Celephaïs

Kuranes, a dreamer in waking life no longer young or rich, finds in sleep the city of Celephaïs in the Valley of Ooth-Nargai, a place of his boyhood dreams where time does not pass and he is a king. He gives more and more of himself to finding it again, chasing the city through the lands of dream as his waking life thins to nothing.

In the end the two trade places. He loses the grey world entirely and gains Celephaïs forever, riding into his shining city as, in the other world, a tramp's body is washed against the cliffs below his old home. One of the Dreamlands tales, it is wistful rather than frightening, the horror folded inside a wish granted too completely. The Archive gives it a dreamer's lilt, a swing for the king who never came back.