Maek greeted this day with inner silence. The ancient gold still gleamed silently on the portal's crown while the earth burned in the fire of the sunset. As if he had seen it only yesterday. As if all those long years had never happened.
Sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss of memories, Maek saw how, as a child, the elders told stories about people who were born in the wrong place. People who lived as they were told, did what was expected, and yet felt like strangers in their own homeland. Legend had it that the silent cries of their soul summoned the restless spirit of Dragon Mirt, and after encountering it, those people disappeared forever. The tree branches in the Notgrove were hung with soul stones, so that those who were lost in silence could find their way back to their homeland.
He was brought back to earth by a rumbling, heavy animal cry that had shaken the sky somewhere in the distance, the same one that had terrified him many moons ago. And for a moment, he thought he saw a familiar silhouette in the clouds. Maek thought he would never shake off that horror of ringing emptiness: when the Dragon left him alone on a desolate cliff, when he wandered through foreign lands searching for a way home, his feet bleeding, when old Muna treated him for dust fever, when he worked for food in the Urtal mines, and even when the tribe of Pearl Bark Keepers took him in and offered him a new home.
Now he sits before the door to his former world, staring into that emptiness, which has transformed into silence, into peace.
The last rays of the sun brushed his shoulder, as if encouraging him before disappearing beyond the horizon, plunging the space into darkness.
***
The wind rushed through the branches of the Notgrove, swaying the whimsical stones hanging on twisted threads. They clinked against each other as if playing a secret melody, while a torn thread on one of the branches swayed like a metronome, and the cold grass, wet with dew, kept the silence of a stone with the letter M scratched into it.
Sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss of memories, Maek saw how, as a child, the elders told stories about people who were born in the wrong place. People who lived as they were told, did what was expected, and yet felt like strangers in their own homeland. Legend had it that the silent cries of their soul summoned the restless spirit of Dragon Mirt, and after encountering it, those people disappeared forever. The tree branches in the Notgrove were hung with soul stones, so that those who were lost in silence could find their way back to their homeland.
He was brought back to earth by a rumbling, heavy animal cry that had shaken the sky somewhere in the distance, the same one that had terrified him many moons ago. And for a moment, he thought he saw a familiar silhouette in the clouds. Maek thought he would never shake off that horror of ringing emptiness: when the Dragon left him alone on a desolate cliff, when he wandered through foreign lands searching for a way home, his feet bleeding, when old Muna treated him for dust fever, when he worked for food in the Urtal mines, and even when the tribe of Pearl Bark Keepers took him in and offered him a new home.
Now he sits before the door to his former world, staring into that emptiness, which has transformed into silence, into peace.
The last rays of the sun brushed his shoulder, as if encouraging him before disappearing beyond the horizon, plunging the space into darkness.
***
The wind rushed through the branches of the Notgrove, swaying the whimsical stones hanging on twisted threads. They clinked against each other as if playing a secret melody, while a torn thread on one of the branches swayed like a metronome, and the cold grass, wet with dew, kept the silence of a stone with the letter M scratched into it.
Tilda Publishing
Dragon Mirt
Drop a Coin in the Well
Your offering keeps the stories flowing
