The gift that keeps giving

Journal Entry – October 21, 1871

(The Whisper and the Mark)

The clasp will not quiet.

I found it again this morning where I’d left it—on the small table near the window—but the light from the curtain made it shimmer like something alive. I reached for it without thinking. The moment my skin met the metal, the mark on my palm answered. A soft heat first, then a pulse, as though the two shared a single breath.

It isn’t just a trinket. It’s listening.

When I close my hand around it, the rhythm steadies into a pattern—three quick beats, then one slow. The same cadence the sisters used when we called the circle in the woods. I had thought that ritual long buried, the mark nothing more than a stain of ink and guilt. But this… this feels like a conversation. Not in words, but in knowing.

I swear I hear something faint when it hums—like whispers pressed against glass. They come from somewhere deeper than sound, threading through the bones of my hand and into the place the dreams come from. I can almost make out syllables, but they slip away before meaning takes hold.

Tonight, when the wind shifted, the clasp grew cold and the mark burned. Two opposing tempers of the same will. I set it down, but it rolled toward me on its own, as if drawn by the pulse beneath my skin.

Perhaps it is reaching for me.

Or perhaps something else is reaching through it.

Either way, I am listening now.

— K