Legend LXVII – The Woman from the Moor

More about Legend LXVII – The Woman from the Moor

As the mist crept across the moorland like a forgotten breath, and the sky lay colorless over the world, a whisper grew between water and root, silencing even the crows. No one remembered when it was first mentioned—whether in an inn, steeped in fear, or in the murmur of a dying man who tasted the water in his lungs. But those who once walked the path across the black pools spoke of a figure suspended between light and decay. They called her the Woman from the Moor. It is said that she is neither alive nor dead. Her heart a silenced beat, her gaze a crack of memory and resentment. Her skin as pale as moon pebbles, and her dress—a crumbling vow of mourning, immortalized by the mud. No one knows who she was before the moor coveted her. Only that she was once loved—and betrayed. On stormless nights, when the moor is so still that one must fear the sound of one's own thoughts, she wanders across the mirror-smooth surface of the water. Each step a whisper, each fold of her garment a drop of night. In her hand she carries a lantern whose flame does not burn, but remembers. It does not light the way, it shows what could have been. Whoever follows her sees not the path, but their own guilt. They tell of a cartographer who wanted to map the mist, to tame the moor. His name is lost like sunlight beneath black water. On his last pages, blurred by dew, it was written: "I saw her. Not like a ghost, but like truth. She looked right through me, as if my life were but a shadow of her pain." That night he followed her, step by step, along paths no human had ever trod before. The ground did not yield, as if it knew that it, too, was a secret. The woman stopped in a clearing where the water lay like glass and the mists parted. She raised her lantern—and he saw images, like tears poured into space: a girl with a flower wreath, a man on the bank, a kiss like an oath. Then hands, cold as fear. Water rising. A cry heard only by the moor. Love sinking. He wanted to be her comfort. To reach out his hand, to bring her back from eternity. But the woman from the moor knows no beginning, only an endless after. As his fingers almost touched her, the water closed over his boots like a gentle mouth. The moor silently took him, like a memory that refuses to leave. They say he smiled—not out of madness, but out of knowledge. He had understood what she was: not revenge, not a ghost. She was the longing that remains when the world moves on. Even today she wanders in the mist, a silent prayer of pain, love, and water. Sometimes her lantern flickers far away, like a lonely star forgotten by the heavens. Whoever encounters her must not do one thing: look back. For whoever sees her shadow loses their own. And when in autumn the earth seems to breathe and thin threads of light glide across the water, then you know: she is near.