Speaker 1: Hello there, I'm your storyteller for tonight. Take a slow
breath in through your nose and gently let it out.
Let your shoulders soften, let your hands rest. You've arrived
in a quiet moment, and you don't need to do
anything at all. You are safe, You are welcome. Here
tonight we'll drift into a gentle world, one shaped by
calm and soft imagination. Let your breath steady, let your
thoughts grow lighter, settle in, and allow the story to begin.
The rain had been falling for hours, a soft and
steady curtain that wrapped the little coastal town in gray
and silver. Each drop a small tap on the quiet
skin of the sea, each tap a gentle sound against
the window of a single lighted room above the shoreline.
Inside that room, the world was small and calm. A
wooden desk, a simple chair, a bed with a familiar
blanket folded back, a lamp that poured a warm circle
of light over paper and pen. Beyond the glass, the
ocean moved in slow, deep breaths, hidden behind mist and rain.
Lena sat by the window, her hands resting on an
old notebook. Her gaze turned toward the dark line where
the sky met the water. She had come to this
town because of the sea, because of a story that
lived beneath it, a story the world called a myth,
and that some part of her quietly believed was a memory.
The rain was the gentle kind that never rushed. It
slid down the glass in thin, bright lines, gathered in
tiny rivers along the frame, and landed on the window
sill with a soft ticking rhythm. In that rhythm, Lena
heard more than weather. She heard the steady, patient voice
of the ocean, speaking in drops and waves. There was
a book open on her desk, its pages worn and
cream colored. A drawing spread across the center. The drawing
showed a city arranged in perfect circles, three rings of land,
three rings of water, a pattern that looked almost like
the ripples from a single rain drop hitting a still pool.
Bridges arched across the canals, thin and bright, the lines
of them so delicate that they almost seemed to tremble
with light. Atlantis, the words sat at the top of
the page in faded ink. Beneath it, someone long ago
had written that this city had once stood at the
edge of the world, that its beauty had rival the heavens,
that its people had walked through streets of stone and
silver and believed themselves favored and save. Lena ran one
finger tip slowly along the circle of the outer canal.
She imagined water shimmering there in the sun, imagined boats
gliding in silence, imagined voices rising in markets and plazas,
all of it bright and alive above the surface of
the sea. Once upon a distant day, Now the world,
said Atlantis, slept under the waves. If it had ever
stood at all, it would be only stone and shadow
in the deep, the memory of a memory, the echo
of a story told too many times. Yet this night
did not feel like a night for endings. It felt
like a night for a door opening, very quietly, where
no one else was watching. Outside, the rain thickened for
a moment, then softened again, like breath. The wind brushed
against the walls of the house, not harsh, just present, steady.
The scent of salt and wet stone reached through the
window frame, the ocean breathing in and out just beyond
the glass. Lena closed the book, but the image of
the city did not leave her. She still saw the
three bright rings of water, the streets like threads between them,
the Great Temple at the center, its towers rising above
all else. In her mind, the temple did not blaze
with fire or harsh light. It glowed with a soft,
pale shimmer, the way moonlight spreads across calm water. She
had read every version of the legend. She could find
tales of pride and power, of kings and gods of anger,
and storms of the sea rising to claim what had
forgotten humility. But tonight she was not interested in the
noise of those stories. Tonight she was listening for something quieter,
not the fall of Atlantis, but the way it might
still rest beneath the waves, peaceful, now unhurried, part of
the deep. There were whispers in old sailor journals, lines
that most readers skipped, single sentences tucked between talk of
currents and stars, Sailors who claimed that on some nights,
when the rain fell in a certain calm and the
sea was neither wild nor still, they felt that there
was something below them, something that watched with no malice,
something that remembered sunlight and song. Those were the lines
Leaner had chased from harbor to harbor, life library to library,
until they had led her here, to this coast, to
this small rented room above the tide, to this particular night,
When rain touched both the window and the wide surface
of the ocean in the same unbroken rhythm. She leaned
back in her chair and let her shoulders soften. The
day behind her grew distant, The details of travel and
errans slid into the edges of her awareness, unimportant. Now
there was only the lamp, the notebook, the sea, and
the sound of the rain. Far off, a low roll
of thunder moved across the horizon, not sharp, not close,
just a deep, quiet note that seemed to come from
the belly of the world. It passed, leaving behind an
even greater sense of stillness, as if the sky had
exhaled and decided to rest. Watched a single droplet form
at the top of the glass. It gathered slowly, pulling
smaller beads toward itself until it grew too heavy to cling.
Then it slipped downward in a smooth, clear line, tracing
a path from the top of the pane to the bottom.
For a moment, the shape of that falling drop reminded
her of a descent through water, steady, controlled, inevitable, she imagined,
following that motion past the glass, through the air, down
into the dark surface of the sea, letting the cold
embrace of the water fold around her. No fear, just
the feeling of being held supported from every side, drifting downward,
while the world above faded into a softer and softer murmur.
Somewhere inside her, a thought stirred, Gentle and sure to
night is the night, not because of any sign written
in the sky, but because her breath had finally slowed enough,
her mind had finally grown quiet enough, her heart had
finally become soft enough to listen not to the old
stories of anger and ruin, but to the silent city itself.
The room around her seemed to lean into the hush.
The lamp hung faintly, the pages of the notebook waited,
blank and patient. The bed stood ready with its promise
of rest. There was nothing to do nowhere to be,
nothing to fix or prove. Only this rain, this sea,
this waiting. If you find comfort in slow nights like this,
in gentle stories that drift across the water and help
you rest, you can let yourself return to them whenever
you wish. You can choose to follow more sleeps stories
like this to keep them close for other evenings when
your mind feels too full. But for now you do
not need to make any decision at all. You only
need to breathe, to listen, and to let your body
grow heavier against the place where you rest. Lena rose
from the chair and crossed to the bed, each step unhurried,
the floor cool beneath her feet. She set the notebook
on the small table by the headboard, turned down the
lamp until the room was washed in soft gold dimness,
then lay back and let the mattress hold her weight.
Rain traced new pathways along the window, lines of silver
against the dark. Outside, the sea moved in long, slow swells.
