Unknown Clicks

✶ ✶ ✶ ⸸ A RECORD SET DOWN WITHOUT AUTHOR ⸸ (Recovered from a fragmentary codex of unknown origin. Script inconsistent. Ink reacts poorly to light.) Hearken, O Wanderer of the Later Hours— for what is rendered here was not made, but unsealed.   [Note: The verb used here does not imply intent. Troubling.] This hymn was drawn forth from the interstices of the firmament, where stars forget their names and angles refuse obedience.   [Margin: Cross-reference impossible. Constellations do not remain fixed.] It speaks not in command, nor in consolation, but in remembrance— of forms antecedent to breath, and truths requiring no witness to persist.   [Annotation: I believe this passage predates language as we know it.] ᚛ Let it be marked: those who attend its sound may perceive the pull of tides unmoored from ocean, and hear a summons where none was uttered. ᚜   [Note: I heard nothing. Yet I wrote this line anyway.] This is no phantasm, nor sleep-born fiction. It is alignment.   [Margin: Define “alignment.” Definition resists containment.] The voice carried herein does not beckon— it recognizes. It does not hasten— it abides.   [Addendum: Recognition implies prior contact. I do not recall such contact.] If the silence should seem to answer in return, if the dark should incline itself nearer, reckon this not as terror, but as familiarity long deferred.   [Marginal hand differs: Deferred from whom?] ⚠︎ No admonition is inscribed. ⚠︎ No safeguard is promised.   [Later ink: This omission appears deliberate.] Only this truth remains: There is no ending— there is only proximity.   [Final note: The page grows warmer here.] You have already begun to listen.   [Unattributed: So have I.] ✶ ✶ ✶