Where Dawn Breathes

The pearlescent light pulsed softly between the trees —
not bright enough to dazzle,
but steady enough to beckon.

The Deep Listener stepped forward,
heart lifting in a slow, ancient cadence she hadn’t felt in years.

As she walked, the forest changed again.
Gently. Subtly.

The bark of the trees lightened,
their branches arching overhead like the ribs of a great cathedral.
Ferns unfurled in her wake,
and the air grew warm with the faintest scent of citrus and something floral she couldn’t name —
the scent of beginnings.

She smiled despite herself.
This was the Awakener’s realm, without question.

As she entered the clearing, the ground beneath her feet softened, turning from forest earth to a bed of tender moss, green as the first breath of spring. Dew shimmered like tiny stars. The light that had seemed distant now radiated in gentle waves from a small rise in the land ahead.

She knew that rise.

A hill shaped like a cupped hand —
open, offering, listening to the sky.

The Awakener’s place of dwelling was not a cottage nor a hut,
but a woven sanctuary built into the earth itself.

Willow branches formed its walls,
their long tendrils braided with ribbons of sunlight that never fully faded,
even in deep winter.

And there —
standing at the entrance where morning gathered,
hair loose and lit like gold caught in wind —

was the Awakener.

She was barefoot, of course.
Barefoot and bright-eyed,
as though she had been watching the horizon all night
for something she couldn’t name.

When the Deep Listener stepped fully into the clearing,
the Awakener’s head snapped toward her —
not startled, but called,
as if she’d been waiting for this exact moment
without knowing why.

A smile broke across her face,
soft and blooming.

“Ah,” she breathed,
hand rising to her chest.
“So it was you I felt.”

“And you I,” the Deep Listener replied.

Their steps met in the center of the clearing,
and for a moment — just a heartbeat —
they held each other’s gaze in a silence
that was anything but empty.

It was recognition.
Relief.
Reunion.

The Awakener reached out, brushing her fingertips lightly along the Deep Listener’s forearm.

“You felt the tremor too,” she whispered.

The Deep Listener nodded.
“I felt it… and then I lost a memory so dear to me it left my chest aching.”
Her voice wavered. “Like a story dissolving in my hands.”

A shadow crossed the Awakener’s bright gaze.
“I’ve been dreaming of unraveling,” she said softly.
“Threads slipping loose, one by one. Colors fading. Songs dwindling to ember.”

The Deep Listener’s breath caught.
“Yes,” she murmured.
“That is the forgetting.”

The Awakener shivered, though the air was warm.
“I feared it was only my own mind,” she confessed.
“I feared I was thinning.”

“No,” the Deep Listener said, taking her hand.
“This is the world calling to us.
The weave is loosening.”

“And the others?”
The Awakener’s voice was a tremor of hope and dread mingled.

“They will feel it soon,” the Deep Listener whispered.
“I sensed glimmers of them as I walked.”

The Awakener closed her eyes.
When she opened them, her irises shimmered with something fierce and tender.

“Then we must gather,” she said.
“Before the stories fade beyond reach.”

A breeze swept through the clearing —
warm, fragrant, alive —
as if the world itself exhaled at their joining.

The Awakener lifted her face to the sky.
“Dawn will break sooner than we expect,” she murmured.
“And we must be ready.”

The Deep Listener squeezed her hand.
“I walked here with a sign,” she said.
“A leaf crumbling before its time.”

“And I woke,” the Awakener replied,
“to a light that did not belong to the sun.”

Their eyes met again —
and between them, something ancient stirred
like a great wheel shifting back into motion.

A beginning.
A remembering.
A call answered.

And just as the Awakener turned toward her sanctuary,
just as the Deep Listener stepped to follow —

the air rippled.

A sound like a distant, mournful hum
rose from the earth itself.

Both women froze.

The Awakener’s voice fell to a whisper.

“…did you hear that?”

The Deep Listener’s heart clenched.

“I did,” she said.
“It’s starting.”