The first tendrils of dawn crept through the ancient trees surrounding Silverstream, painting the morning mist with hues of rose and gold. Lyra, barely sixteen summers old, already felt the day tugging at her. Not with any great urgency, mind you, but with the gentle insistence of a vine winding its way around a trellis. She rose from her small, straw-filled mattress, the scent of chamomile and lavender, stuffed within the ticking, clinging to her sleep-warmed skin.
The cottage, shared with her grandmother, Elara, was small and unassuming, built of river stone and timber, its walls softened by climbing ivy. Sunlight, filtered through the leaves, danced across the earthen floor. Elara was already up, humming a tuneless melody as she tended the small hearth. The aroma of simmering herbs filled the air, a familiar comfort.
"Up already, little wren?" Elara's voice was as warm as the fire, her eyes, the color of aged amber, crinkling at the corners. Elara, despite her years, moved with a grace that belied her age, her hands, gnarled with time, still deft and sure as she stirred the bubbling concoction.
"Couldn't sleep, Grandmother," Lyra replied, stretching. "The wind was restless last night. Kept whispering my name."
Elara paused, her gaze sharpening. "Whispering, you say? What did it say?"
Lyra shrugged, a flicker of unease passing over her features. "Nothing I could understand, just… whispers. Like secrets it couldn’t quite share."
Elara returned to her stirring, her expression unreadable. “The wind speaks to us all in different ways, child. Sometimes it carries warnings, sometimes just idle tales. Best not to dwell on it too much.”
Lyra helped prepare the morning meal – a simple porridge of oats and wild berries, sweetened with honey from Elara's own bees. As they ate, Lyra couldn't shake the feeling of unease. It wasn't just the wind. For weeks, she'd been experiencing strange occurrences. Small objects moving on their own, a teacup sliding across the table, a book falling from a shelf when no one was near. Whispers in the forest, too, faint and elusive, like voices just beyond the edge of hearing. At first, she'd dismissed them as tricks of the light or figments of her imagination. But the incidents were becoming more frequent, more insistent.
After breakfast, Lyra set about her daily chores. She gathered eggs from the hen house, watered the herbs in the garden, and swept the cottage floor. Each task was performed with a quiet diligence, a sense of connection to the land that was as natural to her as breathing. She felt the pulse of the earth beneath her bare feet, the gentle hum of life that permeated every corner of Silverstream.