Legend LXXXVII – The Guardian of the Spotted Silence

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Deep in the verdant heart of the world, where the forest no longer grew but remembered itself, lived a being that had not been born but had remained. As time began to flow faster, as names lost their weight and paths closed without ever having truly been trodden, a remnant of silence gathered among the roots of the oldest trees, and from this silence the Guardian took shape. His body was small and squat, covered in shimmering scales, spotted like forgotten star charts, each marking an imprint of what could not be lost. A red crest ran along his back, jagged like a dormant flame, in which dwelt a soft glow that did not warm but preserved. His eyes were large, amber, and deep, and those who met them sensed that they saw not what was, but what had once been and now found no bearer. The guardian moved silently over mossy branches and gnarled roots, his claws touching the wood with a care as if any carelessness could shatter a memory, and his curled tail circling slowly through the air as if rearranging time, step by step. Wherever he lingered, a silence descended, but it was not an empty silence; rather, a dense, full silence, heavy with unspoken farewells, forgotten names, and paths that had never ended. The animals of the forest knew this silence and did not fear it, for it brought peace, and even the oldest trees rustled their leaves more gently as the guardian passed. He lifted what had become too heavy, gathered memories that no one could bear any longer, and let them fade slowly beneath his scales until they no longer cut but glimmered like a distant light. On nights when mist hung between the trunks like a foreign breath, he sat motionless on a branch, gazing into the depths of the forest, while a pale glow seeped from his crest, bathing the ground in soft green. Then it was said that somewhere, a person had forgotten something, not out of cruelty, but out of necessity, to be able to move on, to avoid remaining at a point long past. No one called upon the guardian, for he appeared only when silence itself pleaded for help, and he left before gratitude could arise, before words could regain their weight. Once, however, a child, whose voice had been lost in the thicket of the world, followed him step by step, without fear, only with a heavy emptiness in its eyes. The guardian let it be, shared the path, the silence, and the long breaths of the forest with it, and when their paths diverged, the child had not recovered a single word, yet its silence was now soft as moss and no longer cutting. Thus the guardian, wandering between memory and forgetting, remained the bearer of what could no longer be spoken of, a small being with the task of an entire forest, and as long as his spotted scales still shimmered in the twilight, the world never forgot everything at once, but only as much as it could bear.