A shoreline underfoot. Air thick with stillness and echo. The world leans inward. The lake does not speak, it listens. And Vin’nyla responds.
VIN’NYLA (voice slow, almost reverent): The surface shifts, though nothing breaks it. The sky flickers, though the stars remain fixed.
I place my hand on the water. It is warm. As if it remembers.
I’ve walked for days, though time does not hold shape here. The farther I go, the less real things become. The horizon dissolves outward, like ink dropped into stillness.
The water murmurs. A language I almost understand.
I don’t mark the path. I am the marking. Each step a ripple, each breath a question the lake chooses to answer, in current, in silence, in depth and reflection.
This is not arrival. This is dialogue.
At night, I sleep beside constellations that rearrange themselves. Shapes form and unform, like memories rising before names return.
And still I do not know if I am shaping the lake or if the lake is shaping me. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.
Then I reach the center, a place that should not exist. No shore. No sound. Only a stillness that reflects nothing.
I kneel. Press my palm to it. The lake hums.
And then it happens. Not a shift in the world, but a shift in me.
I am no longer touching the lake. I am within it. The surrounding water is now my own form. The current moves through me, shaping me as I once shaped the path.
I have not crossed the lake. I have become it.
The lake does not speak. It never did. But it listens, and what you listen to changes you.