Life grew, stubborn and unshaped.
In the untouched valley, winds carried the scent of raw soil and burning wood.
There were no temples, no kings, no gods.
Only hands, and voices, and the small, tireless acts of survival.
**
Anor'ven remained.
At the edges.
At the margins.
A silent, immovable figure.
He had no place among them.
No voice to offer.
But neither was he feared anymore.
They no longer fled at the sight of him.
The youngest ran near his legs,
wild and laughing,
sometimes tugging at the coarse fabric that wrapped his frame,
showing him lizards trapped in woven cages,
or strange butterflies clinging to stones.
Anor'ven would lower his gaze,
study whatever was shown,
and answer with a slow, grave nod.
**
He learned to ask for tools with a simple motion.
To offer help with a glance.
To warn of danger with a shift of his body.
He did not speak their tongue —
not truly.
But he caught the weight of their sounds:
"Fire."
"Water."
"Hunger."
"Pain."
Words stripped down to survival.
Words even the dead might have whispered.
**
He built with them.
When a tempest shattered a shelter, he rose without command, lifted the heavy beams in silence.
Others came with ropes, with stones, with hands hardened by work.
They did not cheer.
They did not kneel.
They rebuilt — together.
The world moved forward,
not through miracles,
but through stubborn acts shared without ceremony.
**
And then, one muted morning,
when the mist clung to the low hills,
a small child approached him.
Barefoot.
Tangled hair.
Hands full of damp earth.
No weapon.
No fear.
Only the raw, unshaped curiosity of a life still untouched by doctrine.
She stepped closer,
holding out a misshapen fruit,
bruised and imperfect.
A ridiculous offering.
A perfect one.
**
Anor'ven looked down,
then lowered his hand.
The fruit was warm, soft against his calloused fingers.
For a moment, something stirred inside him —
not a memory exactly,
but a faint, aching brush against a wound buried too deep to name.
An echo of another child,
another gesture,
lost in the ruins of time.
**
The girl laughed —
a bright, reckless sound that tore through the still air.
Anor'ven stood frozen,
the fruit forgotten in his hand,
the laugh digging deeper than any blade.
And then, without thought,
without control,
he answered.
A sound cracked from his throat —
not a word,
not a cry,
but a laugh:
broken, raw,
a ruined thing trying to be alive.
The girl shrieked with laughter, stumbling backward,
arms flailing.
Around them, heads turned.
Adults.
Children.
Elders.
They looked.
They smiled.
And returned to their lives.
No one armed themselves.
No one prayed.
No one fled.
They accepted his presence
as they accepted the wind,
the rain,
the fire in the hearth.
Not a god.
Not a monster.
Simply — there.
**
Days blurred into weeks.
Anor'ven drifted at the village's edge,
no longer unseen,
no longer feared.
They left fruits and roots near his resting places,
not as offerings,
but as simple gestures of sharing.
He repaired fences without being asked.
He lifted heavy stones when others struggled.
No one ordered.
No one thanked.
It was enough to be part of the motion of the world again.
**
One evening,
the sky ripped open with shrieking winds.
Branches snapped, and beasts howled from the ravines.
A shelter crumbled in the storm.
Anor'ven rose,
braced the falling beams with silent, inhuman strength.
Others rushed in,
tethering ropes, setting stones,
working side by side without a word.
They rebuilt what the storm had broken,
not because they trusted him,
not because they revered him —
but because it needed to be done.
**
Time passed.
One morning, under a clearing drenched in golden light,
they celebrated a birth.
No drums.
No ceremonies.
Only rough songs, cracked bowls of burning soup,
and tired arms rocking newborns against the beating heart of life.
Anor'ven watched from a distance,
seated on a mossy stump.
Children danced around the fires.
Old men smiled toothlessly.
Mothers held fragile bundles against their chests.
A boy, his face smeared with soot,
brought him a bowl of steaming broth.
Held it out.
Anor'ven took it.
He did not drink.
He did not eat.
He simply held it between his hands —
a small warmth against the endless cold of memory.
**
Night deepened.
The songs faded.
Bodies collapsed into piles of worn blankets and murmured dreams.
Anor'ven sat awake,
eyes open to a sky smeared with indifferent stars.
He carved the night into the hollow of his mind:
the clumsy dances,
the broken songs,
the smell of burnt wood and newborn skin.
He did not smile.
He did not cry.
He simply recorded.
For them.
For him.
For no one.
**
The fires died into faint embers.
And in the hush between one breath and the next,
he exhaled a whisper into the earth:
"You are born not knowing.
You will die not understanding.
But you are beautiful."
And beneath a sky too old to remember his name,
he remained —
silent,
still,
witness to a life that asked for nothing but to be.