The Wanderer
For the first time, eyes opened, but they knew not what they saw. Thoughts swirled and coalesced and took form, but where exactly was uncertain. And then movement. A small digit at first, testing and teasing its own strength and limitations. Then more, a fist, then an arm.
The cocoon that held him quivered. Veins of vine tightened in protest, then slackened. Mud cracked, warm sap trickling down his skin like blood from a living wound. The husk that Q’elva and Thalen had woven for him strained and split, roots snapping like cords too long under tension.
A shaft of light speared through the green gloom. He flinched. His body, though grown and powerful, shuddered as though the weight of light itself were too much. Instinct—not thought—made him push outward again. The vines yielded, and the first man tumbled into the day.
He lay sprawled among crushed leaves and torn roots, chest heaving, limbs slick with clay. The world was vast and loud. Wind brushed his skin and he gasped; the touch of air was pain and wonder all at once.
Slowly he moved—awkward, uncertain. His hands splayed against the soil, fingers trembling as he tried to rise. His legs, sculpted from stone and strengthened by divine breath, wobbled like saplings in a storm. He rose half-way, fell again, then tried once more.
Each attempt was clumsy, hesitant—more instinct than grace. But with every effort, the motion grew surer, the tremor less. When at last he stood, unsteady but upright, the vines rustled softly in approval.
He stood erect, looking out at creation, his eyes adjusting to the new light. He took a first unsteady step, then another, and another until walking was like breathing and sure. The first footprints of mankind pressed into the mud, steaming faintly in the cool air.
He walked through jungles that pulsed with his mother’s breath and over mountains carved from his father’s bones. He drank from rivers that mirrored the sky, and when he spoke to his reflection, it spoke back only in ripples.
He learned of pain. Thorns bit into his feet, and he bled—his blood bright and startling against the earth. He learned of hunger, of warmth, of storm. Every sensation was a teacher, every wound a word in the world’s first language.
He discovered fire when lightning split a tree. The blaze frightened him, yet he could not look away. He reached toward it, and the pain seared him—but from it he learned to stay near without touching.
When it died, he wept for it. His tears fell into the ashes, and from them sprouted the first wildflowers, bright as flame.
Days turned to months turned to years and after centuries of wandering a curious thing happened; he began to see more people. He did not know from where they came, but he was glad to see another face not his own. Moreover, he was glad to no longer be alone.
The Wanderer found they challenged his name quite well, for he decided to stay with them a while and learn to be whatever he is with them. He taught them what he knew; fire, the names of plants and what lay beyond. They taught him how to use fire, to cultivate the earth and what it meant to have a home. But one taught him a lesson he would never forget.
Her name is El’Aurea, which in their tongue means “Wind through the leaves”. A gentle name for a gentle soul.
She moved with the patience of growing things, her laughter carrying the hush of the forests that raised her. When she spoke, the sound was soft, but in it was the same rhythm that guided rivers, the same quiet persistence that split stone. Her eyes shone like a new dawn.
The Wanderer had seen beauty before—in the golden blaze of morning, the shifting face of fire, the endless grace of falling rain—but none of it prepared him for her. She was alive in a way the world had never shown him.
They walked together beneath canopies of emerald light. She showed him how the seasons changed, how the moon’s pull could stir the tides, how roots found water deep below the surface. In return, he told her stories of the beginning—of the Bound Woman and the Stone Father, of the first breath and the first word.
Wherever they went, the land grew kinder. Flowers rose from their footprints. Birds built nests in trees that bent to watch them pass. The others saw it too, and whispered that love had found a home in the world at last.
The seasons turned like a great wheel, and time learned the shape of them.
Years slipped gently into one another, marked not by numbers but by harvests, by the migration of birds, by the way the vines clung to their dwelling when the rains came. The Wanderer and El’Aurea lived quietly, tending to their people, guiding the young, mending what was broken.
The world, once wild and untamed, softened beneath their hands. The rivers learned patience, the storms gentleness. Even the mountains, Thalen’s old bones, seemed to bow beneath Q’elva’s peace.
At night, they would lie together beside the fire. She would trace the lines in his hands as though reading the story of the earth itself. “You are still searching,” she would whisper.
“I walk because I must,” he would answer. “When I stop, I feel the world grow restless.”
“Then be with me,” she’d say, smiling, “so the world may rest a little longer.”
And so he did. And so the world finally seemed to rest.
