Dryad
We are the dryads, agents of softening, drinking sunlight, and dispersing the soil. Perhaps we too are enforcing some kind of strangeness upon the bedrock, but we were doing it long before you were.
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Sleep, friends — stop worrying and sleep.
I’m here to be your refuge, me and my blade and my body.
I am here to shelter you — a fortress made of shadow and stone.
Now that the last of us eavesdroppers are gone, the little creek can speak freely, addressing nobody, confiding in the empty air.
We left the spire vacant for generations. Nobody entered… nobody even went close enough to see where it met the earth.
But last night, just by chance, we passed close enough to see it above the trees — and there were lights in the windows.
Do you see my beacon? Do you see the tower, lit and smoking like tallow? Now the world will know…
They will know the tower’s authority is not absolute.
I have something you will never find in your encrypted archive, in your registry, in your solid state cold storage.
When I was lost in the light, I made my own dark, and it walked with me — my ageless shadow, my loyal replica. And in this mirror, another — a replica of the world.
She didn’t need to study the spell in a grimoire, or learn it from a back-alley conjurer… she had it in herself already, and she found it easily enough.
Hey, you, doing that thing you are doing! Do you remember a moment ago, when you were doing a different thing? Pausing briefly for a breath, perhaps, or walking through an already-open door?
“Look at me! Clay in the shape of stillness, reverence formed from plaster by God’s hands.“