Taste of Ether
Once in a secluded corner of the woods lay a hidden garden where vines crept with slumbering whispers across the tangled trees. In those dreamy veins, waning bees buzzed a lullaby of weary suns.
The Ether Tree's Gift
Children, untethered by the clock's merciless tick-tock, would seek the Echo Willow. Its phosphorescent fibers wove stories across time glazed with silver moon-threads, and beneath its dense arms, lay treasures gifted by the starry voyagers.
Jasper felt a pull. Not a curiosity, but an unspoken promise echoing across the ether around him as if something wickhovelled between the earthen cracks just out of view. He reached out, fingers like whispers to a weekly prophesied dream dangling from the willow’s nail-like leaves.
Fear Unraveled
The air then twisted. A somber chill snaked through Jasper's thoughts, tainting the wonder with graphite teeth. What magic seemed entwined now yawned a darker lore, shapes fluttered in the moon pits as phantoms from forgotten nurseries. "Beware the stempel of all seen too often under night's veil," it murmured.
And yet, with eyes burned like the tempered sunstruck sand, he glimpsed reflections bearing endless mysteries that yearned to wrap warmly around fabled beyonds.