One night, beneath a sky so clear it seemed the heavens had drawn breath, they lay together by the fire. The world slept around them—the rivers hushed, the trees stilled, even the stars hung motionless, listening.
El’Aurea rested her head against his chest, feeling the deep, slow rhythm within. Her fingers traced the scars along his arms—the marks of wandering, of learning, of becoming. She smiled in the darkness.
“You have walked through everything,” she whispered, her breath warm against his skin. “Fire, storm, sorrow. You have given names to all things… but who has named you?”
He said nothing. The question, simple as it was, left him trembling.
She lifted herself to meet his gaze. The firelight danced between them, flickering gold in her eyes.
“Then let me,” she said softly, her breath hot and close.
She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear, her voice barely a sound:
“Amaranth.”
It was not a word so much as a heartbeat given shape.
The name hung between them, fragile and eternal. The air itself seemed to take it up, carrying it through the valley, across the trees, into the sleeping sky and passed the horizon.
He drew her into his arms, the fire crackling beside them, and for the first time since his awakening, the Wanderer felt the ache inside him quiet.
He held her, and the world held still.
And beneath the watch of the stars, Amaranthh—the one who endures—was born.
They built things—small at first: pottery, tools, carvings in stone that told stories of their people. In time, their creations grew bolder. They built wagons to carry harvests and children; plows to open the soil with less pain.
It was then that the Wanderer began to dream of a new shape—a circle that might carry both man and memory farther than feet alone.
He spent months gathering wood and vine, bending and binding, smoothing and joining until the first wheel took form. It was crude, imperfect, but it moved—rolling freely down a slope as if the world itself rejoiced in the discovery.
El’Aurea laughed when she saw it. “What need have we of a thing that moves faster than our feet?”
“So that we may travel together farther than before,” he said. “So that distance may no longer keep us.”
She shook her head, smiling as she always did when he reached too far. “And if the world wishes to stay still?”
“Then I will move it,” he replied.
For weeks they worked side by side—gathering timber, testing strength, shaping spokes. The others watched, curious, and whispered that even the gods might envy what these two could make together. Each day the wheel grew smoother, truer, until it turned with a rhythm that matched the beating of their hearts.
When it finally stood ready, round and perfect, they brought it to the edge of the valley to see how it moved. The morning sun shone golden on the fields. Children followed, laughing. El’Aurea rested her hand on the rim, her eyes bright.
“Let it go,” she said.
Amaranth gave the wheel a gentle push. It rolled down the slope, steady and sure, gleaming like a small sun. For a moment it seemed to fly, free and joyous, a creation without flaw.
Then the earth shifted.
The wheel caught a stone, lurched, and turned back toward them. He shouted, but the sound came too late.
It struck her just below the ribs.
The laughter died. The world stilled.
El’Aurea crumpled to the ground, her hair spilling like a river of gold. Amareth ran to her side, hands trembling, pressing against the wound as if he could force life back in. Blood—warm, bright, and crimson—seeped between his fingers and into the soil. The vines nearby shuddered but did not answer. The world watched in silence and horror.
He called her name, again and again, until the word broke in his throat. “El’Aurea! Please—don’t leave me.”
Her breathing came shallow, the rise and fall barely there. Her lips moved, but no sound came. The wind had gone still. Even the birds refused to sing.
He pressed his forehead to hers, whispering the only prayer he had ever known: her name. Over and over, until it became a sound older than language.
“Don’t go, please! Stay with me, here, in our home. I can’t live without you” he cried out to whatever god was listening.
Each breath was rattled, labored, painful. The earth appeared still, yet something was listening. Someone was waiting to pounce.
A warmth bled through the stillness—at first faint, then searing. The light along the valley began to bend, as though the sun had come too close. The others fell to their knees and covered their eyes, for from the horizon a figure was walking, steady and sure.
His form wavered in the heat, edges shifting like smoke. He stopped a few paces away, hands clasped behind his back, and looked upon them with neither pity nor cruelty.
“Brother,” he said softly, “your plea has reached even me.”
Amaranth looked up, his face streaked with blood and soil. “Who are you?”
“I am called Serrat” his eyes flashed an unnatural green, “I have come to you in your moment of need”.
His smile pantomimed sympathy like a hangman’s noose pantomimes a scarf.
“Why have you come?” Amaranth demanded, his voice breaking between fury and desperation. “If you can heal, then heal her!”
Serrat stepped closer, the air around him shimmering. “I do not heal,” he said quietly. “I balance. There is a difference.”