Inside her breath began to match that rhythm, in and out,
in and out, like waves reaching the shore and slip
away again. She let her eyes close, not forcing sleep,
simply allowing the pictures that waited behind her eyelids to
step forward. First the impression of circles overlapping and expanding
like ripples from a stone dropped into a perfectly still pool.
Then the faint outline of towers, arches, canals filled not
with storm and foam, but with clear, still water. That
caught and softened every fragment of light. The story of Atlantis,
the one she had heard as a child, was loud
and heavy, filled with warnings and raised voices. The version
that brushed against her now was the opposite. It was
a story of quiet ruins resting under miles of water,
of streets no longer crowded, of plazas where only drifting
fish pass by, Of a temple that no longer reached
for the favor of the sky, but simply stood, calm
and surrendered, adapted to the deep. The deeper leaner sank
into that vision, the more the sounds of the room
blended and faded. The rain against the window became distant,
like a memory of rain. The low hum of the
lamp dissolved into a kind of underwater silence, thick and gentle.
The steady beat of her heart slowed and spread out,
each pulse a soft echo in her chest. Somewhere between
waking and sleep, she felt the first true shift, as
if the mattress beneath her had become buoyant, as if
the air itself had grown denser and kinder, supporting her
the way water supports the body of a swimmer. Who
has finally stopped fighting the tide and chosen instead to
float in that space where thought no longer rushed, and
worry had loosened its hold. The boundary between her room
and the world beneath the sea grew thin. The simple
sounds of rain and breath wove themselves into something else,
something older, an invitation perhaps, or a welcome, offered not
in words, but in the slow glowing image of a
city that waited in the dark Atlantis, she thought not
as a question, but as a quiet recognition, and in
that moment, the circles in her mind seemed to settle
into place. Three rings of land, three rings of water,
a pattern of stone and canal that had outlived pride,
outlived story, and now existed only as a gentle resting
place at the bottom of the ocean. As her body
relaxed further, heavy and warm beneath the blanket, Lena felt
herself begin to move, not in any sharp or sudden way,
but in the same slow, drifting motion as a single
rain drop, leaving the top of the window and sliding
down toward the sill, a steady descent deeper and deeper,
toward the quiet heart of the sea, toward the sleeping
city that waited there in the dark, calm and unafraid.
And as she drifted, the night above, with its rain
and its distant thunder, shifted into the softest of backdrops,
a distant ceiling of sound, while the world below opened,
patient and welcoming, ready to show itself, one slow, shimmering
detail at a time. The first thing that changed was
the feeling of the bed beneath her. It did not vanish,
it did not tilt. It simply began to feel less
like solid ground and more like something that floated, a
quiet raft on a slow movement tide. Lena did not
open her eyes. There was no need. The room was
already imprinted in her mind, the shape of the lamp,
the line of the window, the soft fold of the
blanket around her. Instead, she let her awareness lean toward
the sounds, toward the rain and the breath and the
distant sea. The rain kept its steady rhythm on the glass,
patient and smaller, but there was a moment when the
sound of it seemed to stretch, as if each drop
drew a longer line down the window than it had before,
as if gravity had softened and the path of water
was no longer a single straightfall, but the beginning of
a journey downward and inward. Her breath matched that, lengthening
each inhale a little deeper, each exhale a little slower.
The edges of her body felt less sharp, more like
something outlined in faint light, as if she were a
figure sketched on the air rather than laid out on
a mattress. The heaviness of the blanket became a comforting
weight that held her in place, even as everything else
began to drift. In the space behind her closed eyes,
the darkness was not empty. It held a dim glow,
the faintest suggestion of blue and green, not bright, not fixed,
but slowly moving, like light passing through deep water. It
shifted and rolled, carrying quiet shapes that were not yet clear,
hints of arches and towers and wide flat stones that
waited below. There was no sensation of falling, no rush
of air. Instead, there was the feeling of sinking, the
way a leaf sinks, turning a little, swaying a little
without hurry, guided by a current so gentle that they
were almost impossible to feel. Lena understood on some deep
level that she was still lying safe in her bed,
and at the same time that she was also somewhere else,
moving slowly down through a different kind of night above her.
In that other place, the surface of the sea received
the rain, each drop a tiny ring of disturbance that
spread and faded. From beneath, Those rings would look like
soft tremors of light, overlapping circles of brightness that shivered
and then smoothed, the way she imagined watching that pattern
from below, like watching the sky breathe through the water.
The deeper she drifted, the more the sounds of the
room blurred. The tap of rain, the sigh of wind,
the hum of the lamp, all of it softened until
it felt like a single distant tone, a low kind
humming that asked nothing of her. Under that hum, a
new quiet began to emerge, the thick, embracing silence of depth,
where sound travels differently and every movement is slow. Color
gathered in the dark, building itself in patient layers, first
a dusky blue, then a green touched with gray, then
thin shafts of pale light that pierced downward from somewhere
high above the last traces of day that had followed
her under the surface, those shafts did not cut, they caressed,
laying gentle patterns on stones and sand. Far below. Lena
could not feel cold, only support. It was as if
the water around her had chosen exactly the right temperature
to encourage her muscles to loosen, her jaw to unclenched,
her hands to relax. There was no pressure in her ears,
no sting in her eyes. This was not the water
of storms or struggle. This was the water of a
dream that wanted her to stay as comfortable as she
had been under her blanket. Shapes began to move around her,
small at first, shadows that flexed and narrowed and widened,
then resolved into fish, gliding past their bodies, slim and
quiet scales, catching enough of the faint light to flicker gently.
They did not dart, They did not flee. They drifted
with the same unhurried calm that carried her, as if
her presence was nothing strange to them, just another piece
of the deep settling into place. There were strands of
underwater plants as well, long and soft, rising from the
unseen floor and swaying in a hidden current. Their movement
was like breathing slow bend, slow rise, slow, bend again.
At their tips, tiny bubbles sometimes formed and broke away,
floating upward in clear little beads that glimmered as they
rose toward the surface. Lena had left behind every now
and then, Far above and far away, there was a faint,
deep roll, the echo of thunder, traveling through miles of water.
By the time it reached her, it was only a
gentle vibration in the bones, a reminder that the world
above still existed, that rain was still touching the waves,
that the night sky was still there watching over the sea.
