Story Installment
Woolie returned to the Ackerly Green office one night in February 2019 after Warner Green’s safe arrived in the office, revealing the Hermie proofs from the Book of the Wild, and Saberlane received a notification from the Ackerly Green app reading “A light that both blinded me and made me whole.” Saberlane had been camping out in the office waiting for him since receiving the notification.
The Memory
The light that drew me here is almost gone, and I feel myself breaking apart, turning to ash like embers on the wind. I was something real, but now I am vanishing. Held together with a light that wanes by the moment. I knock and knock to try and get back to what I lost. Who I left behind. But my hands pass through the doors like mist. I can’t return to her.
Molly. My own Molly. The first of my guild who welcomed me. The girl who lived across the world, who I never would’ve laid eyes on had I not found Neithernor. The warmth of her hands. The light in her eyes. A light that both blinded me and made me whole. I never deserved her, but I feel as if I have somehow betrayed her, though I don’t know how, not by following through the open door, to the light of this place. No, it was before we were all made of mist. I broke her heart. The pieces are here, still in my hands, but I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know much of anything anymore. All the warmth is fading from your world. Perhaps I belong here, having wronged the ones I love, though how escapes my mind. I will end here, in ash, undeserving of a way back home to her, and unknowing why.
After reciting this memory, Saberlane said that Woolie knelt to the floor and wept. Saberlane attempted to console him by sitting near him, eventually falling asleep. When he awoke, Woolie was gone, and another set of clues for the Mountaineers had appeared on the wall, written in ash.