The Pit

In a darkened place in the center of a wood so old that the fact of this forest had become myth and myth had become legend, and finally it had dissolved from the collective consciousness of the people of this land (the final death, really), there exists a pit, eons deep, as dark as ink. At the bottom of this bottomless hole in this forgotten forest is where They live, so still and cold that They are nearly impossible. They have lied there for as long as can be misremembered (or unremembered) and should do so forever more; and They whisper, quietly, continuously, tendrils of soft words trickling out of Them, seeping through the ground, into the roots of trees, up into the sky, on the wings of birds, and it travels for miles and miles. This whisper pushes the queen bee to settle in the rafters of a homestead and create a colony; it drives salmon upstream each year to mate and die and start again; it pushes the germinating seed to rupture through the soil towards the sky; some used to think that certain syllables made the sun shine. The voice that They used changed like the seasons, and each new age heard it differently—dissonant, kind, malevolent, beautiful, slow as molasses. There They lay, in that place where light and memory didn’t reach, alone and undisturbed and Speaking. Its eyes see without seeing and it hears the dust forever settled on the moon.