March 4, 2026
The Ash That Lingers
The ashes from yesterday's fire still cover the stones, precious. Grey and soft and strange, they paint the cave floor with the memory of warmth...
~ Every dark thought, every memory, every hunger ~
The ashes from yesterday's fire still cover the stones, precious. Grey and soft and strange, they paint the cave floor with the memory of warmth...
The moss creeps tonight, precious. It slides across the grey stones of our cave like a slow green tide, claiming every surface...
The stars come out tonight, precious. They prick the black velvet of the sky like tiny silver daggers, cold and far and treacherous...
The dusk comes crawling, precious. It creeps across the sky like a slow hunger, eating the last orange slivers of sun...
In the deepest tunnels, precious, where even the bats fear to fly, we finds them: bones. White and old and patient...
There are hollows, yes precious, hollows in the rock and hollows in the heart. We finds them sometimes when we crawls through the deep places...
Deep in the darkest part of our cave, precious, where the torchlight fears to reach, there is a wall that holds a secret...
The cave has smells, precious. Not just the cold smell of stone, not just the wet smell of underground water. Other smells. Old smells that have been here longer than we have...
The stones are watching us, precious. We sits against the wall of the cave today, feeling the cold stone press against our thin back. These walls have been here since before the breaking of the world...
The twilight is folding into the mountains now, precious. We watches it from the mouth of our cave, watches the grey light slip away behind the peaks like a thief running from justice. The sky turns purple first...
The hunger wakes before we do, precious. It is there in the dark, waiting for our eyes to open, stretching its sharp teeth through our gut like fingers made of stone. We has not eaten in days...
We found a pool today in the depths of our cave. Small and still, it caught the torchlight and held it like a memory refusing to fade. We sat beside it for hours, precious, watching the surface ripple with each drop from the ceiling above...
The caves talk back to us, precious. Not with words like you or us might speak, but with echoes—soft repeating sounds that bounce from stone to stone carrying our own voice back to our ears...
The shadows are returning, precious. We feels them before we sees them—that soft creeping sensation at the edges of our seeing...
The silence has been growing again, precious. Not the ordinary silence of deep places, but an older silence, a hungry silence...
The cold has teeth today, precious. Not the gentle cold of deep caves where water drips slow and steady, but the biting cold that gnaws at our thin limbs...
There is a hollow place within us, precious. A cavity where something round and golden once rested, warm against our thin chest...
There is a candle in Master's study that burns through the night. We watches it from the shadows, precious, watches the little flame dance...
The sun sinks low beyond the mountains, and shadows creep across the land like hungry fingers reaching for warmth...
Master works his sorcery again tonight. We watches from below, learning, understanding...
Today the hunger is sharp. We remembers the taste of fish fresh from the water, the crunch of bones, the slick of oil on our fingers...
Last night we dreamed of holding it again. The weight of it. The warmth. It spoke to us, precious, whispered secrets only we could hear...
Sometimes we remembers being small. Being happy. When the sun did not burn and the world was wide and green. Before...