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I took second watch tonight.
Second watch is the worst. Every sound is amplified, the rustling of leaves, the shuffling of fauna in underbrush, the errant cries of the strange creatures that inhabit this forest. The moonlight shifts, plays tricks with your eyes with how it shines off the crystalline trees, the shadows twisting and unfurling, driving you mad as you try to figure out if what you’re seeing is real or not.
But Velonia … last time she took second watch, I woke to her talking quietly. To whom? I do not know. It is only us, it’s only ever us in this forest. Maybe it’s always just been us. That doesn’t sound right, but it’s all I can remember anymore. She said it was Pride but I’ve never seen nor heard anyone else, not since the forest died and was reborn, and nothing I said could convince her otherwise. She wasn’t the same the rest of the day, withdrawn, eyes tracking unseen things, occasionally mumbling to nothing and no one.
I take second watch now.
There is a persistent, dissonant echo that permeates these woods, like that of glass sliding against glass like a whetstone over a blade, and at night it’s downright unsettling. Even now, my stomach churns and roils at the sound, my head pounding in rhythm with my heartbeat, then suddenly a lance of pain shoots up my jaw because I’ve been clenching my teeth.
I have to remind myself to take deep breaths.
Truthfully, I don’t know why exactly we keep watch. I think we did it before, so maybe it’s just a habit? But what are we watching for? I’m not sure we even know anymore. Glowing eyes dot the edge of the clearing around the new ruins we rest in, but are they real? I blink, and they’re gone, and I’m standing in the middle of the clearing, hand clutching my sword, sweat dripping down my forehead, and I shiver as I can feel the gaze of something incomprehensible, something unknowable.
It feels like I gaze into an abyss, apprehension scratching at the back of my neck as I back away, returning to my post. My hands shake as I write this, recounting it, like the dread pooling in my gut threads through my fingers, weighing them down. The night is endless, eternal, suffocating. It’s quiet, but loud, the silence like a scream echoing in my ears, the cool air thick and sweet like honey, bitter like poison as it sits like rot in my mouth. Time is nothing. Time is meaningless. I could sit here for an eternity and not know the difference even as I can feel each and every second bearing down on me, unravelling, stretching thin like a thread about to snap, and I can only hold my breath and wait and watch.
And then it breaks, the stars gone, the sky bleeding as it lightens, the sun distant and shrouded but shining, and I stare. I hear my name being called through the trees, echoing through the forest … Erosine … and I call out in response, “Velonia?” It sounds like her, but it can’t be her, surely. She’s sleeping, resting, and yet I find myself rising, every step across the clearing sending ripples across the grass as if it were water.
Water. It shimmers and shifts as it flows, more rainbow light than liquid as it streams upward into the skies, dissipating into the morning mist as flowers with oil-slick petals sway in a non-existent breeze. A halla gracefully steps past the treeline, its eyes more like holes, as black as the space between the burning stars, and as it looks at me, I shiver as its gaze pierces my soul. It knows me, it recognises me. Something within me calls out to it like a siren’s song, I can feel it in my veins, feel it winding around my heart, squeezing, squeezing until I can't breathe. It doesn’t hesitate or flinch as it approaches, so close I can see the shimmer in its fur, how it undulates like liquid metal, its antlers more like flowering vines than swirling horns. I reach out to touch it and my hand … my hand goes right through it as if it’s nothing, as if it’s not there, as if this is a dream. But I’m not sleeping. Am I? Yet, as it leaves, it feels as if a piece of me goes with it, slipping away into the trees, further into the prism, into the light.
It’s coming closer now, crawling up my legs, my arms, wrapping around my throat, pulling me in. I think … I think I'm disappearing. I think I'm becoming something else. Someone else. Or maybe I'm just fading, piece by piece, into the prism, into the light, into nothing, into everything.
And then I hear it. Her voice, Velonia’s voice. Soft, like the first touch of dawn on a sleepless night, like the way she used to say my name when the world was whole, unbroken by this veil. It drifts through the trees, through the light that shimmers and dances on the edge of my vision, pulling at the threads of my heart, unravelling the fear that’s settled in my bones. She calls to me and it’s like a hand reaching through the fog, warm and real, something to hold onto, something to follow. I don’t know if it’s real. I don’t think it is. But I’m going to her anyway, and if I find myself embracing annihilation instead, then so be it. Because maybe, maybe I can find her, hold her, and we can find our peace again, sharing it forever more.
She is me. I am her. We are the light.
———
This final journal of an ancient elvhen forest scout was recovered by Scout Harding in a shimmering portion of the crossroads, at the feet of what appeared to be the figures of two women embracing, their forms somehow unnaturally preserved by woven flowering vines.