The Realmwalkers

I met him on a deserted road, in the middle of a sun-scorched plain. He stood right on the horizon—small as a mirage—and was studying his shoes as though he had just stepped down from a distant star. When I drew closer, he lifted his head and smiled, as if he had known me all his life.

“Are you lost?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “You are.”

I smiled mockingly.

“But I know exactly where I’m going.”

“You know the road, but you don’t know why you’re walking it,” he said. “I, on the other hand, simply walk.”

“Where to?”

“Wherever my feet take me. Or my thoughts. Or the wind.”

I noticed that his clothes were covered in brightly coloured patches, and a backpack stuffed with books, feathers, and seashells hung from his shoulders.

“Are you a traveller?”

“No. I’m a wanderer. It’s quite different.”

“What’s the difference?”

He bent down and picked up a dry twig.

“Do you see this? This is the traveller. He walks in a particular direction because that is what his roots have decided.”

Then he tossed the twig into the air. It spun around before falling to the ground.

“And this is the wanderer. He flies wherever the wind carries him.”

“And where is your destination?”

“Nowhere. It is in the journey itself.”

I fell silent. I had never met a child like him. He spoke with such simplicity, yet there was an endless wisdom in his words—the kind of wisdom you might find in an old sailor, or in a star that had watched the world from the heavens for thousands of years.

“Would you like to come with me?” he asked.

I hesitated, but something in his eyes told me that if I refused, I would never meet anyone like him again.

“Where to?”

“Wherever the wind blows.”

And so I set out with the Little Wanderer.

We walked for a long time. The road was an endless ribbon stretching between hills and forgotten trees. The Little Wanderer walked lightly, almost as though he were dancing, while I kept stumbling over the invisible stones of my doubts.

“You think too much,” he told me one day.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“It’s heavy.”

I thought about that.

“But isn’t thinking a good thing?”

“Yes. But if you carry a sack of books, and all the pages inside are blank, what good is it?”

I opened my mouth to argue, but the Little Wanderer had already wandered off towards the hillside.

At the top stood a house.

It was neither very old nor very new. Its windows glowed with a gentle light, like the eyes of a weary sage.

“The Story Weaver lives here,” said the Little Wanderer. “She weaves words together the way others weave baskets.”

“Why?”

“So that people can carry their dreams inside them.”

He knocked.

The door opened, and a woman appeared before us, her hair resembling threads of sunset.

“Welcome,” she said with a smile. “Are you in need of a story?”

The Little Wanderer nodded.

“But not for me. For him.”

He looked at me.

“He has blank pages.”

The Story Weaver gazed into my eyes, and I felt as though she could see straight through me.

“Then you must choose a thread,” she said, leading us farther inside.

The room was filled with balls and spools of thread—silver, golden, dark, glowing. They hung from the ceiling, lay scattered across the shelves, and intertwined in intricate patterns along the walls.

“Choose,” she said.

I reached out, but the Little Wanderer stopped me.

“Be careful,” he whispered. “The story you choose will change you.”

I froze.

Which one should I choose?

For a long while, I studied the threads, but one caught my attention more than all the others. It was silvery-blue, like moonlight reflected on water.

I reached for it, and somehow it seemed to slip into my palm of its own accord.

The Story Weaver smiled.

“You have chosen the Thread of the Forgotten Voice,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“Every story has a voice. Some hear it clearly, while others lose it without ever realising it. This thread will help you hear what has been forgotten.”

I fell into thought.

What could I have forgotten?

The Weaver took the thread and began weaving it into a pattern. With every movement, I heard something distant and barely perceptible: the sound of waves, someone's laughter, the rustling of pages...

“What is that?” I asked.

“They are memories waiting for you to remember them.”

The Little Wanderer watched in silence.

“Do you want to hear your story?” the Weaver asked.

I nodded.

She finished the weaving and handed me the piece of cloth she had created.

I touched it—and suddenly I found myself somewhere else.

Before me stretched a city I did not remember, yet somehow it felt strangely familiar. Narrow streets, lanterns glowing with warm light, the scent of freshly baked bread...

I stood before the doorway of a house where someone had once lived—a person whose name slipped from my memory like a shadow.

“Who lived here?” I asked.

“You must remember that for yourself,” came the Little Wanderer’s voice, though he was nowhere nearby.

I took a step forward.

Something was waiting for me in this city.

Something important.

I took another step, and a gentle wind swept through the streets. It drifted across the rooftops, brushed against the wooden shutters, and slipped beneath the arches of the bridges.

It seemed to whisper something—fragments of words, familiar and yet forgotten.

I began walking through the narrow streets.

The city was alive. Somewhere, an old woman was watering flowers on a balcony. Children were drawing with chalk on the cobblestones, while a baker was pulling fresh bread from the oven.

But no one noticed me.

