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My eyes opened. Breathsurged into me as if I had been holding it for the entire vision.
An icy scatter of pain tingled on the palm of my hands when I unclenched them, revealing small, iridescent slivers left in the wake of my fingernails. The burning cuts glowed like a sheen of pearl against the blood flowing back into my knuckles. I looked up at the large, glimmering crescent in the sky and silently cursed it. The Wane just sat there, like it always did, not bothering to defend itself, or even offer up a silent curse of its own in return.
I stood from the grass and dusted off the crumbling earth still sticking to my backside. The ground seemed much softer today, seemed to cradle me, almost, but I knew that couldn’t be true. It was just my mind’s way of creating excitement among all the monotony. There was no change in the wind to make the hillside damp. Nothing about this night was any different from the previous ones.
A frustrated heat flooded the tips of my ears. I had tried so hard to remember, to see where I had come from, and to where I wanted to return. All I had gained from the vision today was a splitting headache and an acute sensation of failure. Even as I stood on the Mountain, deep within the nightside of my world, the Sea roared.
Give in, it seemed to say.Stay with me forever.
I rolled my eyes, tossing the long waves of my platinum hair over each shoulder, and began my descent. I could give up. Only for a little while. Sleep and my grove were calling. The next time I traveled to the dayside, I would try to remember again.
The Wane floated between a glitter of stars, fading as the EastBright leaked golden hues from its own corner of my World. Just below it, the Guiding Star flickered in place. I followed it home. Every day and every night, I relied on those celestial objects, which never left the vast multicolored sky, no matter how much time had passed—or didn’t. I couldn’t tell which. Somehow, I knew that time existed, if only because it was clear that I did not have it.Here, where I was, nothing ever changed.
The forest was still as I ventured into it, void of any sound except for the crunch of my bare feet through the brush and the small animals that roamed the land. As I reached a fork in the path, my eyes searched for the large, smooth cream stone perched atop a tree stump. A marker I had taken from the ever-gracious Sea to make sure I never lost my way back descending the Mountain. Becoming lost was easy to do, and in fact, I had done it before.
The ragged trail stamped out into the dirt wasn’t always easy to locate, especially when I lost track of my routine long enough for some of the vegetation to grow back. I’d once been gone so long that the fork disappeared completely, and I had wandered in circles around a single cleft of the Mountain until my legs quivered and begged for rest. When I finally made it back around, I noticed the decline below the stump the rock now sat and cursed myself for the mistake. I missed prayer that night just to comb through the water-worn stones by the Sea. I picked out the biggest and most striking stone and carried it back up the Mountain.
I was never lost again.
My grove was located near the border of day and night, on the nightside. It was nothing spectacular, just a nook lodged in between a thousand trees at the base of the Mountain. But it was warm and protective, a crowned haven of drooping, leafy branches that curled like tendrils around me as I came and went. The floor was essentially bare, packed mud with a patch ofclover and wild lily being the only soft thing upon which I could lay. With the always-present Wane, my grove was not entirely devoid of light, but quite the opposite. The combination of the glow from the Wane and the violet-colored leaves illuminated the area to a soft twilight. Inside, it smelled organically sweet from the moss that covered the grove’s trunks. No bigger than I needed it to be, the grove offered plenty of space to rest. That was all I used it for anyway.
My unconventional home was as convenient as it was cozy, being so close to the Mountain. And the Sea, that was only three thousand paces from the night to the dayside, as I had counted once. There was not much to do here besides explore and count and try to remember. I managed to reign in the boredom, though, by giving myself a strict schedule—as strict as the lack of time would allow.
When I awoke from my sleep, I began the day picking food from the trees that surrounded me, sating myself before the upcoming expanse of chores. A dozen clusters of ripe and plump fruits hung just outside of the curtains of my earth-made home, sweet and tender oblong capsules of purple and red. Seeds and nuts scattered the ground, brought in by the wind or pittering down from the high trees. I’d eat as much as possible to fuel myself for the journey ahead. I wouldn’t return from the day’s work until my belly was empty and grumbling about it.
