At night Caduceus listened to the stillness. He emptied his thoughts and let the world fill him. It was a reminder than nothing is truly still. The plants and the animals and the weather all moved. To be part of the world was to hang delicately in its movement, to move as it moved in harmony.
He’d lived his life in one kind of stillness. Crickets, frogs, wind in the grass, and rain in the eaves all sang softly at night. He fell asleep knowing his place in that chorus. It was easy to find yourself in the place you always were. Every place has its own hymn, and every night he lay there finding his place in it.
The fields and woods along the road had a similar song, but the animals and the wind were different. The ocean sang deeply, vast and ephemeral. After months at sea he’d started to pick up its rhythm. The tunnel to Xhorhas had been a stillness he’d never felt. The sparseness was almost overwhelming as the stone drank the sound. Their movements an intrusion on that silent vigil. The cities were the strangest. The constant chant and percussion of people with somewhere to be, irregular and fast.
The hardest part about sleeping since he left the Blooming Grove was it’s always the wrong kind of quiet.
Critical Analysis 