Amaranth’s hands trembled as he clutched El’Aurea to his chest. “Then take me instead! Let her live, and I will bear the price.”
A faint, sad smile touched Serrat’s lips. “You already bear it, brother. The law was written before you drew your first breath: nothing moves without loss. You made the world turn. Now the wheel turns back.”
“I don’t understand,” Amaranth whispered.
“And perhaps you never will” he knelt down. “I cannot save her, but I can tie her to the world. Is that what you wish?”
“And…I can still see her?”
The eyes flashed that sickly neon green again. “Yes, you’ll see her everywhere you look”.
Amaranth bowed his head in defeat.
“Save her” was all he said.
That too wild smile and then, “Gladly”.
He set his palm gently over the wound beneath El’Aurea’s ribs. The valley hushed. Heat rose from the earth as if the sun had stooped to listen. A low note sounded—stone humming, vine answering—and gold light spilled from the press of Serrat’s hand. It ran along her skin, thin as threads of dawn, and gathered at her fingertips.
Leaves unfurled there—first small and green, then deepening to autumn’s fire: amber, russet, wine-red. The transformation crept upward, slow and terrible. Her calves braided into tender stems, her knees into pliant boughs. The grass bent toward her, as if remembering its mother.
“El’Aurea,” Amaranth whispered, reaching, “stay.”
She turned her face to him. Her eyes were still her own—clear, bright, full of patience. “I am,” she breathed, voice like the sigh between wind and word. “I am here.”
The light climbed higher. Her breath became a soft current moving through the camp, stirring hair and ash. The autumn leaves along her legs loosened and drifted, each one a tiny glowing ember lifting into the air and floating outward—outward—until the far edge of sight was flecked with gold. Her body seemingly deflated as a soft gust blew her away in so much gold and brown foliage. She was gone.
Serrat removed his hand. “It is done.”
“No,” Amaranth said, scrambling after the rising glow, as if he could gather the leaves back into her. “Not like this.”
“The world does not keep what it cannot carry,” Serrat answered. “So it lengthens itself. It makes room.” He nodded toward the distance, where the scattered embers were threading themselves along a long, faint line. “There.”
The horizon woke—thin at first, a single filament of fire stretched tight between sky and earth. Then brighter, wider, golden as wheat under noon. It breathed. It waited.
El’Aurea’s gaze held his one last time. Her hand, now light and leaf, lifted as if to touch his cheek—and turned to breeze upon his skin. The gold at her throat blossomed like a final flower; her voice crossed the distance, whispering with the tenderness of all their nights by the fire:
Find me.
She was everywhere at once—ringing the edge of the world.
Amaranth stood, swaying. “El’Aurea!” He took a step toward the line. It receded. Another step. It withdrew again, perfectly, painfully constant.
Serrat watched him the way a scribe watches ink dry. “You asked that she live in the world. She does. She is its farthest promise. The Horizon itself. You will see her, always.”
“You tricked me!” Amaranth roared, ready to strike but found that his body met nothing but air. Serrat had vanished back from whence he came.
The valley held its breath. The children clutched at their mothers’ hems; elders bowed their heads. Even the trees seemed to lean inward, listening for a heartbeat that had become wind.
Amaranth staggered to the broken circle lying in the dust. He lifted a splintered spoke and turned it in his hands until the wood fit his grip. The rest of the wheel he left where it fell—half a sun pressed into the earth, a scar the world would keep.
He faced the gold-streaked distance. The line did not waver. It did not pity. It simply was—her presence remade as geography.
Behind him, the people began to sing, not with hope but with memory. They laid wildflowers where El’Aurea had fallen; the petals caught in the breeze and rode it outward, joining the faint drift of leaf-light threading the edge of the world.
From deep below, the roots of Q’elva stirred, mourning in green. Far off, Thalen’s cliffs answered with a muted groan, stone remembering what love had cost.
Amaranth set the spoke to the soil like a pilgrim’s staff and took a step. The ground thrummed beneath his feet.
He took another. The horizon receded—faithful, constant, unreachably near.
He walked because she glowed.
He walked because she asked.
He walked because to stand still would be to let the world forget.
By evening, his figure was a dark stitch on the bright seam of the earth. By morning, a rumor. In time, a road.
And to this day, when travelers lift their eyes and feel the sweet ache pull at their ribs, when the line between sky and soil shines a little brighter and whispers a single command—find me—they are hearing El’Aurea’s breath and the vow of the first man, the one who endures, forever ahead, forever out of reach.
