Portraits of the Divine

Oren's voice rose from behind the booth, no longer cheerful or exaggerated, but smooth and measured, each word carefully shaped like it belonged to this different world. He spoke of a far-off village tucked beneath crooked mountains, a place forgotten by the world and slowly forgetting itself. The puppets emerged with uncanny grace, their stitches clean, their limbs fluid when moving as they drifted through painted scenes as if gliding across water. A faded backdrop rolled into view, revealing a village of twisting chimneys and shuttered windows, where every face was hidden behind a wooden mask. 

Once upon a time in a land few could find, there were roads that looped endlessly unless you forgot where you were going, trees that whispered your name until you forgot it was yours, a sky that changed color depending on whether anyone remembered you that day. Somewhere in this vast land lay a village full of people with no names, only roles. 

The Baker. 

The Watcher. 

The False King. 

They lived behind masks and spoke only in riddles, as if full speech had rotted out of their tongues long ago. 

The Baker of this village never baked; he simply guarded a cold oven, stuffing it with rocks and paper and dreams until the chimney wept smoke that no one could smell. The Watcher had no eyes, only empty sockets that stared into mirrors, hoping one day a face might look back at him. The False King, enthroned upon a ladder, made decrees only after consulting his weathervane and a jar of marbles. 

One day, a wind arrived that wasn't from the mountains or the woods, but from somewhere inside the village itself. It carried no scent, only memories and scraps of the lives the villagers didn't recall living. It passed through cracks in doors and under floorboards. Wherever it touched, names started to return, half-formed ones at first. El... Ra... Mi... They clung to the villagers like static. 

The Watcher blinked for the first time in years, the mirror had cracked, and for a moment, he saw something that might have been his face. The False King, afraid the villagers might remember how flimsy his rule had been, burned the ladder he'd once called a throne and buried the jar of marbles he once claimed held wisdom. The Baker was forced to bake again under the kings' desperate orders, only this time what came from the oven were masks, dozens of them, pale and unpainted, each still warm to the touch. The villagers were told to choose a new face, one they'd never worn before, and when they put them on, their memories crumbled like ash so that even the wind couldn't find them anymore. A girl with no name refused to wear the mask, so she hid in the well at the center of the village where voices couldn't echo and wind couldn't reach. She waited there, listening to the trickle of water, and made a map of the entire village by memory alone. In her hand she held a stone with a crack that looked like an eye. 

Oren's puppets illustrated each moment with theatrical flair; tiny props appearing from behind the curtain, delicate shadow-play projected on a thin screen of gauze, yet nothing about it felt staged. The story moved with the rhythm of a dream just on the edge of waking, too vivid, too real in its wrongness. The three members of the audience began to stop blinking, too engrossed in the story to notice the changes. 

One day, the girl climbed from the well with her map in one hand and the stone in the other. The villagers didn't recognize her when she returned and they called her Stranger, even though she had once lived alongside them. She moved like a forgotten song, opening shutters, unmasking doors. The wind followed. Far above the village, beyond the painted night sky of the stage, a giant pair of hands turned a crank, spinning the clouds like clockwork. Joren leaned forward, eyes wide, almost holding his breath. The puppets paused on the stage. The Stranger stood now before the False King, the map she spent all that time creating was torn. The stone she held was glowing and the villagers watched from behind their new masks, too afraid to move. 

Oren's voice dropped to a hush, the puppets barely moving now, suspended in a tableau of fear and decision. "She could not fix what had been broken," he said softly. "But she could name it." The Stranger looked to the sky, to the hands still turning the world, and she spoke a name none of the villagers could remember. For a moment, everything stilled. The sky, the wind, even the flickering stage lights stopped, as if the story itself held its breath. Then the puppets turned, slowly, deliberately… and looked beyond the curtain. Their stitched mouths parted in unison, now sounding like completely different people. "You know the ending, don't you?" 

The music, once soft and lilting, warped into something glassy and discordant. The painted stars behind the puppets began to spin. Light flared at the edges of the booth, and in that brightness, the world bent. Joren's breath caught in his throat as his fingertips tingled. He looked down to see his hands stiffening, his skin dulling fabric, thread emerging where knuckles should be. Willow let out a soft gasp beside him, her limbs jerking unnaturally as if pulled by strings. Gus staggered backward, eyes wide, but his voice was gone, swallowed by the thick hum now building around them. Their shadows no longer looked human, they had become the puppets of this story. 

Joren tried to shout, but no sound came out. His mouth was stiff, the hinges of his jaw creaking faintly as he opened it. Fabric. He could feel woven thread instead of skin, seams along the corners of his cheeks. Panic surged through him, but it was like trying to breathe through cotton. He turned to Gus, only to notice that he too was becoming a puppet, his transformation of a ventriloquist dummy. Willow's hands were halfway to her own face, eyes darting left and right like she was calculating some escape, but even her fingers now bent at the wrong angles, limp and dangling. She had become a marionette, waiting for someone to pull the strings attached to each of her limbs. 

A faint shudder passed through the trees, like something underneath the world had stirred and turned over in its sleep. The colors around them dimmed, golds faded to amber, then to a soft, paper-like beige. The music had changed again, it was no longer carnival-like or discordant, but a lullaby now, slow and distant, like something hummed through a closed box. Master Oren stepped from behind the puppet booth unhurried, unsurprised. His hands were empty now, the crocodile and the gentleman were gone. He moved toward them, casual, smiling, as if greeting old friends. "Ah," he said, clasping his hands together. "There it is. The hush before the world learns its trick." He crouched in front of Joren, his voice dropping to a near whisper. "You're still in there, aren't you? That's the hardest part, really. Not the change. The watching." He tapped Joren's shoulder with one finger, the stuffing just like a cushion to the puppet master. 

Oren stood up and stepped away, leaving them in silence. No more lines. No more puppets. Just the three of them, frozen, changed, watching from bodies that no longer felt like their own. A stillness settled over the clearing like dust. The puppet booth remained in front of them, its curtains drawn open, but nothing moved behind it anymore. All that remained was a faded backdrop of a sky with too many stars. The wind had stopped moving, even the branches overhead had gone still, as though the world itself was waiting for something. Joren's head turned slowly, not by choice, but like his body was remembering how to move without him. He saw Willow, her joints slack, her painted eyes staring ahead. Gus sat upright but unmoving, like he had been placed that way. There were no strings above them, no hands, but something was guiding their movements, like they had to finish the story. 

Somewhere beneath that stillness, a sound began. It wasn't music this time, more like the echo of something being wound up. A faint click... then another. The kind of sound a toy makes when it's being wound up and readied to move again. Joren felt it in his chest before he heard it, a gentle tightening, like a spring pulled taut behind his ribs. The booth hadn't moved, Oren was gone, yet the world didn't feel empty. If anything, it felt more full, as if unseen eyes were watching them from just outside the edges of the clearing. A performance half-finished. A stage still warm with memory. 

Joren's arm twitched, not by his decision. It was a practiced motion, smooth and unnatural. Beside him, Willow shifted in tandem, her head turning just slightly, like a marionette waiting for her cue. Gus remained still, but something in his eyes shimmered. The story hadn't ended. It was still unfolding in the way the shadows bent around their feet, in the hush of the unmoving wind, in the way the backdrop of painted stars refused to fade. The show was not over, and it was now their turn to act.