A Dance Of Light & Shadow
Sit down. Get comfortable. Actually, no, don’t. You may come back tomorrow and find the spot you’re in now has drifted up the road… or into the next town over. Who knows? I certainly don’t. And I’m the one writing it. The river did not stay where it was supposed to. No one seemed to mind. It curved where it pleased, slipping its banks by inches, by miles, depending on who was looking, and when.
Echorin had learned not to question it. Without knowing it, he sat at its edge anyway in between this world and elsewhere. Some days he slept there. Others, he read. Today, he was remembering. Not the river. Not the land. Something far more important, himself. Lines he could not explain found their way beneath his hand, threading across the page in careful arcs and quiet certainty. Places he had never been will soon become settled into shape. As if they had been waiting for him to remember them. Somewhere, far from the river something shifted to match. …and that’s before the River’s Song even starts. You see, he thought he was drawing places he’d never seen. And well, the world disagreed. This is his story
Journal Entry 264:
I woke up with a strange sensation this morning. A feeling of remembering something I didn’t know I forgot. It’s understanding the feeling but not why I’m feeling it. The ink on my maps responds to my confusion, not knowing in which direction to go. It seemed to dance to a melody my brain knew but refused to name. It didn’t want to dry, it trembled in fear like it’ll be trapped on the page. My quill is full but the ink does not want to come out. And once it does, it pooled at the center of the map. Right where the Wellspring meets. It must be the lack of sleep I’ve been getting. Sam has been stressed. I know it is my fault, I haven’t seen him like this since the day we met.
People like Sam are rare and often overlooked. That's because they do not take the time to get to know him. Yes, I was a stranger and he pulled me from the river without knowing what would happen when. That is who he is. He saw a person, not a bomb.
Not a fugitive. Not as a stranger. He saw someone that would have died had he not been there. People are dismissive of Sam but that’s because they do not know him. He took care of me and I became the only family that ever accepted him without conditions. Anastaria is his grounded center, had she been there, well I might not be here at all. She helps him control those impulsive behaviors. He and Anastaria have not been getting on so well. He worries incessantly over me and that drives her mad. So Sam has been gardening more. That means I’ve been gardening too. They do not argue in a typical way. Our home is heavier with more silence than it ought to have.
And I have not been myself lately. I can’t sleep and am up for days. I’m exhausted all the time. When I do manage to sleep it’s the same dream. Something or someeone has put threaded a weave of repitition on my dreams. For what reason, I do not know but it is always the same. Porch. Path. River. The Song repeats. It begins as it bends around me as if it knows it’s not supposed to be here and I was the only thing it could cling to. I do not know this song but it left me feeling uneasy. I must be tired and the kettle has stopped. Yes, I think some tea and a pipe will do me well, and I’ll get a good night’s rest.
Journal Entry 265:
The next morning, I find myself wandering in a haze of distraction. Last night, the dream came to me once more. It’s leaking out somehow. I heard it in the den the other day. And again by hearth. It’s changing the atmosphere in our house. Sam is gardening not to watch things grow or soothe a restless heart but because he cannot bear to watch me stare at blank parchment. Too afraid to try, coasts form that I’ve never seen, roads I’ve never traveled. Now I know old places can fade but ones that have never been cannot map themselves. A hand still needs to ink the page. Sam and Anastaria speak in hushed voices in the kitchen when they think I am asleep. I heard him say my name “He’s fading, Ana. The light in his eyes looks like it’s being pulled towards somewhere. I don’t know but it isn’t here. I cannot blame his fear. I am afraid as well.
The dreams are getting heavier. Last night, it came again, only louder. The world is starting to change its shape and color. I see the matter behind the weight of things. Weight is more than physical, tangible things. It gives everything its color. I don’t know what is different but I feel like part of my mind is stuck at the end of a dream. Those fleeting moments in between waking and dreaming. Only I’m lingering longer than I ought. In this dream it whispers the same haunting phrase. I hear the song wrap around me. The river speaks to me. Instinctively, I knew what it came for. It’s not even an ominous thing to say; it’s not odd for this particular river. It’s not that it was meant for me, it was that it felt familiar, like I’ve heard it before. “The river remembers what humanity forgot”
Journal Entry 266:
I’m still shaken from the dream a few weeks ago. It was absent from them for a time so I was hopeful it was gone. Until the day it snuck in through the window, I was in the study, attempting to talk the ink into staying firm on the parchment. It did not care what I wanted. The silence in the house created an emptiness that longed for sound to fill it. And in that silence, it drifted in. I felt it in little movements at first. It began in the desk legs, soft; easily missed if it had not been for that gnawing sound begging me to listen. I felt it as a humming, that reverberated up through the wood and into my elbows. I felt the pulse of the woods outside and the rhythm of the river seemed to move through me. The River sang her song, the very same song from my dreams.
