Longing for the dark
There are nights when I ache for the world to be new again, not the sterile newness of progress and invention, but the wild newness of a realm still drunk on its own possibilities. I hunger for the time when magic flowed as freely as mountain streams, pooling in hidden groves and seeping through the very stones beneath our feet. When every forest held creatures worthy of legend, their breath misting in the dawn air as they moved like living myths through the shifting fog.
Those were the days when mothers sang warnings to their babes about the crimson eyes that watched from beyond the firelight, when such songs carried the weight of truth rather than mere superstition. Children learned respect for the dark not from empty threats, but from knowing that something ancient and hungry truly did stir in the spaces between shadows. How I long for the gods of those forgotten ages, not the preening deities who now scramble for worship like actors desperate for applause, but the old ones who stumbled through their immortality with wine-stained lips and hearts still capable of surprise. They were flawed and foolish, yes, but they valued the fierce devotion of a single faithful soul over the hollow adoration of multitudes. They walked among us not as distant idols but as wayward family, powerful and proud and beautifully, terribly human in their divine imperfection.
The world has grown too knowing, too measured. I would trade all our careful certainties for one true mystery, one genuine wonder that could not be explained away or catalogued or tamed.