The Edges of Forgetting
The forest shifted as she walked —
not changing shape, but changing tone.
What had been companionable silence now carried an undertone she struggled to name.
A faint brittleness.
A tension in the roots.
As if the land itself was holding a worry behind its teeth.
The Deep Listener slowed her pace.
The memory she had just lost still pulsed softly in her chest, like a bruise touched too soon. She placed a palm against the nearest cedar, grounding herself in the tree’s steady presence.
“How long,” she whispered, “has the forgetting been creeping in beneath our feet?”
The tree answered not in words, but in sensation —
a downward tug, a loosening, a quiet unthreading.
She swallowed.
Yes.
That is what she had felt for months — perhaps even years —
though she hadn’t wanted to name it.
A thinning.
Not of magic.
Magic rarely dies.
But of memory.
Of connection.
Of the small, sacred agreements that once held the world in balance.
Children no longer asking for stories before sleep.
Elders no longer tending the communal fires.
Villagers passing each other with numbness rather than curiosity.
Songs sung less often, rituals forgotten, gratitude left unspoken.
Sacred places untended, their offerings missing, their stones cold.
The weave didn’t break from malice.
It loosened from neglect.
As she resumed walking, she traced her fingers along the bark of every tree she passed, whispering a greeting. A remembering. A promise.
She hoped they heard her.
But beneath her hope lived another thought — one she had tried to avoid:
What if the forgetting was not simply something happening to the world…
but something growing within its people?
A hollowing out.
A loss of meaning.
A slow abandonment of soul.
She exhaled sharply.
The forest seemed to shiver in reply.
Ahead, the path widened. The trees grew taller and more spare, their trunks pale as moonlight. The air tasted different here — crisp, tinged with a subtle sweetness she hadn’t tasted in seasons.
A boundary.
No map marked it.
No signpost pointed it out.
But she knew this place.
Every Keeper did.
It was the outer ring of the Dawnlands — the territory where the Awakener’s presence was strongest, where the first colors of morning always lingered, even on the darkest days.
The Deep Listener paused, closing her eyes.
At first, she heard nothing.
Just wind, just leaves, just the quiet ache of the world she loved.
But beneath that, faint as a tremble of light…
She sensed her.
Not a sight.
Not a sound.
But a shimmer.
Like the gather of breath before someone speaks truth.
Like the hush before dawn spills gold across the horizon.
The Awakener was near.
Stirring.
Listening back.
A warmth blossomed in the Deep Listener’s sternum —
not memory this time,
but recognition.
The unraveling was no longer a whisper in the distance.
It was at their doorstep.
And she would not face it alone.
A soft glimmer broke through the trees — a faint, pearlescent glow that didn’t belong to sunlight or firelight or anything the ordinary world could explain.
The Deep Listener smiled, weary and hopeful all at once.
“She’s waking,” she murmured.
She stepped toward the light—