It followed me out this time. In the waking hours I hear it clearly. The memory of the melody that sank its notes into me during the dream was here in the waking world. It's crossed a threshold never meant to be crossed. The ink lines on the parchment now obeying the song began to lift and bead, forming small, shimmering domes of pigment. Bubbles of ink and music notes swirl above me singing. The words appeared as a flash in my mind, “In the beginning, in the vast dark, an ache began to form.” They were gone before they could register in my mind. My throat could not form even one small note. The words like sandpaper in my throat. I cannot help myself, it is not a song I can sing. It is a direction I have to follow. The map is answering. The destination already knows my name. The hum flows into me through my feet, up my spine, settling in my chest. I try to move but I am frozen where I sit. In my mind’s eyes I can hear her voice, the voice of Rootmother calling me. It’s barely above a whisper when it says my name. The walls around me lean in, just slightly. Not enough to frighten me. Just enough to make me feel noticed. The ink and notes leak out from above, spilling out over the parchment on the desk where my map lay. I want to grab it to keep it from ruin but I cannot bring my limbs to move and I watch the ink engulf my map.
When it no longer mattered my body flung itself towards the desk. As I looked at the map, I felt both confusion and curiosity as I made out the words that brought up those same feelings of remembering a place I have never been, the ink spelling out clearly, Sister Aevraya, Glasswater Ford. Shardborn Territories.
Journal Entry 267:
For three nights I heard it only in sleep, faint and impossible by morning. Today it followed me into waking hours. It was there in the morning. Drifted in with the light, so it couldn’t be my imagination. Dreams crumble in the light. This did not. It seemed to stay as if waiting for me to wake and listen again. I was angry enough to resist it for half a day. Ashamed enough to go by nightfall. The road to Glasswater Ford took longer than we planned. I told Sam and Anastaria they did not have to join me but they insisted. He says what he always says when I try to stop him from following me, “Now Echo, if I didn’t come with you, who would keep you from getting lost in the clouds?”
He’s Solari and I’m the one getting lost in the clouds? Ana is quick to point this out.
”Sam may be Solari but he’s terrible at being one. He hates heights, bright lights and refuses to talk to the clouds. The only thing that proves he’s Solari is dislike for Tide-Runners.” Sam grimaced at the Tide-Runners name. That feud is so old the origin is probably older than the Tide-Runners themselves. “Those people are insufferable.” We can’t help but laugh at how worked up he gets. “Calm down Sam you’re glowing ” Anastaria rubbers his forearm until the light beneath his skin dimmed. We continued our journey and arrived by late afternoon the next day. Glasswater Ford is where the first trial of the Rootmother River, the pilgrimage known as the Walking of the Waters. I’ve never been here and yet, it feels so familiar to me.
Everyone told me Whispering Way showed the truth. That you would be faced with everything you’ve kept buried. I am ready for the shame, for the grief of losing what I care for in meaning alone. I was mostly ready, welcoming in fact, for some buried fear to rise and name itself. I was not afraid. It will hurt, they warned. Fine. Let it. Let it drag something up from the bottom and hold it in front of me until I choke. At least that would be something. At least that would mean there was still a reason I’ve stayed like this so long. That there’s some hidden crack I couldn’t reach, some untouched chamber I’ve forgotten. Or some wound with enough depth and weakened stitches that could excuse the fact that I have done nothing. I know the answer before the question so I dismiss it. The river will show me now. The stones broke the surface under the water, and I stepped onto them before I could talk myself out of it. Beneath it, blue‑green bioluminescent flowers reach upward like memory trying to surface. Rose‑pink pillars rise around me like still reeds. The cliff above leans in, listening. I don’t want to look. Surprised by the fear my chest tightens. Restricted like a too‑heavy sweater in High Sun was suddenly my skin. I swallow hard and the fear scrapes on the way down. My legs move without my permission. “I’m not ready,” I whisper. A voice I didnt recognize, answers: You are ready. I kneel. My reflection stares back, too absent, almost hollowing a stranger’s eyes in familiar bones. Then a shift in the water and the face of pity looks back at me. I know this water does not reflect the truth. It mirrors memory. So does this mean I feel sorry for myself?