I pass a rocky hill in the woods, where multiple tiny waterfalls spill down the stones...a place most would never notice if they were passing through.

  The water is clear, cold, singing softly as it tumbles over moss-covered rocks, emerald cushions softening every hard edge. Trees grow here despite the steep, unyielding terrain: twisted, bent, roots clutching stone like desperate hands, yet they rise tall, branches spreading wide to cast shade over the hill and the stream it carves.

  Beautiful in its seeming insignificance.

  I pause at the water’s edge, bare feet on cool stone, watching the falls play their endless song. The current carries fallen leaves in slow spirals, each one a small journey ending in quiet surrender.

  A raven lands on a low branch above me. Black feathers gleaming like polished obsidian, eyes sharp and knowing, gold-flecked with faint runes that shimmer in the dying sunlight. A silver pendant I do not recognize hangs from his neck.

  He does not speak at first. He simply watches. Present. Unblinking. Eyes ablaze with a surreal glow.

  I speak aloud, soft as moss underfoot, in the rhyme that now flows from me like breath:

  “Dark bird with eyes of ancient fire,

  you perch here in the fading light.

  What name do you carry, silent sire,

  in this quiet corner of the night?”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The raven tilts his head, one eye fixed on me.

  “Muninn,” he croaks, voice low and ancient, like stones grinding together under water.

  I nod slowly. The word lingers in the air: memory, from old tales.

  He spreads his wings slightly, runes along his feathers burning brighter as dusk settles in around his form.

  “I watch,” he says. “That is all.”

  I place a palm flat against the nearest rock, feeling the cool moss beneath my fingers.

  I murmur in rhyme, as Muninn lands briefly on my forearm.

  “Let your eyes hold fast and true,

  let the world reveal itself to you.

  Shadows pass, but streams remain: the hill endures through storm and rain.”

  I walk East. Muninn flies West.

  Moss blooms in my footsteps...emerald cushions rising from the rocky path, carpeting the ground behind me. It spreads slowly, a green rebellion against the dark, inviting life back where it was denied.

  As I step past the last waterfall, in the soft moss at the base of the hill, I see it: a large, fresh footprint...deep, deliberate, claws splayed wide. The earth remembers the weight that passed here moments ago.

  The stream continues its quiet song.

  The twisted trees continue their quiet stand.

  The falls continue their quiet fall.

  The forest is quiet tonight.

  But it listens.

  The dark has arrived.

  And something has passed through it.