As she drifted, Lina became aware of something more than
just a downward movement. There was a slight pull in
a particular direction, not strong, not urgent, but steady, the
way a tide can nudge a swimmer, almost without their notice.
She let herself lean into that pull, trusting that it
was part of whatever this night had chosen to show her.
The faint glow ahead of her grew broader, no longer
just scattered strokes of light, but a soft, luminous haze
that seemed to rest on the floor of the sea.
The water between her and that glow felt clear and still.
The distance, closing at a pace so gradual it felt
almost like standing still. Yet detail slowly came forward, lines
and curves emerging from the blur. First she saw the
suggestion of circles, wide arcs that curved out of the
murk and then back again. Not random formations of rock,
but deliberate apes, too smooth and too regular to be
anything but made. Their edges were softened by time and water,
but the intension behind them was still there. Three broad
rings at different depths, each separated by a channel of
darker blue. As she came closer, those rings sharpened into
land and canal, bands of pale stone with flat tops,
and between them, water that was calmer even than the
sea above, protected by the height of the carved banks.
On the surfaces of those canals there were reflections not
of sky, but of structures that rose from the rings themselves,
towers and columns and long, low buildings, all rendered in
muted tones of silver and white. The city of Circles
waited in silence. It did not glow with harsh brilliance.
It did not flash or flare. Its light came from
the way the stone caught what little brightness traveled down
from the surface and bent it, held it, passed it along.
It was a city that had learned how to exist
in twilight, how to be enough without reaching for more.
Lena felt her drifting slow as she neared the outer ring.
There was no wall to break through, no barrier, only
a gradual settling, until it seemed that her feet, or
whatever part of her this dream used. As feet touched
a broad stone walkway. The sensation was as gentle as
stepping onto sand at the edge of an incoming tide,
firm enough to hold, soft enough to comfort. She stood
at the border of the first canal. The water beside
her was so clear that she could see the bottom
with smooth stones and patterned with the shapes of ancient carvings,
faded by time and covered in a thin layer of
pale silt. Small fish moved along those patterns like strokes
of living ink, tracing paths older than any story she
had ever read. Across the canal, the first ring of
Atlantis rose a band of architecture shaped by hands that
believed deeply in order and balance. Buildings stood in rows
that curved with the circle, each structure facing inward toward
the heart of the city. Their walls bore the colour
of old bone and moonlit marble, softened in tone by
the water. Their edges rounded where countless years had passed
over them. There were arches over doorways, tall and welcoming.
There were windows without glass, openings that once might have
looked out over busy streets and distant horizons. Now they
framed only the rippling blue of the surrounding sea, and
the faint shimmer of drifting particles that caught the weak
light and turned it into slow falling stars. The bridges
that joined the rings together arched high above the canals,
slender spans of stone that looked almost too delicate to endure,
Yet they had survived. Every line of them spoke of care,
of artistry, of a desire to bind separate circles into
one hole. Their undersides were lined with carvings that only
the water and the creatures beneath would ever see, patterns
of waves and scrolls, and stylized dolphins that swam along
a path etched into stone. There was no sign of
ruin in the way a storm would leave it, no
jagged brakes, no torn edges. Instead, there was a gentle
wearing down, as though the sea had spent centuries smoothing
every surface, taking away sharpness and leaving only rounded corners,
softened reliefs, columns that had bent slightly rather than snapped.
This was not destruction. It was transformation. Indignation turned into surrender,
and then into peace. Lena moved along the path by
the canal, each step sending a faint puff of silt
into the water, which settled back again like dust in
a quiet room. Her movements felt natural, unhurried. The dream
did not weigh her down or tuggert her. The city
did not resist her presence. It accepted her in the
same way it accepted the currants and the fish and
the soft fall of time. She became aware as she
walked of a feeling that did not come from her
own thoughts. It was not a voice, not words, but
a kind of awareness around her, the sense that the
stones were not empty, that they held the memory of
footsteps and voices, of music and laughter, and also of silence,
long long stretches of silence, until this night, when a
single quiet mind had drifted close enough to listen. If
anyone had asked her on the surface whether the city
of Atlantis was real, Lena would have offered caveats and conclusions.
She would have spoken about myth and metaphor, about the
way stories reveal more about the tellers than about any
one place. Here in the deep, those questions no longer mattered.
The city was real enough in this moment. She could
see it, could sense it, feel the rhythm of its
circles echoing in the pattern of her own breath. At
the edge of the first ring there was a wide
stone platform from which several bridges sprang outward toward the
inner circles. It felt like a crossroads, a place where
many paths once met. She paused there, letting her gaze
travel over the view ahead. Beyond the next canal, the
second ring gleamed faintly, and beyond that, faintest of all
lay the third ring and the central island, where the
taller structures rose. The temple at the heart of Atlantis
did not tower with arrogance, not anymore. Its upper levels
were softened by the sea, its once sharp corners wrapped
in gentle growth, But its shape still carried grace. Its
columns still lifted upward in a slow, steady rise. It
was not a hand reaching out for favor. It was
more like a pair of hands held open, ready to
receive whatever light still filtered down from distant surface. Between
where Lena stood and that central island was distance, but
not the kind that needed to be crossed quickly. This
was a journey meant to unfold gradually, each step an
invitation to notice one more detail, one more pattern carved
into stone, one more glimmer of the life that now
inhabited this place. In quiet harmony, she looked down into
the canal again. The water there seemed deeper than the
outer channel, the color shifting into a richer blue. Something
in that depth drew her gaze inward. She saw not
just her own reflection, but the faint mirroring of the
city above, towers stretching upside down toward the darker sand bridges,
forming bright arcs that echoed the ones overhead, Atlantis reflected
within Atlantis, circle within circle. The pull that had guided
her down from the surface was still there, gentle and patient,
and now it seemed to be centred somewhere beyond the
next bridge, toward the inner rings, toward the heart of
the city, where the temple waited. She did not feel commanded,
She felt invited, welcomed, by a place that had known
both noise and stillness, and had chosen in the end
to rest behind her somewhere far above. The rain continued
its quiet fall on the ocean, each drop adding another
tiny ring to the surface. Those rings sent their faint
patterns of light downward, and in the slow moving water
above the outer ring of Atlantis, they arrived as soft,
trembling shadows, as if the sky itself were knocking gently
on the door of the deep. Lena took a breath
that felt both like the cool air of her small
room and the dense calm of the water around her,
and then she stepped toward the nearest bridge, the stone
under her feet steady and sure, the city ahead waiting
in patient silence, ready to show her, step by slow step,
how a place once filled with power and pride could
become a sanctuary of quiet and peace. At the bottom
of the sea. The bridge rose in a slow and
gentle arc above the canal, its stone worn smooth by
water and time. As Lena stepped onto it, she felt
the faintest lift in her body, as if the dream
itself wanted her to notice the space opening up around her.
