When the Outrealm Called... | Sunday Storytime
A Report from the Dimming Lands
The air had shifted before anyone spoke. The sort of pause that happens that causes the birds to stop singing… The threshold between worlds had grown thin.
Pearl was the first to feel it and knew immediately what had occurred… She’d been tending the thresholds longer than any human living in Wondermere. Her palms recognized it like an old friend returns to a doorway and simply knows the door will open.
She glanced over at Scathalan, who, too, had gone quiet… still… in that ancient way of his. Not waiting exactly or waiting. Just knowing… and being.
The message had gone out, moving without words… the way Council calls always did. The Circle gathers.
By the time Figwynn arrived, they were all present.
She entered the chamber the way she always did… hesitantly, almost as though she was asking permission to occupy the very space in which she stood.
Her patchwork cloak was dusted with grime, undoubtedly from the Outrealm. Her acorn hat sat at an angle, and one of boots was slightly crusted with mud. Ny’Raia, who sat near the threshold, noticed there appeared to be three new jars sticking out of her satchel… and the others… they were notably quieter than they’d been before.
Scathalan, who sat with his back to the great oak that overlooked the chamber, smiled. Warm, tender, echoing his scales which caught the candlelight like embers that refused to dim. His whole demeanor meant to put Figwynn and the others at ease.
Returning his smile, even if slightly hesitantly, and curtsied… truly, actually curtsied…
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice small and careful before, she cleared her throat. “For gathering…”
Setting down the steaming teacup in her hand, Pearl sat forward in her chair. “Figwynn, you’ve seen something.” It wasn’t a question.
The young gnome nodded. Her lavender and moss-green eyes held something that wasn’t quite fear but wasn’t quite anything comfortable either. Reaching into her satchel, she pulled out her notebook… the one she’d held for seasons now. Its pages were worn soft as skin, the margins crowded with sketches, pressed flowers, and fragments of overheard conversations written in her careful hand.
“I don’t know how to say this…” She shook her head, hesitating before continuing. “The Outrealm…”
She spoke not of the violence nor the sharp edges of the systems that bound the Tethered… they already knew of these things. Instead, she spoke of something quieter. Something that somehow cut deeper.
The way the Tethered had learned to be alone… together. The way they moved through crowds and felt more hollow than if they’d walked through silence. The way they carried devices that promised connection… but only built walls between them.
“They’ve forgotten,” Figwynn said, and her voice trembled slightly. “Not just the magic…”
Melvin, who had been sprawled in a chair that certainly was not meant for sprawling, sat up at the very mention of magic.
“Not just that they’re connected to each other…” Figwynn continued. “They’ve forgotten…” Pausing, she seemed to search for the words that would truly help the others to understand the seriousness of the situation. “They’ve forgotten their selves. Their own hearts. Their own knowing. They perform for so long… always striving… always perfecting… they stop believing a self even exists beneath the doing… the efforting.”
She flipped through the pages of her notebook as she sought a particular notation…
“Last week, I sat in a coffee shop…” Glancing up at the others, she continued, “Many of the Tethered… they drink coffee constantly… almost as if the caffeine might fill the absence they feel… And I watched a woman order her drink in a voice so small that it might have been an apology. The barista… the Coffee Tender… didn’t hear her, so she said it again. This time even smaller… And the barista said, ‘What?’ and by then… the woman’s voice had disappeared entirely. She… she just pointed.”
Figwynn touched a page in her notebook marked with a pressed flower that had faded to almost nothing.
“I collected it,” she said quietly. “That silence… I put it in a jar.”
Scathalan’s eyes closed. A gesture that could have meant many things.
Tears pooled in Figwynn’s eyes as she continued to recall other recent incidents in the Outrealm. “The division…” Pausing, she cleared her throat again. “The division between them is exponential now. It’s not that they’re distant… It’s that they believe distance is… inevitable. Natural. They’ve built languages around it… They say things like ‘I’m bad at staying in touch’ as though it’s a character flaw, not a choice… a choice they make every day, sometimes every hour, to reach for the device… rather than the hand beside them.”
She pulled out another jar. This one… it was nearly empty.
“The glimmers… they get rarer,” Figwynn said. “Do you understand? The sacred moments… the unnoticed sacreds… They’re still there, but the Tethered… they move through them like they’re moving through water. It’s almost like they’re asleep… and… if you’re asleep… how can you even see a glimmer?”
Pausing, Figwynn glanced over at Auriel. Her form, which normally shimmered, less solid than the rest, more frequency than flesh… flickered as the weight of Figwynn’s words settled upon her.
“And their morale?” she asked.
“Fractured, at best,” Figwynn replied. “Diminishing… Many are losing heart. Not dramatically, mind you. Not with noise, but… quietly. Like light going out in a room so slowly you don’t notice it’s dark. At least not until you look up and realize that you can’t see your own hand in front of your face.”
Melvin leaned back in his chair, causing it to creak in protest. “So… the magic? It isn’t… dead? The Tethered… they still have it, right? They’re just… lost to themselves?”
Figwynn nodded. “Yes. The magic isn’t dead. It’s… sleeping, and they’re sleeping around it… through it. It’s like… standing in a garden, but not knowing that you’re standing in a garden.”
Ny’Raia didn’t speak. She never spoke first. But something in her settled—like she’d been waiting for this exact word. This exact shape of it.
Pearl picked her tea up again without drinking it. She just held it for the warmth. “Figwynn, why now?” she finally asked. “Why did you feel called to bring this to us now?”
