The guardin

 I saw him again today.

Not in a dream, though it felt like one.

Not in a memory, though it wore the weight of déjà vu.

I was walking the lip of a valley that shouldn’t exist; some kind of sunken place where the land dips inward, as if an enormous thumb pressed into the world and left it dented. The Pool sits there now, clear as glass, insultingly calm. And beside it, as always, him.

He is taller than I remember.

Or perhaps I am simply smaller each time.

He doesn’t turn when I approach. He doesn’t acknowledge sound or footfall or the way the air changes around him. The Guardian gives the impression of someone who was told, long ago, that he must stand and watch — and has never questioned the order.

I’ve watched him for hours in the past, hoping for movement, expression, anything. You would think a creature bound to a pool of impossible memory would show some sign of the weight. But he doesn’t. He just listens.

Not to me.

Never to me.

But to the stories vibrating across the water like distant thunder.

There is a moment, if you get close enough, when you understand:

he isn’t guarding the Pool.

He’s guarding the threshold.

Guarding the shape of the story itself, making sure no one climbs out of their arc, no one cheats the ending, no one rewrites themselves.

It made me uneasy, realizing that.

As if there is a version of me he’s waiting for.

Or a version he’s already seen.

When I finally stepped away, I glanced back once, stupidly hoping for a nod, a blink, a crack in the mask.

He didn’t move.

But the water rippled. A single ring expanding outward, perfectly smooth, perfectly centered, as though something beneath had woken.

I don’t know if it was a warning or a welcome.

I only know he noticed me.

And I don’t think he forgets what he notices.