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Reverie RestWell
Name: Reverie RestWell
Title / Role: Keeper of the Quiet Quilt
Species: Threadling
Core Thread: Imagination
Home: The Quiet Quilt, in the Drowsy Downs
Status: Active
Themes: Dreams, Daydreams, Rest, Renewal, Possibility
"You call it drifting off. I call it arriving."
-- Reverie RestWell
Reverie RestWell is the Keeper of the Quiet Quilt, and the most famous sleeper in Threadbare. His realm is the daydream in an idle afternoon, the heavy eyelids while reading in the evening, the long, wandering thought that goes nowhere useful as you stare out of a window in class. He is soft-spoken, unhurried, and has a disconcerting habit of drifting off mid-sentence and finishing it, perfectly, an hour later.
Reverie lives in the Drowsy Downs, at the edge of the Quiet Quilt: the vast patchwork of fields at the heart of the Downs, in which every patch holds a different dream. Where you choose to lie down will determine the world you wake up in.
He is almost never encountered standing. Wherever you might meet him, whether in the EverLasting Library or in the Drowsy Downs themselves, he is most often found lying down and fast asleep, curled up in front of a fire, or leaning, heavy head in hands, on a desk, mid-nap. In conversation, one might mistake Reverie for not listening, and you'd be right. But it is on the other side of sleep that Reverie works, listening and watching intently as your dreams unfold, and gathering the stories he stitches into the Downs.
He wears the colours of the dreamer, soft and fading blues with whites, and a patchwork shawl made from the dreams too small to stitch into the fields. His notebook floats idly beside him, written in handwriting that changes from page to page, because he only ever writes in it while half asleep. No page has ever been finished. Each trails off in a tail of ink.
"Lie down for a moment. No, I'm serious. The answer is so much easier to find when you're not looking for it."
-- Reverie RestWell
Threadlings call him RestWell, because no one in Threadbare rests as well as Reverie does, and no one is better at helping others to do the same. A night spent anywhere near him is said to be the best night's sleep of your life, and Threadlings still wish each other goodnight with his name: rest well. He takes it as the highest compliment there is, and usually falls asleep before he can say thank you.
His craft is the featherstitch, the stitch quilters use to join one patch to the next: a line of small, branching loops that look like a feather laid along the seam. Reverie's are the finest in the Downs, so light that a sleeper never feels one dream give way to another.
Every night, the Threadlings of Threadbare dream, and every morning, most of those dreams are lost. The KnitWitches say this is natural, and mostly harmless: a dream forgotten on waking returns to If, to be spun again another night. But some dreams are too good to lose, and some are not finished when the dreamer wakes.
Those dreams drift loose at the Waking Edge, the border of the Downs where dreams fade as their dreamers wake. Each dawn, Reverie walks the Waking Edge with a basket on his arm and gathers them up, then stitches each one into the Quilt along with all the others, so that it can go on being dreamed. He is not alone in that work. Throughout the night, the Noddlings, who live inside sleep itself, stitch small patches in the dreams they visit, and at dawn they bring them to Reverie to be sewn into the Quiet Quilt too.
The keepership of the Quilt is older than any Threadling can recall. It has always passed to whoever in the Downs sleeps most soundly and dreams most kindly, and no one in living memory has ever done either as well as Reverie. The Noddlings say that if you sleep at the Quilt's heart, you will dream a little of everyone who ever dreamed before you, and wake with an idea you could never have had alone. Reverie will neither confirm nor deny it, and usually falls asleep before he can be asked twice.
"Some of the best ideas in Threadbare were had with eyes closed. I should know. I was there for most of them."
-- Reverie RestWell
Since the Void came, Reverie's work has grown harder, and darker. Where the Void touches the Downs, a veil settles over the sleepers, and their dreams go still and pale beneath it. The Noddlings call it the Whispering Wane, as it fades and reshapes dreams to a chorus of whispers. It is said that these are the voices of those the Void took while they slept. Fewer dreams drift to the Waking Edge each dawn, and the patches Reverie stitches are thinner and paler than they were.
For the first time in his long keepership, Reverie has begun to leave the Downs and walk in the waking world, to push back the Void and help keep Threadlings safe in their beds. He is certain that as long as someone somewhere is still dreaming, the Downs can be saved. He is less certain how long that will be.
"Don't wake yet. There's no hurry. And besides, this dream hasn't finished telling you what it came to say."
-- Reverie RestWell
Reverie is the keeper of the Drowsy Downs, and of dreams, rest, and daydreaming. He is a gentle, surreal presence, and a natural guide into the stranger, more dreamlike corners of Threadbare. The Whispering Wane makes him a quiet witness to Null's first denial, Not.
For contributors, Reverie belongs in stories about dreams and dreamlike places, and in any quest where the answer comes not from effort, but from stopping, resting, and letting the mind wander. His dreams are always about rest and renewal, never about death (see the note for contributors on The Drowsy Downs).
- The Drowsy Downs - the region of sleep and dreams, and his home
- Noddlings - sleepy creatures who live inside sleep, and bring him their patches
- Hushrooms - watchful fungi that warn of danger
- If - the FirstSpun of Imagination, to whom forgotten dreams return
- Threadlings - the people of Threadbare
- The Void - the existential threat to Threadbare
- Null - the Dark Elder, and the denial Not