When I was but a youth, eager and full of words, I was taken as apprentice to Master Skaldir, a man of great wisdom, few words, and even fewer smiles. I was young when I met Master Skaldir—young in years, younger still in understanding. Passionate and inquisitive but also impatient and quick to speak, I thought wisdom lay in the clever turning of words.

Skaldir lived in the hills above Aelon, where the clouds touched the earth like veils and stars seemed close enough to touch, and he walked as though he knew the secrets of stones and stars alike. For Skaldir was a man carved from silence. A sage they called him. A keeper of the deep runes, the ones not written in books but in the marrow of the world. He spoke rarely, and when he did, his voice felt older than stone. I thought him strange but noble—wise in the way only the silent are.

One morning, he woke me before the dawn and beckoned without a word. Still rubbing my eyes and ignoring the last vestiges of sleep, I followed. The first place he took me was a hidden glade, hours beyond the village. We passed beneath green boughs dripping with dew, and after many hours, we came upon a glade so fair I felt I’d stepped into a dream.

“Master,” I whispered, breathless, “it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”

He said nothing.

We sat in stillness, as if even a whisper would be a trespass on this holy ground, and when he rose, I followed, my heart full.

We never returned.

Another week, another path—this time to the cliffs of Eldamar, where wind howled, and the sea beat the rocks with a divine fury. Wind tore at our cloaks, and the sun died in red fire over the waves.

“It’s as though the sky itself is bleeding its last light,” I whispered, in awe.

He said nothing.

He met my eyes for only a moment. Then turned away.

We never returned.

Another path followed. Then another. He took me to places I didn’t know existed, even in the tales told by firelight. We visited wonders—Windswept cliffs above Eldamar, fields where fireflies blinked like stars come down to earth, lakes frozen clear as glass that chimed beneath our boots, caves where crystals caught torchlight like captured stars, where the sea shattered itself into thunder, a cavern where crystals held the echoes of forgotten storms.

So it went.

Each time I could not help myself. I spoke of what I saw, trying to capture it, hold it in words. Each time, he listened.

Each time, we never returned.

I began to wonder. Was I displeasing him? Was I missing some deeper lesson? Had I failed him? At first, I thought he was testing me. That I had said something wrong. But he never chastised me and never offered explanation. Only walked on.

Then came a morning unlike the others. We climbed high into the northern peaks. The path was steep, the air thin, and our breath rose like smoke into the heavens. We climbed in silence, past frost-bitten stone and pale mountain sun, dawn just breaking behind us. When we crested the final ridge, I stopped cold.

Below us stretched a hidden valley, untouched by time. Light poured across the grass in golden sheets, and the trees moved like they were breathing. Tulips carpeted the ground like fragments of a sunset sky. A waterfall spilled from the cliffs above, and its music rang purer than any harp or horn I had ever heard. Birds sang—not loudly, but clearly, as if speaking only to those who could truly hear. I opened my mouth.

And I closed it. I said nothing.

And in the silence that followed, I felt something shift. The wind moved through me like a revitalizing breath. The colors seemed to press not into my eyes, but into my very soul. I looked at Master Skaldir. He met my gaze. And for the first time in our long journey, he nodded.

We returned the next morning. And again the morning after.

I learned, then, the lesson he had never spoken: that words, for all their power, can only chase experience—they cannot become it. That to speak of beauty is to place it in a cage, when true beauty lies in its experience. To speak is to disturb still water.

Years passed. Skaldir aged like the mountain—weathered but unmoved. He grew older, slower, quieter still. One winter morning, he did not rise. I buried him beneath the high ridge, where the dawn still spills gold like wine across the stones, and the valley still sings, where the sun still touches first each day.

Now, I walk the paths he once led me down, not as a boy of words, but as one forged in silence. I take students of my own. I show them the glade, the cliffs, the lake. They speak, as I once did. And when my own learners speak in wonder, I do not stop them.

We do not return.

Not until they, too, learn to listen in silence.

And when they ask me the most beautiful place I have ever seen, I simply smile.

And I say nothing.

I was forged in the fire.