To Ilan

A shrine to Ilan.

How odd, to find such a thing out here. Tucked into the shadow of a tree, away from the gaze of the Architect and just about everyone else, too. A little pillar cradled in the roots of a towering sequoia, carved with layers of intricate runes. The stone is still fresh, and the roots are none too long. No hint of moss or overgrowth. This shrine was erected within a lifetime.

Facing away from the tree is the most conspicuous rune of them all, an eye. The slight angle of the stone allows it to gaze up, silently regarding the towering edifice of Mount Hyris. I follow its gaze to the summit.

Ilan isn’t exactly the type of God for shrines and idols. Above all, Ilan was ephemeral; that you would try to capture their grace and power in anything so physical and staid as stone or text was almost offensive. Ilan was said to live only in the infinite power and mutability of the moment, surviving and spreading on the chilled breath of the people who lived at the foot of Mount Hyris, in the countenance of warm fires and woven into stories of generations past.

So elusive was their nature that to this day I have not managed to uncover their purpose, or almost anything about the rituals and prayers that would gather their attention; those few documents and tablets that remain describe them only in passing, the only surviving relics of a religion now millennia past. The last words to have been written of them date over two thousand years ago, when the last of the Hyrisian people wrote of their final resting place… on the summit.

I glance back to the small shrine. A few gold coins are scattered at its base, still all but pristine, the howling winter winds not having yet buried them in the frozen dirt. Placed here recently. Watching. Waiting, for Ilan’s return.

Somewhere, Ilan survives, even as their body rests all but forgotten at the deathly peak of that mountain.

May we all be so lucky.