The fog is thin tonight.

  It has no strength left.

  Only dust, and the memory of dust, drifting across cracked earth like a sigh that never quite ends.

  I am Muninn.

  Not the one who forgets.

  The one who cannot.

  There was an age when the sun turned cruel.

  Too hot.

  Too fast.

  The jungle: that verdant fever, that green overgrowth where children were born with vines in their hair and climbed before they walked... withered in weeks.

  Leaves curled into ash.

  Roots drank sand instead of water.

  The World-Trees toppled like fallen kings, their canopies becoming bone-white skeletons against a sky that had forgotten how to rain.

  Humanity scattered.

  Nomads now, skin burned dark, eyes narrowed against glare.

  They built ziggurats from the bones of the jungle: stepped towers of baked clay and desperation, reaching for a heaven that had turned its back.

  They danced rain dances until their feet bled.

  The sand drank it all.

  They sang songs of the green days.

  The wind carried the songs away.

  Love existed then too.

  Not the dominion of Anakiel and Anakia; that came later, when power learned to wear affection like armor.

  Not the tiny spark of mini-Zephyrion and his faerie lass; that is new, fragile, still learning how to burn without consuming.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Love in the Age of the Desert was desperate.

  It was two shadows sharing the last sip of water from a cracked gourd.

  It was a hand reaching through blistering wind to find another hand already reaching back.

  It was the only thing that kept the heart from drying out like the rest of the world.

  But love remembers.

  And remembering hurts.

  Every grain of sand that ever fell echoes in me.

  Every rain dance that ended in silence.

  Every ziggurat that crumbled under its own weight.

  Every whispered promise that “the green will return” when both lovers knew it was a lie.

  I remember because someone must.

  Because forgetting would be the greater sin.

  Saturday you will read their stories.

  One dark.

  One glowing.

  One wound that never heals.

  One spark that might yet light a fire.

  Read them.

  Feel them.

  Let them hurt.

  Because love that does not hurt is not love at all.

  It is convenience.

  It is cowardice.

  It is the desert pretending to be kind.

  I will keep watching.

  I will keep remembering.

  Even when the sun dies and becomes the Moon.

  Even when the new sun rises and the cycle begins again.

  Because someone must.

  Muninn

  Warden of What Was

  Keeper of the Echoes

  Last Witness Before the End