Speaker 1: A forest of earth and mind. An Arcane Heart Studio production,
created and written by Ainsley Bay. Chapter twenty three, Then
do you drop? The silence is loud. Don't get me wrong.
I lived in Philadelphia. You'd kill for silence at times.
But this silence, it's not an escape from noise. It
is the noise, but doesn't make sense. I know. But
here in the whispering hollow, silence isn't just the absence
of noise. It's a thing, a weight, a tixture. It
presses against my ear drums like water pressure at the
bottom of the ocean. I am sitting on a cushion
made of woven spiderwebs. Don't think about it, viv just
go with it. Around me in a perfect circle, set
twelve fay lords and ladies. They are beautiful, terrifying, and
completely motionless. We are staring at a flower correction. We
are staring at a single dewdrop resting on the petal
of a flower. We have been doing this for forty five minutes.
My leg is asleep, my nose itches, and my brain
is screaming. Don't fidget, don't fidget, don't fidget. I fidget,
I shift my weight. The spiderweb cushion moves softly. It's
barely a sound, quieter than a breath, but in this
oppressive silence, it sounds like a gunshot. Twelve pairs of
eyes shift toward me. They don't blink, They just slide
liquid and cold to fix me with a collective stare
of mild disappointment. The envoy, the one who refuses to
tell me his name and anything other than unpronounceable sounds,
and the one who took me from slate fall, is
sitting directly across from me. He looks like a statue
car card from birch bark stillness. He whispers. His voice
doesn't travel through the air. It blooms inside my head.
The dewdrop contains the universe. Observe, I am observing. I
whisper back. My voice sounds rasping and crude. In the
crystalline air. It's damp, it's round, it's very shiny. Look deeper.
I look deeper. I see water surface tension, refraction of light.
I see the physics of it. I see the biology
of the petal beneath it. It's going to evaporate, I say.
The fae to my left, A woman with hair like
Spanish moss winces. Time is a construct. The drop is eternal. No,
it's not, I argue forgetting to whisper. It's h point
two point oh point oh point. The ambient temperature here
is why what seventy degrees humidity is maybe sixty percent?
That drop has twenty minutes tops. The envoy closes his eyes.
You are loud, ink girl. My name is viv. Your
mind is a storm, chaos, noise. How do you endure it?
It called context switching? He sighs. We are in the
high feast of contemplation. It is a sacred communion with
the ephemeral. Please be empty. I can't be empty. I'm
full of questions. Questions are anchors, he says. They tether
you to the mundane. Release them. But who put the
drop there? I ask? Did it form naturally or did
someone place it? Is it a specific drop? Does it
have a name? Is it Steve the dewdrop? The moss
lady makes a sound like a snapping twig. Stop. I'm
just cure curious. You guys sit here for hours staring
at water. Don't you ever wonder where it came from?
It just is, The envoy says, that is enough, not
for me. I stand up, my knees pop another gunshot
in the silence. I can't do this. I have ADDHD
or just humanity. I need stimulation, I need context. Sit.
The envoy commands the word carries weight, actual physical weight.
I feel it pressed down on my shoulders, trying to
force me back onto the cushion. But I don't sit.
I push back, not with magic, but with simple human stubbornness,
with rizzo grit, as my mom would say, with the
sheer refusal to be controlled that has defined my entire life. No,
I say, the pressure increases. It feels like gravity has
doubled my bones ache, I said, sit, I grit my teeth,
and I said no. I start humming. It's a boy
band song for some reason, and I just laugh at
the ridiculousness of it. It's instinctive, a defense mechanism against
the crushing silence, and the song that pops into my
head is the most annoying, persistent earworm. I know I
want it that way, the Backstreet Boys, God help me,
but really it's catchy, don't judge. I hum it louder.
The fay recoil physically recoil It's like I just threw
a handful of gravel into their faces. What is that?
The moss lady gasps, covering her delicate, pointy ears. It
is dissonance. It loops, it resolves, and then loops again.
It's a classic, I say, fighting the pressure. Tell me why,
ain't nothing but a heartache. I'm not even singing the lyrics.
It's like they won't let me, but I get the
words out. The envoye stands up. The pressure vanishes instantly.
He looks horrified. Your mind, he says, it is broken.
I can't help but laugh. That's what a former boyfriend
told me. It is a virus. It sticks, it repeats.
He rubs his temples. I can hear it echoing in
the ether. Tell me why stop it? It is interrupting
the contemplation. Then let me go. I say, I don't
fit here. I'm noise, I'm chaos. I'm ruining your vibe.
The envoy looks at the other lords. They look terrified.
The sanctity of their silence is crumbling under the assault
of late nineties pop. Go, he says, finally, walk far away,
leave the circle. Can I have a snack? Go? I
walk away? I don't run. I walk, humming the back
Street Boys, and I watch the beautiful, terrifying fay Lord
flinch with every step. I reach the edge of the
clearing and step into the woods. The trees here are silver,
the leaves purple. It's breathtakingly beautiful. I find a stream,
purple water naturally and sit on a rock, real rock, hard, uncomfortable, solid.
I miss here. I miss his warmth, his scent, the
way he looks at me like I'm the only thing
in the world. I miss the pack. I even miss
Malcolm and his terrifying eyebrows. But I'm not helpless. I
look at the stream. Okay, hollo, I whisper. You want stillness,
you want silence, You pick the wrong girl. I pick
up a rock and throw it into the water. Splash,
ripples spread outward, disturbing the perfect reflection of the strange,
violet sky. If they think the Backstreet Boys are bad,
wait until they hear baby Shark. I'm going to be
the worst guess they've ever had. The Shadows swear the
light one stood sullenly whispers in the n The winded cries.
It calls a man a fleeting ancles signals chosen fre