Once Upon the Knowing Time

De: Darlene Zagata

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Before there was the Knowing Time, there was the Forgetting.

It happened so gradually that no one noticed. First, the stories stopped being told. Then the songs grew shorter, simpler, until they were merely noise to fill silence. The old ways—the gathered circles, the shared harvests, the long nights of laughter under stars—faded like morning mist under a harsh sun.

People began to measure their worth in hours worked, in coins earned, in ranks achieved. They traded touch for screens, conversation for transactions, meaning for efficiency. They called it progress. They called it civilization. They called it inevitable.

Children stopped asking why. Adults stopped remembering when. The old ones, those who held the fading memories of different times, were dismissed as nostalgic, unrealistic, out of touch with the demands of the modern world.

And so the Forgetting became complete. Not because people couldn't remember—but because they had been taught that remembering was useless, that the past was primitive, that forward was the only direction that mattered.

But in the forest of Everly, where ancient roots run deeper than recorded history, one being still remembered everything. The Tree had witnessed it all: the before, the during, the after. Its bark bore the scars of transformation, its rings held the truth that humanity had been carefully taught to forget.

Some called it legend. Some called it myth.

Micah called it their last hope.