The House of Echoes

Anchor-of-Ages did not punish his student. He did something far more devastating: he exiled him. ‘Your voice is not one that can be spoken in this house of answers,’ he said, his voice devoid of anger, filled only with a sorrow that was as deep and as polished as the stones he revered. ‘Go. Find your own house, a house of questions, if you must. But you are no longer a Shepherd-of-Stillness.’

Hesitation-in-Silence bowed, not in deference, but in acknowledgement. He had expected anger, argument, perhaps even punishment. But this quiet, sorrowful banishment was a wound that would not easily heal. He had not sought to leave his home, only to make it larger.

He gathered his ‘broken’ spheres, his small collection of flawed beauties, and walked out of the studios of the elders. He did not go to the walled garden, nor did he seek out Trace-of-Light and the other Dancers-at-the-Edge. He was an exile from both worlds, a voice that was neither a question nor an answer, but something in between.

He found a small, abandoned alcove at the very edge of the enclave, a place where the wind had carved its own rough, imperfect sculptures in the rock. And there, he began to build his own gallery, a gallery of the in-between. He called it ‘The House of Echoes.’