A long, soft hush followed—
the kind of silence a world makes when it is listening to its own breathing.
Seasons—new, strange, unmeasured—came and went. The beings who had risen from memory settled into their rhythm, learning not through teachings but through echo:
the echo of the Circle's last steps,
the echo of beginnings,
the echo of a world that dreamt itself into motion.
In time, they learned to craft small things—shapes of clay molded by curiosity, woven grasses tied into patterns, stones stacked into deliberate spirals that meant nothing at first… until meaning began to grow within them.
They learned to follow the rivers, not because they sought direction, but because the rivers hummed songs they felt at home with.
