The Inn's Silent Dawn
I woke at dawn to an unnatural stillness in the inn. Not the quiet of sleeping guests, but something deeper—the absence of wind, birdsong, even the creak of floorboards beneath my feet.
As if the world had been muted.
I descended the stairs and pushed open the front door. The forest outside was so silent it made my skin prickle. Not a single leaf rustled as it fell.
Then, I heard it—a whisper so faint it seemed to rise from the depths of my mind.
"Can... you hear me?"
I whirled around. Nothing. Only an ancient tree standing sentinel, its trunk etched with characters nearly erased by time. I leaned closer. The script was archaic, the strokes hauntingly familiar yet foreign to me.
The voice surfaced again.
"I was once a guide for lost sounds..."
I closed my eyes, letting my consciousness sink.
An image unfolded: Long ago, these mountains housed a Sound Spirit. It led the lost home with echoes, carried yearning between distant loved ones, even sang forgotten melodies back into the world’s dreams.
But as humans embraced technology, voices became signals, songs turned into recordings. The spirit’s gifts were deemed interference—static—until it was sealed inside this tree, its name erased from memory.
When I opened my eyes, the tree stood silent. Yet beneath the bark, I felt its heartbeat: slow, stubborn, alive.
"I just... wondered if anyone still remembers what sounds used to be," it murmured.
I pressed a palm to the trunk. "I remember. The tremor of wind through bamboo, the grumble in my grandfather’s throat as he told stories, the hum of my mother’s lullabies... I remember."
The branches shivered—a sigh of relief.
Back at the inn, I dusted off an old phonograph. The needle hissed as it touched the record, releasing a wordless folk tune spun from pure melody.
That night, the entire inn listened. The wind spoke. The trees whispered. Even the walls creaked their stories.
And the Sound Spirit—
At last, after so much silence,
was heard again.
ns216.73.216.103da2
and then Add to home screen.