You stand where the map grows thin—
here, where the village exhales its charms
into the damp throat of twilight.
Rowan limbs sag above doorways,
their berries like clots of old blood
warding what whispers through the cracks
in the world's wet ledger. Listen:
the soil hums a counter-song
to the stars' cold mathematics.
Even the church bells wear their tolling
like a bridle, holding back the hour
when the sky forgets its name.
This is no land of bright heralds.
The market's true currency is fear—
vervain twined with grave dirt,
psalms scratched on river stones,
the way a shepherd's song frays
at the edge where the moor begins
its slow argument with reason.
You'll learn the price of paths:
some lanes lead to hearth-smoke,
others to clearings where pines
whisper in angles that itch
behind your eyes. Merchants return
with frost in their beards and pockets
full of silence. Watch their hands—
see how they tremble counting coins.
The nobles claim their castle stones
remember an older order, but climb
the tower stairs at midnight
and you'll hear the mortar hum
a hymn no priest would bless.
The woods? Keep your blade bright
and your prayers brighter. Trees here
grow two shadows: one for the sun,
one for what gutters beneath the bark
like a lamp you shouldn't name.
Shepherds will tell you—those who still
have tongues to tell—how mists move
against the wind here, how flocks
return with too many teeth, too few eyes,
and wool that smells of storm-cellars
where something learned to breathe.
Child of salt and candleflame,
this is how you'll survive:
mend the fraying rituals,
barter dread at the crossroads,
kneel when the bells convulse
their bronze throats at dusk.
But mark this well—the earth
dreams in a language of fractures.
Plowmen find glyphs in the frost.
Midwives burn the afterbirth
lest it crawl back, keening.
Every ward weakens. Every prayer
is a door held shut with both hands.
Now step forward.
The soil knows your weight already.
The shadows have rehearsed your name.
What will you add to the ledger—
another scar on the oak's thick skin?
A new verse to the wind's dark psalm?
Or will you be the one who stares too long
at the patterns the river etches in clay,
who follows the will-o'-wisp's sly arithmetic
into the glade where the air goes…
quiet…
soft…
alive…
(Choose slowly.
The trees are listening.)