The Mirror Beetle in a Dreamlike Forest

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It is said that deep in the ancient forests, where compasses no longer hold and even the light is lost, lives a beetle whose shell not only shines but also remembers. The elders call it the Mirror Beetle, guardian of forgotten lights. Its back holds worlds no one knows anymore: forests that have never been cleared, waters that have never been murky, and skies that still knew trust. Whoever sees it, it is said, sees not just the world, but what it once was—before time began to consume itself.Once upon a time, on the edge of the great Needle Sea, lived a girl named Ilwen. She was the daughter of a resin collector and had a voice like the drops of dew falling on moss. Her father always warned her to avoid the old path that led into the heart of the forest. "There the wind ceases to speak," he said. But Ilwen listened more to the silence than to words. One morning, when the fog still shrouded the world in silence, she spotted a tiny creature on a fern leaf. It was a beetle, barely larger than a seed, but its shell shone like polished glass. As Ilwen leaned over it, she realized that the shimmering reflections on its back were no mere reflections: She saw forests, the reflections of trees swaying in the wind, tiny rays of sunlight dancing across needles—as if the beetle carried an entire cosmos within itself. She picked it up carefully. Its body vibrated as if responding to her heartbeat, and within its shell her own face appeared—not as she was, but as she could have been: free, smiling, with leaves in her hair, devoid of all fear. A whisper rippled through the leaves, and Ilwen felt the beetle calling her. So her journey began. Day after day, she followed it deeper into the forest, where the sunlight hung between the branches only like a memory. The beetle strode unerringly over roots and stones, and wherever its feet touched the moss, it began to glow. Sometimes it stopped, and scenes appeared on its back: a spring flowing backward, a village forgetting itself, a tree counting its own leaves. Ilwen saw in these images the forest's memory—not of the past, but of what was possible. But the forest never forgets without a price. The further she followed it, the more Ilwen lost the shadow of herself. Her breathing became light, her voice echoing only in the leaves. When she finally reached the Heart Tree—an ancient oak whose roots had grown from stone over centuries—she felt she barely carried any weight. The beetle climbed her finger, glowing a soft green and flashing a final reflection: She saw herself woven into the moss, her eyes full of peace. Then she was gone. Only the beetle remained, shimmering in the first light. The branches of the heart tree rustled as if they had understood something, and in the dew of the next dawn, the wind told a new story. Since that time, the Whisperers say, a beetle sometimes appears on a leaf, its back carrying entire forests.