The Starless Sea

They take an unspoken vow to no longer tell their own stories in reverence to the ones that came before and to the ones that shall follow

What is a single house, after all, with nothing surrounding it? Without a yard for the dog. Without a complaining neighbor across the street, without a street to have neighbors on at all? Without trees and horses and stores. Without a harbor. A boat. A city across the sea.

That somewhere there are tongueless acolytes in a subterranean library?

A boy at the beginning of a story has no way of knowing that the story has begun.

He had thought there could be no stranger feeling than stumbling across a book that narrates a long-ago incident from his own life that was never relayed to anyone, never spoken about or written down but nevertheless is unfolding in typeset prose, but he was wrong.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is on campus to read

Beneath the bee is a key. Beneath the key is a sword.

once her voice has been muted, then her ears awaken.

contemplation is only thought to be silent by those who have never been inside the room

There are three paths. This is one of them.

This is the path of the acolytes.