Klonoa woke to a pillow damp with his own tears, and the last words of a distant whisper in his ears.
For a second he had to gasp around the painful lump in his throat as his heart ached with loneliness, a mere echo of a sorrow deep enough to destroy a whole world if left without comfort.
It was an artefact of the dream, the vision, he had been drawn into. A world that was breaking around the edges, too many of its people forever immersing themselves in a single emotion until the intensity blotted out all else. It was a world that had forcefully turned a blind eye to sorrow, and in so doing had only caused that sorrow to build unto the breaking point. For the young Dream Traveler it had been a real world, if not his own.
The morning sun blinded him for a moment, but he knew without being able to see the room that he had truly woken from his journey. The waking mind always tries to dismiss dream in the rush of a new day, and even dream travelers are not immune. For all that Lunatea was real while he was there, it couldn't be real in the same way here and now. Already the memories of his dream felt a little blurry at the edges. Even Klonoa, who never wanted to forget, caught himself losing details of his own journeys sometimes.
For a second Klonoa closed his eyes tight, clutching the ring he never let go of in his sleep. He held those precious images and feelings to himself as firmly as he had held the King of Sorrow in his arms.
"I will never forget you," he whispered fiercely against his pillow.
Lolo... Popka... Leorina... he never wanted to forget any of them, but how could he ever forget Sorrow? After all, sorrow was waking from each dream, each world. Sorrow was leaving behind precious friends he could never hope to see again, could never even explain to those around him how real they were. That pain was a mark of how important they were to him, all of them.
Somewhere on the edge of his mind, just before he woke, Klonoa thought he might have heard that lonely voice one last time. The voice that had called out to him for help over and over, the voice of the fragile-seeming embodiment of sorrow. If he'd heard the words that had been spoken to him, he already couldn't remember them. Still, he had to answer.
"You won't ever be lost again," Klonoa promised. "I have you."