The Unforeseen Bridge

The Keeper’s first storytelling session was not the grand, unifying event he had envisioned. The younger generation, accustomed to the immediate and visceral connection of the first circles, found his stoic narratives distant, almost sterile. They listened politely, but their hearts remained unmoved. The emotional language of their parents’ generation, a language of quiet endurance and unspoken understanding, was as foreign to them as the forgotten dialects of their ancestors. The bridge the Keeper had intended to build seemed, at first, to be a bridge to nowhere.