When the River Sleeps

by Easterine Kire

It was cold – close to freezing – and perfectly still. It was just the way it should be. The river had gone to sleep.

He still went through months when nothing could touch him except that great loneliness that howled through his being like the wind baying up the valley, relentlessly beating at the wooden house and rudely blasting in through cracks in the walls. The sense of isolation was almost enough to make him abandon his life in the forest and return to the village.

Not so much the festivals and feastings and the community gatherings, but the ordinary things of village life:

the twinges of the all too familiar feeling of loneliness crept in, his own words returned to

“The forest is my wife, and perhaps this is what marriage is like; with periods when a chasm of loneliness separates the partners leaving each one alone with their own thoughts, groping for answers,” he thought.

Strangely, these thoughts calmed him. He felt clearer in his head. He had strived so hard after something that was still elusive. Perhaps the answer lay not in striving but i...

would never be eliminated fully, but that one could deal with it by learning to treat it like a compani...

Some days he could not rememb...

If you are grasping at wealth, you are going to lose something that wealth cannot buy for you.

Not in his waking moments, but in dreams and shadow moments between waking and dreaming.

awkward moments passed after she left. Zote’s words were like malignant seeds sown in the air – bearing fruit that was just as destructive.

If you accept what others say about you, you will always remain weak. You are what you believe you are and what’s more, you are meant to be more than what you are.

you always think of that village where your mother is buried as home, your real home, and you long to go back, at least in your dreams if not in your waking moments.”

The heart-stone is also a stumbling stone, and people who don’t understand its mysteries can possess it but also stumble and lose their way. But it is not the stone that makes them do that. It is their own impure hearts and their corrupted understanding that leads them to use the stone for cruel purposes.

I have no pleasant memories of my ancestral village that I should want to go back to it.”

Zote slowly walked down into the burnt village, surveying the damage as if calculating the loss against the price she herself had paid for all the years she had been made an outcaste.

Both had been disturbed by memories - shared and unshared.

“If I am going to start a new life, why should I take so much of the old life with me? It would only hinder me from beginning my new existence. It would only make me long for the old life again, and that would make me miserable. I must accept that my life here has ended, and I must focus on my new life if I want it to work.”

for me to hear. that is how my life has been. I feel vulnerable without Zote around, because she always protected me.

No one is completely bad and even if they do bad things, there is still some vestige of goodness in them which can be brought out. But if you leave it too late, it gets so polluted that it feels like it’s too much of an effort. that is what makes them remain where they are.”

“You have not purged yourself of guilt,” she began slowly and looked over at him. “If you don’t do it, it will follow you and hinder you.”

His complete distancing of himself from responsibility and involvement became clear to him, and he felt contemptuous of his own conduct.

“I am sorry I failed you. I was a coward then. I hope you can forgive me.”

“It tastes a bit odd but it seems all right. I have to stop thinking of it as something that stung me and start thinking of it as food.” they both laughed.

“She lived a good life and she was kind to all. You should not grieve her going but rejoice that she lived a beautiful life.”

You should come by more often to sample my craft,

is that struggle that makes it all the more precious.

Her eyes glistened with unshed tears as she said