Chapter 68: The Named Tide
The story-stone did not glow with the warm, living light of the other anchors. Its white, lunar radiance was cool, factual, a lighthouse beacon in the realm of meaning rather than the realm of feeling. It stood at the tide line, a small, stubborn sentinel half-buried in the sand, and the world… adjusted.
The change was not in the color of the water or the scent of the air. It was in the certainty. The creeping, formless dread that had seeped into Stillwater's bones for months seemed to hit an invisible wall at the edge of town. People didn't suddenly feel hopeful; they simply felt less besieged. The anxiety, which had been a constant low hum, became a thing with edges it was strong here, near the docks, and weaker near the Anchor, and almost absent up on Morwen's cliff. The blight had been given a shape, and in being shaped, it lost some of its power to pervade.
