Grow, Drink, Remember.

We don't often get visitors.

Of course, that suits us just fine. There is always growing to do, and so many pools to drink from. So many worlds to dream of. Places and people and wonders and stories and…well, we live in the Inbetween. And I suppose that says it all.
Inbetween is bettwixted almost Everything, and so we drink the Everything in. Every wonder in every pool makes its way within us as we drink of it, and all end up within our wooden rings. Stored up safely.

But the Inbetween is hard to get to. Because it is between the Everything. So, we don't often get visitors. But when we do, we remember.
We get to be a part of the story. And we drink of the sweet air around us, instead of the pools, so we remember them.

There were a boy and a girl. And a guinea pig.
And they were beautiful.

They entered, one at a time, all confusion and surprise. And childlike wonder. But who can help but wonder? The Inbetween is a very large place for ones so young.

First came the guinea pig, soft fur and wide dark eyes.
A ribbon around its neck, bearing – we drew back, in the way that trees do. Rustling branches, we swayed in invisible winds.

The Magician. He took the ash. Stolen. A tree was burned. The ash was stolen. We remembered. The ash was in the yellow ring tied to the animal like a trophy.

But the guinea pig's mind was like a cloud, soft, innocent, pliable. It happily supped on our grassy carpet, content and happy in blissful ignorance of the ring.

Then came a girl. Soft brown braided hair, and fearful eyes. A dusty dress and another yellow ring around her finger.
I fear that in our fever to drink of the air, (for we cannot drink of a pool to absorb a story that happened outside of one!), we made the girl rather sleepy. She drifted off, and we took hold of her dreams, drawing out the story, the whys and the wherefores. Where was the Magician? We had seen him die, crushed by sinful mortality, yet here were these ashen rings.

But the girl was not the magician, and her intentions were pure.
She slept, our drinking fading her memories of fear. She was at peace.

Then came the boy. He carried with him three rings, two green, and one yellow!
Magician!
Yet the boy, too, was not the Magician. And so, we teased the memories free from his mind like cotton wool. He was not the Magician, but he knew the Magician.

The Magician was not the same. He was dead, as we had seen. This was a different man. A new Magician. One too cowardly to come here himself. Who instead sent children, adorned with the ashes of one of our own around their fingertips, and the stain of utter ignorant innocents upon their thoughts.

So, we drank of the air, storing the new knowledge up inside ourselves.

But then the boy and girl jumped into an old pool, a dying pool, a pool almost dried up. It led to a bad place. A cursed place.

They Rang the Bell. And woke the Wicked one who spoke the Word that darkened the sun to blood and struck her people down.

And then they brought her back here!
It was good that none knew of our importance. For if the Wicked one had learnt of our knowledge, more damage than one burned tree might have been done.

And then they went back, back into the pool they boy and girl had come from. Which was foolish. Why take the rot from another world, only to use it to infect your own?

But then they came back again! And they brought two more men and a horse with them! It was quite exciting, if terrifying. Because one was the Magician.
And yet the Magician was a coward.
Further, none knew all that much. They saw us as a dimensional elevator, only meant to facilitate the travel between worlds, which was just fine with us. Another Fire would have been devastating.

The six disappeared into a New pool. And we feared for it.
For a World-breaker, a Magician, and two ignorant children to enter a world as He is in the midst of creating it, well, we supposed He must know what He's doing. It seemed strange. But then again, we were not meant to speculate, only to watch, and to drink, and to remember.

Only the boy, the girl, and the Coward Magician returned. And then returned to their own world.
The adventure had finished. Well, as much as an adventure is ever finished.

And yet we watched still.
Because we don't often get visitors.
And we live in the Inbetween. So, we grow, we drink, and we remember.