Figwynn’s jaw tightened slightly. “Because… I felt a shift. Right around the time of the Ember Queen’s coronation… something changed in the Outrealm. The thresholds… they shifted and the divide… deepened. It’s like…” She searched for the right words. “It’s like the Outrealm is responding to something. It’s almost like it somehow knows that something has changed here, and it’s pulling inward. Pulling away from us…”
Hedgewick’s quill moved quickly, recording his thoughts in haste before they escaped him.
“The realms…” Raia spoke for the first time, her voice like flame finding fuel. “They are not separate. When one shifts, the other knows.”
“Yes,” Figwynn replied. “And I think… I think the Outrealm is waiting… Watching to see if Wondermere will reach out.”
There was a long silence.
Scathalan was the first to break it. His voice was old and layered like stone that held the weight of centuries.
“This is what we sensed… in the thickening of the Greyfold… in the dimming of the Glowgrid. The Outrealm… it is not broken. It is reaching,” he added with certainty. “It’s asking if we remember them.”
Ny’Raia moved then. Not suddenly, but with intention… the way she moved through everything now. Every gesture holding meaning.
Stepping forward, the candlelight caught the dragon-scale pendant at her throat. “I will go.” The words, they were simple. They were also non-negotiable.
“Nya…” Pearl began, but Ny’Raia’s eyes were molten, clear, determined.
“This is why I made my vows,” she said. “To protect Wondermere, yes, but to be the bridge between worlds. The Tethered, they are forgetting themselves. They’re forgetting the magic, and because they’re forgetting… the realms are drifting further apart. If I don’t go now… if I don’t go into that forgetting and remember for them until they’re able to remember for themselves… the distance will eventually become too great.”
Turning, she looked at Figwynn directly. “You’ve been their witness,” she continued. “Their tender observer. But… they need more than observation now. They need someone to live among them… to remind them… through presence alone, that a self still exists. That connection… still exists. That magic is not something that happened once upon a time and is now gone. That it’s living in them, sleeping, waiting to be woken.”
Scathalan’s eyes rested upon her. In them was something like pride… sorrow… deep recognition.
“You are certain,” he said. It was not a question.
“I have never been more certain of anything in my life,” she assured him.
Melvin let out a low whistle. “Well… that settles that… now, doesn’t it?”
Auriel nodded slowly, her form stabilizing. “The Ember Queen walks into the Outrealm. The bridge is restored by crossing it.”
“Figwynn…” Ny’Raia turned back to the small gnome. “You will guide me. You know the Outrealm… you know the Tethered… you know the places where the glimmers still live.”
Figwynn’s eyes filled with tears… the sort that come from truly being seen after witnessing from the shadows for so long.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will. I know someone… in the Outrealm. Someone who’s safe… someone who understands the thresholds, even if they don’t fully know the language we speak. We can start there.”
“Mari,” Pearl offered softly.
Figwynn nodded.
Pearl set down her teacup, and when she looked at Ny’Raia, there was something in her face that was more tender than anything had a right to be.
“Then you will carry my blessing,” she said. “And my love… for my daughter… her family… and for the world that still needs them.”
Ny’Raia bowed. There was no submission in it… only sovereignty honoring sovereignty.
“When do we leave?” Figwynn asked, her voice small but steady.
Ny’Raia looked at the threshold, at the space between worlds where she’d been learning to stand.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “At dawn… before the Outrealm fully wakes and the performance begins.”
Scathalan rose, and the air shifted again. This time it wasn’t a pause in the birdsong… this time, it was a recognition.
“The Ember Queen goes into the world to remember them,” he said. “And in remembering, the bridge will be restored.”
Hedgewick’s quill moved even faster now, recording not just words but the feeling in this moment… the way the light caught differently on Ny’Raia’s hair, the way Figwynn’s jars seemed somehow fuller despite being nearly empty, the way Pearl’s hands finally lifted her teacup and drank as though she’d just tasted something she had been waiting for all her life.
Around the table, they settled into the knowing that comes only to those who remember…
Sometimes the bridge between worlds is not restored by force, magic, or grand gestures. Sometimes it’s restored by one being, standing at the threshold, saying yes to the wobbling, the forgetting, the hard work of waking the sleeping magic in those who have learned to live asleep.
Sometimes it’s restored by love
By the time the Council dispersed, the candlelight had shifted. The shadows were longer. The air smelled different… like earth preparing for something… like the season about to change.
Figwynn sat alone for a moment, her small hands holding her notebook as though it might anchor her to something real.
She thought of the woman in the coffee shop… the one whose voice had disappeared.
She thought of the jars, growing quieter.
She thought of Ny’Raia, stepping into the Outrealm... with her refusal to let the magic dim.
And for the first time in a very long time, Figwynn felt a glimmer returning to her own heart.
She reached into her satchel and pulled out a new jar… empty… waiting.
“For the remembering…” she whispered.
And she held it close.
If Wondermere warmed you a little today, the jar is always open. ☕
Previous Installments of this Storyline
When the Outrealm Called… (This post)
© 2025-2026 Wondermere™ by Dawna Kreis | A soul-crafted realm of sacred play and imaginative healing. Stories written by the author, with AI-assisted refinement in service of clarity, continuity, and canon care. Visual art is created with AI tools under the direction and discernment of the Storykeeper.
There are some callings that don't arrive with thunder. They come as a quiet tug, asking us to leave the familiar without promising the map. This felt like a reminder that courage isn't always loud. Sometimes it's simply saying yes to the unknown before we understand why. Beautifully written.