I sleep.

 

Blanketed in black, waterlogged peat, for how long I don’t know. There is no time here, and no waking, only the hush of the bog, the press of wet earth, the long exhale of centuries. Above, rain darkens the heather, pools in the dips of the moor. Hardy roots thread through layers of time, searching for something to hold. But still I do not wake.

 

I dream.

 

My dream is one story and many, forward and back in a slow, endless tide. I dream of this land when the earth was firm, when forests stretched where sedge remains, and the air was thick with insects. I feel the thrum of paws above me as wolves move through the mist, harsh, hungry and unhunted.

 

Time shifts.

 

The trees are gone, land softens, drinking deeply of the rain. Moss grows thick, layered in silence, green lips closing over the calls and cries of creatures past. A seed falls, but never grows. A hare leaps, body light as breath, but there is nowhere for it to hide. The lone keening of a curlew’s cry.

 

Footsteps.

 

They press into the soft ground, leaving prints that fill with water. I dream of hands, rough with work, plucking berries from low shrubs, lifting a child to see the river’s silver thread. I dream of fires banked against the wind, peat cut in neat stacks and left to dry for winter. The land holds these moments close, just as it holds me now.

 

I remember.

 

I remember the hands that laid me here, a struggle in the dark. Sorrow, fear, a knife, a prayer. Careful and deliberate, pressing me down into rich, black earth. Whether punishment or sacrifice, still I do not know. And all I know is still.

 

Time folds.

 

Hooves press deep into the ground, tearing into carpets of moss, exposing peat to wind and rain. Roots ripped up by grazing mouths no longer weave the land together. Farmers’ fire comes through the heather, scorched earth in its wake. Ditches cut like veins split open, drying, shrinking, gasping, dying. No answer to the curlew’s call.

 

Earth alters.

​

Fed by it, feeding it, I sense the shift. The rain is heavier, gullies widening, banks collapsing, things that have slept for centuries torn from their beds and cast adrift. The bog has held its secrets close, but now it breaks open, spilling them out into a world that no longer speaks its language.

​

 

One day I will cease to dream: the silent vigil of centuries subsumed by earth and air. Perhaps new hands will find me, spread my secrets in the sun. Or perhaps my end will be quieter: decomposition’s subtle dance, finally free of age-old form, becoming the earth that binds me.

​

 

But the dream will carry on.