The Tentative Mark

The traveler had not moved for three days.

He sat before the uncut stone, his eyes closed, his hands resting on his knees.

He had been instructed to listen, and so he listened.

At first, all he had heard was the sound of his own thoughts, a relentless chatter that filled the silence.

But slowly, gradually, another sound had begun to emerge, a low hum that seemed to emanate from the stone itself.

On the fourth day, he lifted a chisel.

His hand trembled, not from fear, but from a sense of reverence.

He did not strike the stone, but rather touched it, leaving a single, tentative mark on its surface.

From the doorway of her workshop, Nyra watched, her expression unreadable.

The traveler did not look at her, his attention still fixed on the stone, on the small, almost imperceptible change he had made to it.

A wave of fear washed over him—he had done it wrong, he had broken the stillness—but then, from the stone, he felt a faint echo of his own touch, a response, a resonance, and he knew that he had not been wrong, that he had, in his own small way, simply joined the conversation.