Beneath her, the water lay clear and deep. It did
not rush, it did not churn. It held the reflections
of the city like a second world. The bright lines
of the bridge curved in the surface below, mirroring the
curve under her feet. Here and there a fish passed
through that reflection, its body briefly breaking the picture into ripples,
before the image settled again. From the highest point of
the bridge, she could see more of Atlantis at once,
the three circles spreading outward beneath the gentle blue haze,
the outer ring where she had first arrived, the second
ring that waited ahead, and beyond them, the central island,
with its temple and tall columns. Soft light rested on
every surface, not the harsh light of noon, but something
closer to the glow just before dusk, the kind that
makes every edge gentler and every color deeper. The feeling
that the city was aware of her did not fade.
It remained a quiet presence, not in any single stone
or tower, but in the whole pattern of rings and canals.
It felt as if the place itself was breathing with her,
slow and even its circles rising and falling, just as
her chest did when she drew in and released each
calm breath. She reached the far side of the bridge
and stepped down onto the second ring. The walkway here
was broader, lined on one side by the canal and
on the other by a slow curve of buildings. These
structures stood closer together than those on the outer ring.
Their walls leaned in as if listening, as if they
had once watched long lines of people pass between them,
and now remembered those days with a softened kind of fondness.
The fronts of the buildings were decorated with shallow carvings
scenes cut into the stone, worn but still visible. Lena
traced one with her eyes. It showed a group of
figures around a long table. Baskets of fruit piled high
cups raised a sense of celebration preserved in the curve
of arms and the tilt of heads. Another panel nearby
showed boats drawn up to a harbor, their sails furled,
their hulls lined with goods, a market by the sea,
busy and bright in a time long gone. Here and there,
thin strands of sea plants grew from cracks in the carvings,
their fronds waving gently over the stone. Figures, sometimes hiding
a face, sometimes revealing it again. The contrast did not
feel like ruin. It felt like two lives share in
the same space, the life that had been and the
life that was now, layered one over the other in
quiet balance. As Lena walked on the street narrowed and
widened in a soft rhythm, leading her inward. The ground
beneath her feet had been laid with large flat stones,
many of them etched with patterns that repeated the circles
of the city itself, small rings within larger rings, designs
that drew the eye toward the center, as if each
step along this path was part of a long movement
toward the heart of something important and calm. For a moment,
as she passed between two taller buildings, the water around
her seemed to change. The light thickened and shifted, and
in that change, she felt a faint echo of sound
that was not the distant rain, and not her own breath.
It was like the memory of voices softened by time,
the rise and fall of speech without any clear words,
the murmur of people once going about their lives. Here,
the echo did not frighten her. It felt warm, familiar,
like overhearing a conversation in a cafe where everyone is
at ease, the sense of many lives woven together in
ordinary days, buying bread, sharing stories, laughing quietly in shaded doorways,
all of it gently folded now into the calm fabric
of the sea. She glanced toward one of the open
arches that led into a side courtyard. Inside a set
of steps descended into a small, sunken space. Around it
grows low walls, their tops lined with shallow bowls carved
from the same pale stone. Once, perhaps they had held
water or flowers. Now they held only smooth sand and
the occasional shell placed there by the slow, careful work
of currants and tides. From the courtyard floor, a tree
had grown long ago, its trunk now a softened, hollow shape,
draped in underwater vines. Small fish moved in and out
of the spaces between the roots, claiming it as shelter.
The ghost of green leaves that had once brushed the
air was now replaced by leaves of sea grass that
flowed upward like strands of hair, shimmering faintly as they swayed.
Lay a step back into the main path, and felt
again that gentle pool always in inward, always toward the
center ring and the temple. Yet the city did not
rush her. It seemed to offer each small site as
a gift, a reminder that Atlantis had not only been
a place of kings and gods, but also a home
to people who woke up each morning and moved through
its streets with simple human routines. She reached another bridge,
narrower than the first, its balustrade carved with repeating patterns
of waves and shells. Her hand brushed along the top,
feeling the softened edges where the sea had rounded every
sharp angle. The stone beneath her fingertips felt cool and smooth,
as if it held a memory of wind from a
day when this place had still stood above the water.
Crossing into the innermost ring, she noticed the change at once.
The buildings here were fewer and set farther apart, the
spaces between them wider, filled with open walkways and platforms.
The architecture lifted itself, more columns rising from broad bases
supporting roofs that had once shone with metals, now dulled
by the deep. The feeling of this place was quiet,
but also intentional, as if the builders had known that
this circle would hold the most sacred parts of their world.
In the near distance, the main plaza spread out in
a vast, shallow bowl of stone, edges gently sloping upward,
as if cradling the space. At the far side of
that plaza stood the Great Temple, its steps broad and low,
inviting a slow approach, Its front lined with tall columns
that braced the weight of a roof. Still mostly intact,
the structure did not loom. It watched, patient and still.
Before Lena stepped toward that plaza, she paused to take
in some of the details. Nearby, on one raised platforms
stood a collection of statues arranged in a wide semicircle,
their forms softened and blurred, but their posture still full
of quiet strength. Each figure faced the center of the semicircle,
where a single empty space remained, perhaps once holding another statue,
now lost to the sea, or perhaps always left open,
a place for the unseen or the unknown. The faces
of the figures were worn, yet their expressions had not
turned harsh. There was no trace of anger in the
tilt of their heads, only a kind of steady watchfulness.
Some held objects in their hands, a staff, a scroll,
a simple bowl. Others rested their hands at their sides.
