The Wonder of Home

By Peter Bowden

 


Of the seven kingdoms, no cartographer ever truly caught their breath long enough to draw them right. The ink always trembled. The first kingdom was Morning, washed in pearl light and smelling faintly of dew and new promises. The second was Memory, where the air itself shimmered with the ghost-warm perfume of yesterday and every stone hummed with names it refused to forget. The third kingdom wore a crown of Ash, and even the wind there moved like a hand brushing through the remains of old songs and scorched letters never sent. The fourth, called Grace, was green as a whispered hymn, and its leaves leaned toward the sun as if they understood heaven better than men ever could.

The fifth kingdom breathed Salt and Tide, tasting of tears and distant shores, a place where the sea told stories to the moon and the moon listened like a patient god. The sixth slept beneath a quilt of Snow, its silence so deep it rang like crystal in the bones. And the seventh was the most precious of them all. It was made of Silence and soft eternity, a velvet hush where time loosened its grip and the soul floated as light as dandelion wishes rising into a summer sky.

A boy wandered there at twilight, when the world is half dream and half remembered lullaby. He did not know the kingdoms had opened their invisible gates to him. He only felt the language of the stars rinse his face, felt the sky lean closer as if to study the shape of his wondering. Each step was a bell note in the hush, each breath a small prayer disguised as curiosity. And somewhere beyond the rim of day, he understood, with a quiet and unbearable sweetness, that the seven kingdoms were not lands to be claimed, but luminous rooms within his own fragile, brave heart; rooms he would walk through all his life, trailing stardust, carrying the soft, impossible glow of wonder home with him.


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