Incantations

RIXEN and if you are to love, love as the moon loves; Above me, the wind combed through the leafy branches, which jutted out over the path like many pairs of outstretched arms. This forest was peaceful, quiet except for the gentle rustling of leaves and the occasional chirp of birds. The trees were not packed together so densely, leaving ample space for me to peer between the foliage and examine my surroundings as I walked along a sort of naturally-occurring path. It was the same as any other day in the Rift, which both started and ended with me wandering about in some new and unfamiliar place. The Rift was just so vast. I'd go for miles without stopping sometimes, and still manage to end up someplace new each time. So in that respect, it was an ordinary day. There was something different about it, too. As I went further and further into Solanis, I felt something change. I could not quite place what it was. The feeling was the kind that I could almost instinctively sense. A change barely noticeable, but still there, like the sun rising in the morning. The sun rose out of the darkness in the early hours of the day, an event that occurred each and every day. But despite it being common knowledge that the sun had to rise to signal the birth of each new day, somehow after all these years sunrises managed to happen without anyone ever really noticing. I knew they were there, like this change I felt in the world around me. Was it around me, though,  or- could the change have been within me? It was as subtle as the tone of the voice or the glance of the eye, while at the same time being as noticeable as white stars on a cloudless night.  While I normally would have dismissed the strange feelings accompanying this change as the product of my overthinking, this time I knew that it wasn't just me. I wasn't imagining things. The ethereal shift was real, tangible as this world was. It must have been magic, conjured up by the Rift. Magic interested me greatly, for there seemed to be so many horses here who possessed it. Here, magic was in a way normal. For these horses had been born with abilities like fire-breathing or shapeshifting, and thus for them magic did not hold the element of mystery or eminence that it did for me. Having no experience with magic, I couldn't possibly begin to place what was the driving force behind the feeling that made my heart beat a little faster, or why the Rift had chosen me in particular to bare the burden of its uncanny tricks.   A voice, perhaps the soft susurration of the verdant leaves overhead, seemed to speak to me. I was not even aware that there was something I needed to do, much less why I needed to do it. But the voice in my ear was clear, though not the voice of an individual; it was the voice of the Rift. In my time here, I'd learned that the Rift had its ways of reaching whoever it wanted, whenever it wanted to.  And then, like a wave, my senses went awry. The Rift stole into my mind like a deranged thief, taking all I could remember, what was important to me, and muddling up the rest in confusion. One after the other, my thoughts cascaded out of control until the Rift's grip was so deep that I no longer recognized even the forest around me, the once tree-lined path twisted and turned out of sight, the trunks sprung up so densely that they formed an inescapable maze, a prison without walls. There I was, suddenly very much trapped and confused and blind. But it wasn't the kind of blindness that kept me from seeing. It was something else.  "Talk." it does not steal the night — it only unveils the beauty of the dark

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@Vynter <3