The stone of their garments fell in long, calm lines,
the folds softened by water into smooth flows. Lena's sensed
that these were the remembered children of the old stories, rulers, guardians,
or teachers, once given names and tales of power. Now
simply part of the city itself, they no longer reached
for glory. They stood as markers of a time that
had passed. Accepting the gentle touch of passing fish and
drifting light as their only visitors, she moved past them
and on to the edge of the central plaza. The
floor here was made of large tiles, each one engraved
with concentric circles. When she stepped onto them, the patterns
seemed to mirror the slow expansion of her breath and
its soft return inhale, the circles widening exhale, the circle
drawing inward over and over in a rhythm that the
city seemed to share. At the center of the plaza
was a low, circular basin, long since filled with sand
and small stones. A few delicate shells rested there, carried
in by the water and left in quiet arrangement. Once
this basin might have held clear water that mirrored the sky.
Now it held pieces of the seafloor, as if the
ocean had offered its own tribute to the place. Around
the basin and along the edges of the plaza grew
new gardens of the deep, not planted by human hands,
but by currents and time. Fronds of seaweed rose and
fell with unseen tides. Clusters of soft coral clung to
cracks in the stone, their shapes rounded and intricate. Tiny
creatures moved among them, each following its own small path,
together forming a living tapestry over the sleeping city. The
rain above, though far away, continued to send its message downward,
very faint, now, like the softest tapping on a distant roof,
its rhythm filtered through miles of water and stone. The
sound had become more feeling than noise, a delicate vibration
in the background. It blended with the silence of the
plaza in a way that made the whole place feel
held within a larger calm, the calm of ocean and sky. Together.
Lena stood at the edge of that basin and let
herself be still. Her body relaxed, her thoughts slow and uncomplicated.
She felt no need to hurry toward the temple steps.
She knew that the night would give her whatever she
needed to see, and that nothing here demanded effort from her.
The city asked only that she be present, that she
look and listen and breathe. In need stillness, a different
kind of memory rose, not her own, but something the
city carried. She did not see it as a sharp vision.
She felt it as warmth in the stone beneath her feet,
as the slight brightening of the space around her. She
since days when this plaza had been filled footsteps, voices,
the rustle of cloth, the ring of tools, the low
murmur of prayer spoken in groups and alone. Yet even
in those long ago, busy days, there must have been
moments like this, quiet hours before dawn or after dusk,
when the crowds had gone and some one had stood
here on their own, the city at rest, the sea
beyond the walls breathing its endless breath, a single person
listening to some thing only they could hear. In that thought,
Lena found a thread that tied her to those distant lives,
a simple human wish for peace and a place to
stand still. She turned at last toward the temple. The
wide steps waited, each one shallow and open, inviting a slow,
measured ascent. The columns at the top rows like tall
trees in a very old forest, their surfaces banded with
the marks of time, streaks where minerals had settled, places
where small creatures had made their homes, all of it
softened by the blue and green wash of the water.
With each step she took upward, the plaza below spread
out a little more beneath her, the circles of the tiles,
the ring of the basin, the gentle drift of the
underwater gardens. She could see the outer rings now as well,
the lines of buildings, the arc of bridges, the channels
of water that connected every part of the city. It
was as if Atlantis itself had curled into a single,
great pattern and offered it to her view, a quiet
map of what it had been and what it had become.
By the time she reached the top of the stairs,
she felt as if she had walked through not only
a place, but also through a long, slow understanding. Pride
had lived here once, ambition too, Yet those things had
ebbed away like a tide that goes out and does
not return. What remained was a softness, a willingness to rest.
The city no longer reached upward. It simply existed, balance
between memory and the present calm of the sea. The
entrance to the temper open before her, a wide, dark
doorway framed by two massive columns. The space within was
filled with a deeper shade of blue, a cool and
welcoming shadow. There was no sense of threat in it,
only the promise of greater stillness, a more intimate quiet
than the open plaza could hold. Lena stood at the
threshold for a moment, feeling the slow movement of the
water around her, the gentle weight of the deep, the
distant beating of her own heart. Each sound and sensation
softened and stretched, inviting her to let go of one
more layer of tension, one more bit of weight she
no longer needed to carry. Then, drawn by the same
patient pull that had brought her here from the surface,
she stepped forward into the Temple of Atlantis, into the
heart of the sleeping city, where whatever remained of its
oldest truths waited in silence, ready to reveal themselves in
the slow and peaceful language of stone and water and light.
The light inside the temple was softer than the light outside.
As Lena stepped through the wide doorway, it felt as
if she were moving from dusk into the first calm
moments of night. The water here was still, the shadows deeper,
the colours muted into gentle shades of blue and gray.
Tall columns rose on either side of her. They were
thicker than the ones in the plaza. The carvings on
their surfaces cut a little deeper, as if the builders
had wanted every line to last, even under the weight
of years, and waves, spirals, waves, circles, patterns that echoed
the shape of the city itself, winding upward from the
floor to the unseen tops of the pillars. The floor
beneath her feet was cool and smooth, made of wide
slabs of stone, fitted so precisely together that even the
sea had not found many places to slip through. Faint
lines of glowing moss had grown along some of the seams,
tracing out delicate paths of pale green light. Those thin
lines guided her forward, like small, gentle constellations laid down
at her feet. The sound here was different, too, The
distant hum of the ocean outside was softened by the
thick walls. It became a low, steady tone that wrapped
around the room, deep and reassuring. Her own footsteps seemed
to vanish as soon as she took them, leaving no echo,
only the sense of movement, of drifting further inward. As
her eyes adjusted to the dimness, more details began to appear.
Along the walls. On either side were long panels carved
in relief, scenes laid out in a slow, unfolding story
time caught in stone. The first panels showed the city
as it might have been in its early days, Streets
busy with figures, boats on the canals, towers rising under
a bright sky. The carved figures were simple, but their
movements held a quiet joy. People carrying baskets, speaking to
one another, children chasing each other near the water, workers
shaping stone at the edge of a new building, their
tools raised mid swing. There was no rush in them,
no sense of strain. The lines of their bodies suggested balance,
a life woven around the rhythm of tides and seasons.
In the next panel, the buildings were taller, more ornate,
the figures more decorated, cloaks jewelry symbols of rank and wealth.
