Out the way, newbie! Leo was sitting on the window sill of a child’s bedroom as two larger Sandmen appeared.

It was a week into his job and still he was still the newbie. The child at whom’s room he was sitting was still awake, that is why he had been forced to stay outside, out of sight and wait for two elders to come and deal with it.

He had been sitting there for a while, listening to the pearls of laughter of the young human, it made him smile, something he seldom did, thanks to the treatment he got from the elder Sandmen.

Argh, so much energy and so loud. One of the elder Sandmen wrinkled his nose in disgust as the child in the room broke out into more laughter.
Leo frowned, what was wrong with the sound of laughter? It wasn’t like the Sandmen did it often…

It can’t be that bad to laugh.

Don’t pull that face, the girl Sandman, who had also come along, told the younger one sternly. Humans are loud and full of energy.

.

With that the two of them entered the room and shortly after Leo heard the sound of the child falling into bed. On these rare occasions where the child was still awake, after knocking them out with Sand the Sandmen were allowed to carry them to their beds.
However only experienced Sandmen were allowed to do this. Not the new ones.

Leo pouted, he had never touched a human Child. How did they feel like? They looked soft.

He respectfully bowed as the two elder Sandmen left and he could carry on his job.

Though he was new he had been doing a good job: all the kids got their dreams, slept for the correct amount of time.
Yet everytime he returned to the clouds, exhausted from the job, Seoul was a large city, he was treated like dirt.

Chased away from good sleeping spots, scolded for no apparent reason.
Also it appeared the elder Sandmen liked to follow him around, ready to pounce if he did something wrong.

He had once stepped out of the shadows and immediately an elder Sandman, who ‘just happened’ to be there, thought yelled at him and immediately told Minho about the careless newbie.

Minho appeared to take the scolding of Leo really seriously, he would lecture the younger one for hours. Leo thought he was just going this because he hated him, but once a new Sandman, who was in charge of the children of Jeju Islands entered the same cloud as Leo and also got yelled at by the head Sandman and treated horribly by the other Sandman.
They had spent the night side by side, the other Sandman was called Zelo, he was even younger then Leo but only smiled sadly at the treatment of the other Sandmen.

It will get better, they all say it does, he had beamed at Leo as they lay there.

After that night Leo hadn’t seen him again, it had been comforting to know that it wasn’t something personal towards him.

But that didn’t make him feel better.

He saw the other Sandmen talking and laughing together, but he as the younger one wasn’t allowed to do that, it was awful.

This caused him to never speak unless the head Sandman forced an answer out of him.

He took to isolating himself in the cloud.
During his job he would just get on with it.
Slowly but surely, he started to numb down to the scolding and the bullying of the elders.

His only ray of light were the children, but with the other Sandmen always watching him, he couldn’t even enjoy giving them their dreams properly.

Soon, in his misery, he started giving children less and less special dreams.
They turned grey and monotone, his Sand had turned dull and not as powerful due to his sorrow and sadness.

He tried to give happy dreams but failed, with all the harsch treatment he was receiving it had become impossible to feel happy.

He became distracted.

Waking up too late for his shift, only made the other Sandmen bully him more.

Messing up with the dreams: more scolding.

Leo was miserable and lonely.
He hadn’t seen Ravi for a while.

One fateful night, Leo had landed on earth and melted into the shadows as always when he heard some scurrying.

Maybe it was just a rat.

“Saaaand…” a hiss, like someone playing on a broken violin, was to be heard coming from behind some rubbish bins.

Before Leo could wonder what it was, something dark jumped from the shadows and launched itself at him.

The foul stench of rotting Sand let him know:

Nightmare!
The dark Sandman had his arms around him, his mouth filled with pointy teeth, perfect for eating Sand, snapped near Leo’s face.

In a desperate struggle to get away from the creature, Leo jumped up in the air attempting to fly away, Nightmares had lost their abitily to fly so he had thought that maybe it’d fall.

But it was holding on to tight.
Its eyes shone red and it smiled even wider, the Core, where the Sand was, was in the Sandmen’s chest. As it crawled its way up Leo to its goal, Leo felt his blood run cold.

Certain death would come for him, should the Nightmare take a bite from his Core.
He tried even harder to shake the Nightmare off, sadly because he was so small and the Nightmare seemed to be older, it was bigger then him and weighed more.

As his energy ran low and he couldn’t keep them in the air, they slowly fell back to earth. They had managed to reach a certain height, so as they started to fall it was quiet a fall.

The Nightmare panicked, since it was at the bottom it would mean that it was going to be the first thing that smacked into the ground.
“Fly! Fly, stupid Sandman!” it rasped out, no energy meant no thought talk, so hiss talking was the communication form of Sandmen.

Leo was however so out of energy, he closed his eyes in defeat and fell.

Oh well; it wasn’t like the other Sandmen would miss him.

Don’t you dare!! Leo, run!

There was a flash of Sand and Ravi shot past him, grabbing the Nightmare off Leo and tackling it to the ground.
With the extra weight off him Leo could easily levitate himself again. He saw the older Sandman wrestle with the Nightmare.
Now he saw exactly what had been hanging on to him.

The Nightmare looked like a Sandman just he was black, night black, his skin was like the night sky black, stars faintly glowing. Usually the sight of stars was reassuring to Sandmen, but with those menacing red eyes and those pointy teeth, it was literally the stuff of nightmares.

Don’t stand there run! Ravi urged the other.

With that Leo turned and flew away. He flew and flew until the sound of the scuffle was far behind him.

He was exhausted and scared.

Without a second thought he dived into a bedroom window, planning on hiding there in the shadows till his little heart had calmed down.

As he settled on the shelf of the bedroom, he collapsed into a little heap of shaking and shivering. He had only heard stories of Nightmares after meeting the real thing, he wished he had only known them from the stories.

However as he saw a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye, he realized the Nightmare wasn’t the least of his worries right now.

A small, for us maybe, but a large for Leo, hand reached up and grabbed the little Sandman around his waist and pulled him off the shelf.

Was this a child? Why wasn’t it asleep! Oh wait! That was his job! Sand, where is his Sand!

Leo panicked completely, through the fright with the Nightmare and now this his Sand had turned unusable and as he tried to produce some he heard a voice.
“Are you okay?”