoped.

But anyone would be like that on their first night. Leo glanced at Ravi, it was unusual for elder Sandmen to say something nice to the new ones.
Apparently the dark orange haired Sandman had found a spot in his heart for the small nervous younger Sandman.

The head Sandman, Minho, glanced down at Leo, his eyes studying the other intently.

Fine, you shall start tomorrow by yourself, rest for now and Ravi, you go do the teenagers!

Ravi nodded at the head Sandman turned at wandered off deeper into the cloud, as he turned to leave he felt a hand on his sleeve.

At this point I must tell you that Sandmen wear something similar to a simple t shirt and pants. But may they never hear me say that, they like to call it a _‘cloak of the night’, you can see stars and galaxies sparkling on them as if they were portals to the universe. To put it simple: black t shirt and pants with real stars and planets to be seen on them.

(it helped them blend into the night) They never felt cold so these clothes hardly changed.

Thank you, Leo carefully whispered into Ravi’s head, being a new Sandman this mind talking thing was also new to him, but he felt the urge it had to be said.

Ravi smiled softly and patted his head, take care of yourself, little Sandman.

Leo waved a bit as the older Sandman left the cloud and headed back down to Seoul. Then he turned and looked for a spot where he could sleep, it had been pretty exhausting: shadow jumping and giving Sand. He lay down on the only fluffy spot he could find near the back of the cloud.

As a younger Sandman, he didn’t have to privilege of the really comfortable really soft spots in the middle of the cloud.

It was something he was just going to have to get used to.

But silently, he was really looking forwards to starting his duty the next night.