The markets were fuller, the harbor more crowded, ships with
high prows, sails spread even in the shallow canals, a
feeling of growth and reach, the city leaning outward, seeking more,
wanting more. The third panels shifted again. The figures at
the center were larger, now standing above the others on
raised platforms, hands lifted, eyes turned not toward the sea,
but toward the sky. Their garments weighed down with carved
patterns of gold and silver behind them. The city spread wider,
its edges pressing against the frame of the stone itself,
as if there were not enough room to contain it.
Lena stepped closer, her hand hover in just above the
cool surface. She did not touch, but she followed the
lines with her gaze. The expressions on the smaller figures
around the grand ones had changed. It was a subtle thing,
but she felt it. Shoulders drawn a bit tighter, heads
bowed more deeply, bodies angled away instead of toward, as
if the weight of all that wealth and power had
begun to bend them. There was no judgment carved into
the stone, no harsh lines or broken shapes, only a
gradual shift, panel by panel, from open balance to something
crowded and strained. The story did not shout, It simply
showed one image after another, how a city could move
from harmony to hunger without noticing the moment it crossed
the line. Further along, another panel displayed the sky darkened
over the towers, clouds carved in heavy folds, the sea
drawn with taller waves, The figures smaller now, their arms
spread as if reaching out. But it was not the
chaos of panic that filled the scene. It was something quieter,
a realization, perhaps a late understanding, that the world they
had assumed would always hold them was changing its mind.
The last panel did not show destruction. There were no
broken towers, no shattered walls. Instead, it showed the city
already underwater, not in mid plunge, but settled, the tops
of buildings peeking through a calm surface, fish moving slowly
between the arches, Plants beginning to grow along the stones,
light filtering through in soft beams. The figures were gone,
only their work remained, offered gently to the deep. Leaner
felt a looseness in her chest as she looked at
that final scene. The story carved along the wall. Was
not one of punishment in the loud, angry sense she
had heard in so many retellings. It was something else.
It was the story of a place that had climbed
too high and then been asked to rest. Not in
fire but in water, not in noise, but in quiet.
She realized that she had been holding her breath without
meaning to. Somewhere between the panels of growth and the
panels of weight. She exhaled slowly, now, the air of
her small room and the water of this dream deep
mixing in one long release. With it went a thin
thread of tension she had not known. She carried, the
kind that whispers that one must always strive, always reach,
always prove. The Temple did not press that story on her.
It let her stand and take from it what she
was ready to see. Atlantis in this place was not
a warning shouted across ages. It was a reminder, spoken
in a low, calm voice, that nothing is meant to
climb forever, That even the brightest cities, the busiest minds,
the most driven hearts need nights when they sink back
down and rest. She turned from the wall and walked
further into the hall. At its center stood a wide
circular space, open and empty. The floor there was slightly
lower than the rest, forming a shallow bowl. Around its
rim More columns rose arranged in a ring that echoed
the circles of the city outside. Above them, the ceiling
curved gently, barely visible in the blue shadow, like the
inside of a giant shell. In the middle of that bowl,
there was a raised platform, simple and round, its surface smooth,
not carved, not gilded, not decorated, a single piece of
stone that seemed to have been polished mostly by time.
Lena approached it and felt a strange familiarity, as if
she had seen something like this before, not in any
book about Atlantis, but in quiet places of her own life.
Benches in empty chapels, stones beside lonely paths, spots with
the world. Seemed to invite a pause. She did not
climb onto the platform. She sat at its edge, instead,
lowering herself slowly until she was settled, with her feet
tucked beneath her, her hands resting loosely in her lap.
The water around her moved with a daintest of currents,
brushing past her, like the soft fabric of a curtain
stirred by a barely open window. From this position, the
temple felt different, less grand, more intimate. The columns no
longer loomed. They framed, The carved panels along the walls
joined into a single flowing story. The distant hum of
the sea smoothed into a steady, soothing sound. She could
feel the weight of the city above and around her,
not as a burden, but as a gentle presence, a
structure that had learned in the hardest possible way how
to be still. Thoughts of her own world rose in
her mind then, not sharply, not with the speed of
daytime worries, but slowly, like bubbles rising from the sea floor.
She saw the long days she had filled with research
in late night, the deadlines she had pressed herself against,
the quiet pressure she carried to make something meaningful, important, impressive.
Up there, above the waves and the rain, people built
their own cities of obligation, towers of plans and expectations,
circles of busyness that spun faster and faster. It was
easy to believe that value lived only in reaching higher,
doing more being seen. Yet here under miles of water
lay proof that even the most dazzling achievements could come
to rest, and that rest itself was not a failure,
but a different kind of completion. Lena let those images
drift through her and then drift away. She did not
cling to them. She did not try to sort or
solve them. The temple did not ask her to. This
was not a place fixing. It was a place of surrender,
a place where the story of too much reaching had
already been written, and the result was this vast, quiet peace.
She realized that in every version of the Atlantis story
she had read, the focus had always been on the fall,
On the moment the sea rose and the island vanished.
No one had spoken about what came after, about the
centuries in which the city lay under the waves, its
sharp edges smoothed, its noise gone, its pride dissolved, its
stones adopted by the ocean, until what remained was not
a tale of ruin but a landscape of calm. That
was what she was seeing now, not disaster, but the long,
patient work of water, the way it had turned a
symbol of ambition into a cradle of quiet, a resting place,
a reminder that everything that tries to stand forever must
eventually lie down, and that there is grace in that
lying down, there is gentleness in letting go. Her shoulders
softened further, her spine relaxed. She felt heavier and lighter
at the same time, as if some invisible weight had
been lifted from her, while her body itself sank more
fully into the support beneath it. She could imagine returning
to the surface with this understanding tucked somewhere inside her,
a small, diffused light she could not quite put into words,
but could feel whenever the world tried to push her
into endless motion. Around the edges of the circular bowl,
tiny creatures had made their homes in the cracks of
the stone, small shells, shy anemonies, fine fans of coral.
None of them knew anything about the s that had
once stood here. They lived only in the present, quiet,
carried by currents, anchored to the places that felt safe.
