The Town of Ayahuar

In that chilly spring evening, the yawning darkness of night came not to swallow the light of day, but instead to bear something upon us.

In streaks of cold light, the stars seemed to collapse from the depthless heavens, breaking and crumbling streaks of light crashing through the drowsy dusk silence. The town of Ayahuar, just a mile into the Whistling Skein, had been plunged into endless sleep.

The stars seemed to always hang heavy over the town, hesitant to accept the Architect’s light and shining through the morning haze longer than most. Its inhabitants slept all the same.

The animals bowed away from the shadows that stalked the town day and night, creatures breathed into being by the heaving, writhing weight of the town’s dreams. The lanterns stayed lit; the food stayed fresh in barrels and shelves; and strangest of all, the people stayed vital and alive, even as they dreamt the years away.

The boiling summer days and the cool, clear summer nights came. The fall winds caught the trees as if to make them dance in the spirit of harvest festivals held that time of year. The cold and chilling winter culled the weak and the infirm; among which the town was not. The spring came alive, as if the world itself awoke from its great hibernation, and yet they still slept.

Until one day, as the stars crashed to land, as a great and empyrean light swallowed the Skein, summoned from the exalt dreams of Ayahuar...

they did not.