Somewhere in dream, you walk his road—
Toward distant lands, with hope as load.
The sun burns bright on roads of green,
Where butterflies drift and birds still sing.
A woman stands in tender light,
A child beside her, warm and bright.
With loving gaze and waving hands,
They wave and wave
At the opening of the cotton house.
But halfway down that lonely track,
The road gives way. There is no back.
A violent pull. A sudden fall.
Your satchel splits and spills it all—
Scattered pages in the dirt,
One bearing Datharnian’s word in blur.
Glass lies shattered, sharp and thin,
Its silence strange beneath the wind.
And from one broken vessel’s seam,
A cluster slips where none had been—
Pink at first, then slow they turn
To dust-brown threads against the fern.
You watch the footprints
Stretch further and further away from you,
And then
There are none.
- the quest set before "Feast Beneath the Marsh"
yoru