Their lives simple and complete, no tower reaching, no temple rising,
just existence, gentle and unremarked. And that simplicity Lena found comfort.
She did not need to become like the rulers carved
in the earlier panels, draped in symbols and standing above crowds.
She did not need a place in the loudest stories.
She could be more like these small beings woven into
the soft corners of the world, adding a quiet color here,
a small motion there, and letting that be enough. The
temple around her seemed to breathe, not with lungs, but
with its structure, the columns, the ceiling, the open doorway
through which a faint flow of water passed in some
slow rhythm, perhaps tied to tides above or distant shifts
in the sea. That breathing continued, whether she noticed it
or not. It would continue when she left, just as
the rain above the ocean had been falling long before
she arrived. In her little room, she closed her eyes,
not to shut the temple out, but to sit more
deeply inside it. Inside this understanding of rise and rest,
her breath fell into step with the slow pulse of
the place, in and out, like the sea against a shore,
like circles expanding and contracting on a calm surface, like
a city that had once risen too high and now
lay quietly at peace. There was no voice that spoke
to her, no final great revelation, only the steady press
of Atlantis, not as a warning story, but as a
companion in stillness, a reminder that even the greatest structures
are allowed to stop, that the world does not end
when they do, that life flows on in different forms,
and that somewhere in all of this, rest is not
only permitted, it is necessary. Far above, the storm that
had once taken the city down had long ago passed.
The sea above it had seen countless other nights, countless
other rains. Those storms came and went, but the calm
that followed them endured, layer upon layer, until all that
remained was what she felt now, an abiding gentleness at
the bottom of everything. Lena let that gentleness reach her.
It moved through her like a slow tide, washing away
the last bits of hurry, the last trace of strain.
She did not need to achieve anything here. There was
no book to finish, no page to fill, no voice
to impress. There was only the quiet gift of sitting
with a place that had learned how to sleep. When
she opened her eyes again, the temple looked the same.
Yet it also seemed softer, as if the edges of
pillars and panels had blurred, a little, as if the
dream itself were beginning to thin, not hurriedly, but naturally.
The way night lightens toward morning, the way a tide
begins to turn. She knew without being told, that her
time in this deep hall was nearing its end, that
Atlantis had shared what it had to share, that the
story of its rise and rest had unfolded as far
as it needed to. In her mind, there was no
drama in this ending, only the simple next step, the
gentle beginning of her return. She rose slowly from the
edge of the platform, her movements unhurried. She took one
last look at the circle of the room, the columns,
the panels, the faint glowing moss along the floor, then
turned toward the doorway, the path back out into the
open water, and eventually back toward the surface, back toward
the rain and the little coastal town and the bed
waiting in the quiet room above the sea. As she moved,
she carried with her the quiet truth she had found here,
the knowledge that even in the deepest parts of the world,
there are places that have chosen peace after exhaustion, places
that have finally allowed themselves to sleep, and that she
too was allowed to do the same to night, under
the sound of the rain, wrapped in the gentle weight
of the dark As Lena stepped back toward the open doorway,
the water that filled the temple seemed to thin, not
in weight, but in presence. The shadows grew lighter, the
lines of the carved panels softened even more, as if
the place itself were beginning to withdraw into a deeper
layer of the dream. She paused for a moment at
the threshold, and looked once more into the circular hall,
the ring of columns, the smooth central stone, the quiet
story cut into the walls. It all fell distant and
close at the same time, like a memory she had
not lived, and yet now carried gently folded inside her.
Then she moved forward, and the water outside accepted her again.
The shift from deep interior to open space was as
smooth as stepping from one room to another. The dim
blue beyond the doorway brightened as she passed through. The
soft glow of the plaza opened ahead. The central tile
spread out beneath her, the engraved circle seeming to turn slowly,
not in motion but in meaning. What had once been
a grand, ceremonial space now lay quiet and unhurried, The
basin in the middle filled with sand and shells, the
underwater gardens swaying in their slow rhythm. Lena did not
feel as if she were leaving Somedon behind. She felt instead,
as if the temple were walking with her, the understanding
she had found there, moving at her side, her companion
rather than a place, a calm that would not vanish.
Just because she stepped away from stone and column she
crossed the plaza, Her steps light the water around her
a little brighter than before, as if some hint of
the surface were reaching farther down. The long fronds of
sea plants nodded as she passed. Fish slipped from shadow
to shadow, their small bodies catching the thin threads of
light and bending them into brief, quiet sparks. When she
reached the edge of the inner ring and stepped onto
the next bridge, she felt a change in the pool
that had brought her here. It did not vanish, but
it turned like a tide beginning to lean in a
new direction, no longer drawing her toward the center of
the city, but gently guiding her outward. She looked down
as she crossed the canal. The reflection of Atlantis lay
beneath her feet. Towers and arches and bridges mirrored in
the s still water. Yet the image looked softer now,
as if some of its edges had begun to blur.
The more she moved away from the temple, the more
the city seemed willing to settle back into its long rest.
On the second ring, the carved scenes along the buildings
waited as they had before, but Lena did not need
to study them again. She already carried their story, the
growing weight, the slow surrender, the final calm. Now she
simply walked past, letting her gaze rest on smaller details.
A shell tucked into the corner of a doorway, a
strand of sea grass wrapped around a railing, A school
of tiny fish tracing lazy circles over a worn step.
The echo of those old, crowded days had faded. The
murmur of voices, the footfalls, the clang of tools, all
of it now only the faintest suggestion, like the last
notes of music after they have already left the air.
What remained was the silence that follows, the silence that
is not empty but full of space. Another bridge rose
before her, leading back toward the outer ring. Its stone
rail curved in a way that reminded her of the
path of a distant shore, smooth and familiar. She placed
her hand on it as she climbed, the surface, cool
and reassuring, a single line of contact between her and
the long history of this place. From the highest point,
she looked back once more. The temple at the center
stood quiet and small in the distance, its columns like
gentle strokes of paint on a deep blue canvas. The
rings of the city spread outward from it, pale shaped
within the soft shadow of the water. Nothing here demanded attention,
nothing shouted. Everything simply existed, settled and at peace. She
knew that when she left, the city would not be lonely.
It did not need witnesses, It did not need believers.