“Excuse me,” I said, turning to an apple seller. “What is this city called?”

He did not even look at me.

I tried again, but he continued arranging the apples as though he could not hear me at all.

A strange feeling came over me—as though I was here, and yet, in truth, I did not exist.

And then a voice cut through the silence.

“Are you lost too?”

I turned sharply.

A girl was sitting on the steps beside a fountain. Her dark hair fell over her shoulders, and in her hands she held a book without a title.

“You can see me?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I thought no one—”

“They cannot see,” she said. “Because this city isn't entirely real.”

I sat down beside her.

“Then where are we?”

“Inside a story,” she replied.

I looked at the book in her hands.

“Whose?”

She studied me carefully, as though deciding whether she could trust me.

“Perhaps yours.”

I felt something tighten in my chest.

“But I don't remember this city.”

“Just because you don't remember something doesn't mean it never existed,” she said. “Perhaps you simply left it behind.”

I fell silent.

Countless questions spun through my mind, but one mattered more than all the others:

What have I forgotten?

The Little Wanderer had said that the Thread of the Forgotten Voice would help me hear what had been lost.

Perhaps this city was part of what I had left behind.

“Do you want to find out what happened afterwards?” the girl asked.

I nodded.

“Then you must find the Echoing Spring. It alone can restore the voices of lost stories.”

I looked towards the streets that stretched into the unknown.

It seemed that once again, a long road lay before me.

“Where is the Echoing Spring?” I asked.

The girl closed her book, as though preparing to say something important.

“It is hidden in the heart of the city. But you won’t be able simply to reach it.”

“Why?”

“Because you still don’t remember.”

I sighed.

“But how can I remember if I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for?”

She smiled mysteriously.

“Sometimes memories aren’t something that has been lost. Sometimes they are something waiting to be discovered.”

She stood up, brushed the dust from her dress, and nodded to me.

“Come. Let’s go.”

We walked through the streets, and the city seemed to change with every turn. The houses grew taller, the cobbled streets narrower, and the lanterns cast a soft, gentle light. But now it seemed to me that they were not merely lighting our way. They were watching us carefully.

“You are the first person to come here of his own free will,” the girl said.

“But don’t all forgotten stories come here?”

She shook her head.

“No. Only those who are ready to remember them.”

We turned into a narrow alley, and then I saw it.

At the very centre of the square stood a tall fountain. But the water did not flow from it—it sang softly. I could hear distant voices, words I could not quite understand, and the faintest trace of music.

“Is this the Echoing Spring?”

The girl nodded.

“Touch the water,” she said.

I reached out my hand.

The moment my fingers touched the surface, the world around me changed.

A flash.

Voices.

Children laughing.

A blue sky, sunlight, a tall house with green shutters...

And suddenly, I remembered.

I had lived in this city.

I had been a child who ran through these streets, who knew every path and every whisper of the wind.

But then I left.

“Now you know,” the girl said.

I looked at her.

“But why did I forget?”

She sighed.

“Because you didn’t want to remember.”

I froze.

What could there have been in this city that I had chosen to turn away from?

And then I heard a voice.

“You came back.”

I turned.

At the edge of the square stood someone I could not possibly have forgotten.

He stood in the shadow of a lantern, its soft light tracing the outline of his figure. I felt as though I should recognise his voice, his walk, even the way he tilted his head.

“You came back,” he repeated.

“Who are you?” I asked, feeling my heart beat faster and faster.

He stepped forward, and in that instant something stirred inside me.

An image flashed through my memory.

I saw myself as a little boy, barefoot on the warm stones of the street. This man was beside me. We were laughing, running, drawing with chalk on the walls. His voice was calling my name, and I was answering him...

But now the name was caught on the tip of my tongue, as though it had been buried beneath the dust of time.

“Do you still not remember?” he asked sadly.

“I... I’m trying...”

The city around us fell silent. It was as though even the Echoing Spring had stopped singing and was waiting to hear what I would say.

“Why did I forget?” I finally asked.

“Because when you left, you decided to leave a part of yourself behind,” he replied.

A chill came over me.

“To leave a part of myself?”

He nodded.

“Once, you were a different person. Or rather... you were whole. But then something happened, and you chose to forget.”

I could feel the invisible walls I had built within my own mind beginning to crumble.

“You were my best friend,” he finally said.

And then the name broke free, as though it had been locked inside me for years.

“Leo.”

The eyes of the man—no, my friend—filled with warmth.

“Now you remember.”

And I did.

Everything.

How we dreamed of travelling, how we searched for adventures through the streets of the city, how we promised each other that we would never forget one another...

And how, one day, I left.

“Why?” I whispered.

Leo smiled, but there was sadness in his smile.

“You must remember that for yourself.”

I clenched my fists.

“I don’t want to forget again.”

“Then listen to the city,” he said. “It remembers everything.”