𝒮𝓉𝒶𝓇 𝑅𝒾𝓋𝑒𝓇 [Gold Moon]

Chapter One ✧ Emergence of Sentience

   The first thing I remember is the sound of chimes, clinking glass, and other twinkling noises. My eyes saw nothing but pitch darkness. I had no taste, smell, or even feeling. I relied solely on my ears in my earliest memories. The sounds of glass, rustling leaves, and singing birds were always the most comforting.
  Then one day I heard a voice, a smooth, deep, absently amused voice. I remember the wind chimes picking up and settling again and the word or name, "Rhine." I must have made a face or something because it was followed by laughter. The regular sounds continued for only he knows how long. Then I started to see.
  A silver glow graced my face, then slowly a boy manually but cautiously opened my eyes. He is the first thing I ever remember seeing. His eyes were bright and golden, they reflected the starlight in a way that was excruciatingly painful at the time. I squinted in pain, and then a new sensation. I could feel my eyes in my head watering and adjusting to light for the first time. I felt my tears with my hands. He patted my face gently with a cloth and asked me if I was ok, but I didn't understand.
  Each blurry color was like an individual explosion in my head. My ears wouldn't stop ringing. He closed my eyes and covered them with the cloth. "It's ok, take your time," said the boy, and it was comforting. I opened my eyes on my own after some time had passed, and this time I was able to see properly.
    I was sitting in a wooden chair which was relatively close to the entrance of a cave. Inside this small cave the boy from before was sleeping. His hair was straight but messy and dark brown like cocoa. He slept facing the wall of the cave, on top of what looked like two crates and a large soft mat of some variety. I noticed the dark cave was full of glass vases and viles, as well as wooden crates and chairs. There was also a relatively large stone with interesting carvings. I tried to examine it from where I sat but I couldn't determine what it was. I had to get closer in order to make out certain shapes in the stone carving. I stood upright in order to move, but it didn't work.
   As soon as I rose the room spun and a loud thud echoed in the cave. I heard ringing and shuffling and saw fading darkness. On the inside my head ached but on the outside it felt soft and warm. I woke up to find I was laying on the artificial bed from before. The boy slept half sitting in a wooden chair, with his head resting at the foot of the crate. He made a noise which I've heard a thousand times but never noticed before. I had always thought his breathing was part of nature, something created by the wind, but it was him.
  I looked up towards the entrance of the cave. Through the chiming trees the sky was a bright and saturated blue menace. I covered my face with my hands and rubbed my closed eyes.
I sat up slowly with one eye open. When I stopped moving I felt a hand touch my leg. "Rhine"
"Rhine?" I said in response.
The boy pointed to me and repeated, "Rhine"
I pointed to myself, "Rhine" The boy's face lit up with a smile and he nodded. I pointed to him. He pointed to himself and said, "Han"
  l repeated, "Han" He nodded again, then he stood up and went to one of the glass containers, pouring it into another smaller one. He returned with a glass of clear liquid and stretched out his hand. I put mine in his and he helped me sit fully upright. He tilted my head back and proceeded to teach me how to drink water. My first time drinking water myself was rather messy so he also had to help me clean up. This was when he showed me the dark brown, four pointed, star shaped mark on my chest. He pointed to it and said, "This is a birthmark" I was confused, I touched it and nodded out of acceptance, "Birth" I said. He laughed nervously and said nothing more.
   After a few days of water, medicinal herbs, and learning words Han went to a nearby town for a day. He returned with folded, mended together stacks of paper.
"Paper?" I asked.
"These are books"
"For what?"
"For you to read Rhine" he said with a smile. He sat down next to me and read me a few chapters of a book. It was a story about a cursed ring from what I remember. I fell asleep eventually after he read about elves and whatever else. The next day I woke up to find him mixing a black and silvery gray substance with a brush. "Good morning," he said. Then he proceeded to paint around twenty different symbols on the cave wall. I just sat there confused as he also set up two strong sticks that lay on crates which he clearly moved while I was asleep.
He secured them with some kind of sticky bandage and then looked at me and said, "For you."
"Why?" I asked, genuinely confused.
"We have to go soon"
"Go where?"
"Anywhere you want, don't you want to discover the world?" he said, trying to spark my interest.
However, I didn't know what he meant. I had never considered the idea of the world before; I had never even thought of anything outside of the cave and I didn't feel anything towards it either. I simply understood that the bright blue place was where he would go sometimes for food or supplies. "Resources" I said blankly. "There's so much more Rhine," he said longingly, "big blue and green places, so many stars and so much wind." This I understood, I nodded and after glancing at the wall and sticks briefly I said, "I will learn." 
  I had a very limited understanding of what I was getting into. I knew the sticks were for walking, because I had tried before and failed. It seemed like a pretty genius idea to have some kind of support rather than just balancing on unused limbs.
  However I could never comprehend what the strange wall markings were for. Simply looking at them for the first time was baffling in multiple ways.
  Han caught me staring at them and laughed at me. He handed me a book and said, "If you find those interesting, try this." So I opened it and the whole bound stack, front and back, every paper was filled to the brim with symbols. I flipped through frantically, consumed with the sheer amount of them. Then I realized they were the same.
  I could match the symbols in the book to the symbols on the wall. Han tore out a piece of blank paper from one of his books as I was matching the letters on the spine of the book to the letters on the wall.
  He wrote a short combination of symbols and showed it to me.
"Repeat after me," he said.
"Rh," pointing to the first symbol, "Rh," I said back in response.
"I - N - E"
"I - N - E"
My name was on the paper, "Rhine."
  "That's right," he said. I pointed over to the stone with strange carvings and said, "Rock."
"You won't be able to understand that one," he replied. "I want to see," and so at my request he picked it up carefully and brought it to me, placing the large rock on the ground.
   I examined the rock. It was about three feet tall and two feet wide, but only about four inches thick. It was more like a tablet than a rock, and the carvings covered the entire surface of both sides, which were nearly identical. The carvings themselves could not be matched to the wall symbols. They were bigger and connected with one another almost as if they were a design, which was vertically symmetrical.
   In the innermost part of the design there was a circle which was crowned in gold. Out of the circle grew branches with eye-like designs and other sharp rigid symmetrical lines I couldn't interpret.
  I reached out to touch the rock but Han grabbed my hand and said, "No, you must never touch this." I lowered my hand and asked him why. He didn't explain, instead he paused and said, "Trust me" So I nodded and told him I wouldn't touch it. Instead I examined it safely, I learned to write and make shapes on paper, and I drew the rock and its carvings in my very own journal. Han taught me how to translate the symbols into language, and how to read and write them. I also learned to walk using the support sticks. I could almost even do it with my eyes closed, using the familiar sounds of the chimes and Han's voice.
  After a few months had passed I even learned where to find herbs outside of the cave walls. The feeling of fresh grass on my feet and the wind in my hair were all new pleasant things to experience. Everything was so unbelievably bright and airy. I understood why he wanted me to learn, to experience these wonderful things. I am truly grateful for those days.