It had the sea for company, and the slow passage
of time, and the quiet life of the creatures that
moved among its stones. This dream was not about claiming Atlantis.
It was about visiting a place that had already found
its rest, and learning for a while how that rest. Belt.
On the outer ring, the path where she had first stood,
awaited her. The canal beside it lay like a band
of glass. The buildings beyond softened into abstract shapes, more
suggestion than structure, as if the details were being gently
erased by distance and depth, leaving only circles in light
and shadow. The pool toward the surface grew a little
stronger now, though it remained patient. There was no sudden rush,
no upward drag, only a steady awareness that her time
here was drawing to an end, that the night above
was waiting, that the rain still fell, marking the hours
in its own quiet way. Lena paused at the edge
of the canal and looked down into its depth. The
bottom was harder to see now, the patterns on the
stones blurred, the fish drifting in and out of clarity.
She watched as one small shell, loosened by some tiny movement,
slid a little way down a slope and came to
rest again, a journey of only a few inches that
still felt like a complete story. She took a slow breath,
and in that breath, both worlds met the cool, dense
calm of the water around her, and the soft air
of a room where her body lay resting under a
familiar blanket. Her lungs did not know the difference. They
moved in the same slow rhythm, regardless, in and out,
in and out. Then as gently as she had descended
She began to rise, not with effort, not with swimming,
but with the same effortless motion that had brought her here,
the upward drift of a dream that has shown what
it meant to show, and now starts to carry the
dreamer home. The city beneath her grew smaller, its circles
drawing inward, the rings of land and water condensing into
one quiet pattern on the sea floor. She watched as
the temple became a pale shape, then suggestion, then a single,
soft mark, until at last Atlantis was only a notion
in the blue, a memory nestled at the bottom of
the deep Above. The water shifted from dark to lighter shades,
hints of green and gray reappearing. Thin columns of brightness
stretched downward from the surface, like paths of air, reaching
to meet her. The sound of distant thunder returned, a
low echo that traveled through the miles of water as
a gentle vibration, joining the steady hush of the sea.
The higher she rose, the clearer the surface became not
as a hard line, but as a brightening veil, where
the patterns of falling rain shimmered from the other side,
each drop creating a tiny bloom of silver light that
faded in an instant, replaced by another, and another, a constant,
soft flicker. She did not feel the moment she crossed through.
It was too smooth, too easily woven into the rhythm
of her breathing. One slow inhale in the deep, one
longer exhale in the space above. And then she was
no longer sinking in blue water, but resting again on
her bed in the small room above the sea, the
blanket around her, the mattress holding her, the rain against
the window. Nothing in the room had changed. The lamp
still cast its dim, warm glow. The note book still
waited on the small table. The window still held the
dark outline of the horizon. Yet everything felt a little different.
The air seemed softer, the shadows kinder, as if a
part of the peace from the city below had followed
her up and settled over the space. Her body was
heavy in the most pleasant way. Every muscle softened, every
bit of tension melted, her jaw loose, her hands resting
without effort, her feet warm and still. She did not
need to move, She did not need to reach for
the note book. The story of Atlantis could wait it
was safe inside her, now resting, just as the city
itself rested under the waves outside. The rain had become
a steady curtain. Each drop a tiny footstep on the
path of the night, walking calmly across the roof, along
the street. Over the surface of the sea. The sound
blended into a continuous, soothing murmur, a hush that seemed
to say the same quiet thing, over and over. You
can rest now, you can rest now. The ocean breathed
beyond the glass, slow and vast, its waves rolling in
and out with patient certainty, carrying all the stories of
ships and storms and lost cities and quiet mornings. And
yet in this moment it asked nothing of her. It
did not need her attention, It did not need her effort.
It was simply there, a great, calm presence at the
edge of her night. Lena let her thoughts drift like
small boats loosen from ashore. She did not chase them,
she did not follow each one. She let them move
out over the gentle surface of her mind until they
were too far away to see. What remained was not emptiness,
but a soft, white space where only breath and sound
and warmth existed. If you are listening now, lying in
your own room, you can borrow this feeling. You do
not need to hold the whole story. You do not
need to remember each detail of the city below. It
is enough to keep the sense of it, a quiet
place at the bottom of everything, where even the heaviest
thoughts and the tallest towers have permission to lie down
and sleep. You do not need to be a city
of light. You do not need to rise and impress
and shine not tonight. You are allowed to be like
Atlantis as it is now, resting under calm water, your
mind soft, your breath slow, your body held gently by
the surface beneath you, unquestioned, unhurried, completely safe. The rain
will keep falling, tapping softly against the window. The sea
will keep breathing, moving in long, even strokes beyond the shore.
The night will keep unfolding, hour after hour, whether you
are awake to see it or not. You are not
responsible for any of it. You are allowed to let go.
So you can feel your breath moving in and moving out.
You can feel the weight of your body sinking deeper
into the mattress or couch or chair where you rest.
You can feel the small anchor points of comfort, the
warmth around your shoulders, the softness beneath your hands, the
steady beat of your heart, slower now, calmer Now. The
city beneath the sea grows dim in your thoughts, It circles,
fading like ripples on a still pool, the temple at
its center, a single point of quiet light, then only
a feeling, then only a sense of deep, steady rest.
That rest is yours. Now you carry it, without needing
to see it, without needing to name it. Let your eyes,
if they are still open, grow heavy and close. Let
your breathings settle into an easy, natural rhythm. Let your
thoughts move farther apart, each one drifting away before the
next appears. Longer pauses, wider spaces, softer edges, the rain outside,
the ocean, beyond the room around you, your own slow breath.
They all join into one calm sound, one gentle presence,
a world that asks nothing, that expects nothing, that simply
holds you as you are. Breathe in and feel the
night around you. Breathe out and feel your body grow heavier.
Breathe in and feel the quiet deepen. Breathe out and
feel your thoughts grow softer. The sea rests, the city sleeps,
the rain falls, the room holds. Your body settles, Your
breath slows, your mind loosens. The night is kind. You
are safe. If you are resting, you are drifting. You
are almost asleep.
Speaker 2: No sleep una u u u u.
Speaker 1: U u.
Speaker 2: U u u u u u u u u u
u u u u u u u u u