Respite

He sits on a shoreline. The water goes on forever, unending, and it is night. The stars are brilliant overhead, too many to count. He is there with another man, an old half-elf in robes, tall and portly; he smells of earth and herb and rain.

They skip stones. In the ripples they see different stars, delicate crescents of light that play against the waves, and follow the ripples. The ripples are the tide against the shore. The light emerges from the sourceless void, for here there are no sun and no moons.

This moment holds a solace that endures, it feels. For a while, a long while, it is just the two of them. They pass the moment in idle conversation, not friends at first, but the bearded man’s humor is kind, not sharp enough to sting. He laughs from his belly.

They run out of stones. They sit in silence a while to watch the tide, how it carries on even without them. Then, the old man stood. The younger, the visitor, turns to follow and sees no man, but a tree.

It is tall, taller than anything, its trunk many spans wide and its canopy leagues in the air. It stretches out in the colors of sunrise and sunset, golds and oranges, and its labyrinthine roots sprawl out all throughout the Grove. He looks aside, and sees that the roots span deep into the earth, deep beyond the shore, into that endless sea.

The ripples become wind. It stirs the boughs, and its many branches resonate with soft, ever-present melody. Its branches seem to hold up the stars in veneration, and he feels that it would know each story to each constellation. He does not know how this knowledge comes to him, but it speaks to him in the fabric and tempo of this moment, not in words.

The roots that wind and sprawl from its base are too-familiar to the winding shadows, but they are alive and true. The song turns sorrowful, because the shadow is its kin. The well of pressure that blooms in his breast at the melody is profound, before it quiets. That is not the purpose it has, here, in this dream.

It asks of him, instead. What is your solace? Where is your respite?

A baker’s bread. The lake by home. Fond stories under an old tree.

No, no. Just one.

Just one.

It sings the solace back to him, weaves the respite into a cherished grain of itself, at its core.

It sends him back into the sea, to float on the tide away from this hallowed Grove, but the one melody stays with him. It endures.