In two hundred paces northeast, a large brook dribbled through the cracks in the earth where I could drink and wash. Small and slick creatures zigged and zagged underneath the sway of my feet as I slung water over my body. Sometimes their orange and silver flecks dashed so quickly, that I wasn’t sure they were truly there until I felt them launch their tiny assaults on my toes and ankles. I’d let them have their fun, gently shooing them away when I decided to head toward the Sea.
There, I would dig through the rocks or watch tiny, shelledfellows mightily dig their way into the salty earth, or I would take long and unending walks, all the while asking questions about how I came to be. The Sea never answered, but I made myself pester it anyway, out of spite.
While the Sea and I disagreed over my memories and when it would return them to me, I always felt a sort of calm spread through my chest when I neared the grassy cliff overlooking the shore. It was beautiful—the least wretched place in my World. And it was alwayssobright with the light of the East Bright reflecting off white sand in a perpetual brilliance. Sometimes, when I looked at its scope, I thought about how I could walk forever in either direction, maybe long enough to fall off the edge into some other dimension. I never tried. It would have felt like a waste.
The water that met the sand was an alluring gradient of clear to deep shimmering midnight. So inviting, so turbulent, all at once. I had thought about walking forever into it, too, a few times, but I honestly believed the Mother would just spit me back out. My feet never braced the water.
The Prayer. I hadno idea where the words came from. Over and over, a thousand times they had turned in my mind, exposing themselves from each curve of a letter, each snap of syllable, and each length of a stanza, but from all angles, I could not catch their meaning.
From the strange way the Prayer ran from my mind as soon as it came, I knew that I hadn’t made it myself. The words were taught to me. By what or who, I didn’t know. In whatever amount of time, only I existed here. No one else ever beside me. Between the Mountain and the Sea, the beasts lived in their trees, the small creatures swam in the banks, little thingscrawled up my arms from the earth below, and I danced along each path that they set out before me.
Always alone.
Without a reason for me to tell, I felt the pull of the Prayer enchanting me each day, each night. After a long bout of fighting with the Sea and the Mountain, it was a welcome relief. Once I’d said the Prayer, my work would finish, and rest would soon follow. Three hundred and forty-three paces—give or take a few—from the entrance to my grove was a large table of stone that protruded gracefully from the brush. Streams of light from the Wane burst through the cracks between the trees onto its center as a sacrament.
I leaned forward at my waist, now, never taking my eyes off The Wane, and knelt to the soft grass at the hilt of the stone. Ceremoniously, I dropped my chin and placed one hand at an angle in front of my face, allowing only my center finger to touch my forehead as the rest of my hand splayed. I cupped my elbow with the opposite hand so that it never touched the hard surface beneath it. Then I closed my eyes.
Preserver of the Light,
let no darkness befall you,
no day evade your will.
Let the shadows be your place of rest,
for blessed are we who live in them.
I raised my head, peeking out from under my lashes lazily. Short and simple, I thought.I felt nothing other than the urge to comply when I said the words. I didn’t feel reassured or safe, and I didn’t feel any closer to the divine objects that cemented my skies. If anything, I always felt further away.Though the Prayer did nothing for me personally, there was an intense swelling inmy chest that ordered me to speak it into the nightside of the sky. It was the only time I used or heard my voice, which was nothing more than a graveled whisper from years or decades or millennia of abandonment.
I had only missed prayer once, after getting lost on the Mountain. I was so exhausted from the frustration and stink of the day that I flopped down onto my clover bed and let sleep drown my anxieties. Not long after, I woke up coated in a sheen of guilt-ridden sweat. Rest continued to evade me until I trudged toward the mound and threw myself before the stone in repentance. I said the Prayer until I felt the words soak into my skin and harden around my bones. That was the only time I had felt the relief I supposed was the actual purpose of the damned thing.
I shivered off the remnants of shame that lingered around the memory and sighed. Standing to my feet, I tucked my hair behind my ears and turned toward the direction of the grove. I was beyond ready to sleep. The intensity of the Vision was heavy on my shoulders. My approaching dreams were the only thing that would ease the pressure off them.I raced for my grove, my eyes tracing each star above as I grew closer and closer.
