[c=#2dba69]The Coral Chant - Part 1
The Muffled Song[/c]

[c=#e3aaeb][i]Found in an abandoned underwater grave, wedged between two blocks of stone.
The water hadn't washed away the ink. It seemed, instead, to have protected it.[/i][/c]

Corals have no voice. No cry, no complaint.
But when a reef dies, the silence it leaves behind weighs heavier than grief.

I grew up near a reef that sang. That's the only word for it.
Every polyp, every branch, vibrated together with the others, and the whole became something alive that was greater than any of its parts.
The day that reef died, I heard nothing. It was worse than silence: it was the absence of a silence that should have been full.

I was told about a Watcher of the Dunes. A man with no known name, who carried a flute with spiral patterns, engraved with symbols the salt had nearly worn away.
They said it made no sound - unless you blew just right.

I found it. I don't know how to play. But I blew, and after several tries, a sequence of notes rang out in the hollow of a shore.
A dead coral at my feet shuddered. Then its color returned.

I understood nothing that day. I only know that this flute doesn't make music: it awakens a memory that the sea still keeps somewhere, intact.

If you're holding these lines, the flute awaits you. Find a dead coral on the sand. Play it this sequence, slowly, without forcing it:

e g e c f a f d

The dead don't cry out. But what sleeps can still answer, if the breath is true.
