THE LOST GLADE
A PROLOGUE
I can’t outright say what happened to me.
… Well, *happened to me* makes it seem like my thoughts and actions played no part, but that’s not true. Besides, it’s not like I couldn’t choose what decisions I took. No, it’s less something that *happened*, and more something that I *chose* to happen.
It’s taken the better part of six months to come to grips with my troubling new reality. Being here in the Wanderers’ Library certainly helped.
The town I left didn’t want me. The parents I left wanted someone I wasn’t. The Wanderers’ Library, on the other hand: It wants who you’re meant to become. And with a Cosmos of knowledge at its superbibliothetic tendrils, it knows how to get it.
… Where was I again?
Right.
The *how* isn’t awfully important. But most of all, it’s a blur. Let’s see if you can’t help jog my memory.
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It begins with an old, familiar dream.
The dream is always the same. I move through a fog towards a faraway constellation. The fog tries its damnedest to shroud each and every light. But they persevere nonetheless, and become One.
I eventually pierce the veil. My body falls, leaf-like, into their brilliance.
None of this is painful; I feel nothing at all, save a faint thrumming sensation. I twirl along, a seed flowing freely with the winds.
Then, I settle in the ground and take root.
I drink in my surroundings. At last, they become familiar. This place, a rich clearing, finds itself surrounded on every side by a facade of fantastical trees, a thick shroud that grows thicker as they stretch along.
I bud, and I grow, but soon, the lights fade away. First, their warmth; next, the opportunity to see them at all.
The thrumming returns. It speaks to me. It has a name:
The Lost Glade.
There were lights there, once. They have since faded from common memory, as lost things are wont to do. Someone needs to revive them.
And it has to be me.
Whether I *want to* is irrelevant. Whether by day’s break, or at the witching hour, I always awaken with the memory. It brings forth an urgency. It heralds something I feel but cannot see. Whether it springs from the jolt that sends my heart thumping and my hair on end, goosebumps and all, or saturates the cold sweat that submerses my clothing — it calls in the only way it knows how.
I answer in the only way I can.
By waking to a harsh reality.
Being of no help at all.
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⁕ Lampyra
The Wanderers’ Library, Springtide 2020
