Author: Dale

From: Nectar Infusion   Segment 1: “The Clamor Before the Quiet” As told by Odom the Hollow-Handed, hermit of the Wildflower Valleys I have come to believe that a man may be poor in nothing but silence and still be the poorest man in the city. On the last day I spent among the towns,…

From: Baba Yaga 423 of Disquiet Segment 1: The Whisper Under the Roots As told by Starukh Iven, the Forest Warden There are sounds a man may forget. The creak of his mother’s door. The name of his first dog, called across a field of summer barley. The voice he himself possessed when he was…

From: Item 817 of the Penitents Coil Segment 1: The Cooking of the Brothers The shift was in its nineteenth hour. I know it was the nineteenth hour because the bell had rung four times since the eating-break and the bell rings once each hour after the break. I counted the bells. Counting the bells…

From: Vaporous Vipers Segment 1: The Whisper of a Legend Gather close, my children, gather close, for the hearth burns low this eve and the tale I carry is one that hungers for firelight and huddled shoulders. Aye, draw thy cloaks about thee, for though the night without is mild, the tale within is cold…

From: Talmudic 418 of the Ancestral Lexicon 1. The Soup-of-Noises Call me a Chronicler, though the title sits upon my shoulders the way a borrowed coat sits upon a drowned man — too large in some seams, too narrow in others, and wet through with the salt of every voice I have failed to save.…