The night stretched wide, dark and endless, like the belly of a great beast swallowing the stars. The sky, scattered with faint pinpricks of light, flickered uncertainly as if it too feared the silence that crept across the land beneath. The village of Obade, usually alive with the gentle rhythm of nocturnal sounds—the rustle of leaves, the hum of insects, the distant cry of a night bird—was hushed now. The air itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting, as if the world balanced on the edge of a blade.
Echo stood at the river's edge, her feet bare against the cool earth, the faint pulse of the glowing threads wound tightly around her wrists like lifelines. They hummed softly, a chorus of the songs she had reclaimed, yet beneath that hum, a deeper vibration of unease echoed—a warning from the river itself.
Beside her, Ayomira remained silent, her presence steady and unyielding. The blue flames that twisted in her hair knots pulsed gently, casting shifting shadows that danced across her calm, unreadable face. The dreamwalker's eyes held depths of knowledge that stretched beyond time, as if she had already walked through countless realms of memory and forgetfulness, never fully returning.
"The salt-dream awaits," Ayomira said, her voice low and reverent. "Once you enter, there is no turning back."
Echo met her gaze, steady. Her heart hammered in her chest, not from fear but from the weight of what lay ahead. She could feel the threads tightening around her wrists, the river's song calling her deeper, farther than she had ever dared to go.
"I will carry the silence," Echo said, her voice a whisper, fierce and sure. "But it must be heard."
The air shifted then, as if the night itself folded in on them. The solid earth beneath their feet gave way, dissolving into a cold mist that swirled and eddied like smoke caught in a breath. They fell—not downward—but inward, descending into a vast, empty ocean where no water was wet, no waves broke, and silence was a presence heavy enough to press the breath from lungs.
This was the salt-dream: a realm of echoes and absence, where memory was a blade that cut both ways, and forgetting was a wound left open to bleed. It was a place outside the waking world, beyond time and space, where the ghosts of voices long stilled murmured in half-remembered patterns.
Around them, shadows flickered—shapes just beyond the edge of vision that whispered without words. Faces drifted in the mist—indistinct, fading, singing silent songs with lips that never parted. Echo could feel them reaching, desperate to be heard again.
And then, as the silence deepened, it became something else: not absence, but a presence.
It was the First Silence.
The First Silence was no monster of teeth and claws. It was no demon or shadowy beast. It was something more profound—an emptiness carved from all the forgotten pain, loss, and refusal to remember. It was a song removed from the world because it was too powerful to hold, too true to bear.
Echo stepped forward into the mist, feeling the weight of every lost voice pressing down on her chest like a thousand stones. The silence reached out—not with violence but with cold fingers of absence, probing the depths of her soul, seeking to unravel the threads woven through her being. A numbness spread through her limbs, the familiar rhythm of her heartbeat faltering beneath the pressure.
Her breath caught.
She nearly stumbled, faltering on the edge of the vast unknown.
But Ayomira's voice, soft and unwavering, pulled her back from the brink.
"You must sing it," the dreamwalker said gently, "not to break it, but to carry it."
Echo swallowed hard, gathering the fragile fragments of courage within her. She closed her eyes, felt the threads pulse beneath her skin, and opened her mouth.
At first, only a whisper escaped.
A sound so low it seemed almost swallowed by the silence itself.
It was a song that was no song, a silence that was no silence—a vibration deeper than words, raw and trembling.
The sound grew, swelling slowly like a wave rising from the ocean floor.
It held grief too vast for tears, love too deep for language, fury too quiet to shout.
It sang of loss beyond loss.
Of chains no longer visible but felt in the marrow of bones.
Of voices swallowed whole, not silenced.
Echo sang the song of the First Silence, the song the river had carried but could no longer hold, the song buried beneath centuries of forgetting.
The salt-dream convulsed.
Shapes writhed in the distance—ghosts of forgotten ancestors, drowned children, mothers who had never sung lullabies. The air itself shimmered as if their pain was a fire burning beneath the mist.
The song stretched and folded upon itself, folding and stretching in impossible patterns.
And Echo held it—held the unbearable weight of all that had been lost.
Not as prisoner.
But as bearer.
The song nearly crushed her, but she did not falter.
When the notes began to fracture and the silence clawed to reclaim its throne, Echo reached deep inside and pulled forth a single thread of light—the final verse she had been carrying within her, the promise of remembering.
It wound through the song like a silver needle sewing a wound closed.
The salt-dream shimmered.
For the first time in eons, the silence cracked.
Light poured in like dawn through broken glass.
Echo gasped awake, lungs heaving, body trembling.
Ola and Iyagbẹ́kọ waited anxiously by the riverbank, their faces etched with worry and hope as she broke through the veil of sleep.
"Did you see it?" Ola asked breathlessly.
Echo's eyes burned with the weight of what she had carried. "I heard it," she whispered. "The First Silence… it is not a curse."
Iyagbẹ́kọ nodded slowly, her voice low and certain. "It is a wound. A wound that needs healing."
Outside, the river sang a new song—not one of drowning or despair, but of rising. A melody born of grief transformed into hope.
Days passed, but the memory of the salt-dream lingered, echoing in the minds of those who listened. The village of Obade felt the shift—a subtle stirring beneath the surface of things. The river itself seemed lighter, more restless in its flow, as if the weight of old pain had lessened, just enough for something new to take root.
Echo moved among her people carrying the threads of the swallowed songs, the stories of those who had vanished into silence. Each thread a spark, each spark a hope.
Yet the First Silence was not gone. It hovered just beyond the edges of sight, a shadow waiting for its voice to be answered.
One evening, as the sun sank low and the sky burned gold, Echo sat beneath the baobab tree. Children gathered around, eyes wide as she sang the newly returned verses—lullabies, work songs, prayers—all those small fragments once lost but now recovered.
Her voice wove through the village, stitching hearts together.
After the song, an elder approached—a woman with eyes like river stones, smooth and ancient.
"You carry heavy gifts, child," she said. "But remember: healing is not a straight path. The silence will come again. And next time, it may demand more."
Echo nodded, the weight of the warning settling like a stone in her chest.
"I will carry it," she said quietly.
Night after night, the dreams returned—visions of vast oceans without water, of songs sinking beneath tides, of faces fading into mist.
But in those dreams, Echo found strength.
She walked the salt-dream with growing surety, learning its rhythms, hearing its pain, until the silence was not an enemy, but a presence to be understood.
Ayomira guided her still, speaking of the ancient balance between memory and forgetting, between song and silence.
"Without silence," Ayomira said one night, "there is no song. Without forgetting, no remembering. The First Silence is part of the cycle. The question is—how do you carry it without being consumed?"
Echo's answer came not in words but in song—a new verse born from the depths of the salt-dream, a melody that carried both the weight of loss and the promise of return.
The river whispered back, and the village listened.
And somewhere deep beneath the waves, where the salt-dream stretched endlessly, the First Silence pulsed—not defeated, but changed.
Waiting.