Journey Across the Sky-Veil is a mythopoetic journey through a forgotten realm where the divine brushes the mortal. A nameless man awakens beneath a veil of sorrow and memory, guided by three silent goddesses across a path of signs, silence, and sacred trials. His quest is not to rise in power, but to remember his name—and the order of Being itself. This is a story of longing, wisdom, and the quiet majesty that crowns the soul.
I awoke with no memory of how I had come to the Grey-Beneath.
The ground under me was soft, not with soil, but with a carpet of brittle moss the color of old smoke. It crumbled like a memory too long forgotten as I turned over in quiet desperation. The sky overhead was a motionless dome of dull pewter, barely changing between day and night, a twilight stretched thin across the Sky-Veil above. Nothing moved—not leaf, not wind, not time.
All around me, the world hummed with a low ache, like the sound of distant weeping I could never quite hear but always feel.
I sat up slowly.
I was clothed in a simple tunic, dark and threadbare, dirty from years of wandering. Looking next to me, I found a mysterious satchel—worn, leather-bound, marked with symbols I could not read. It had not been there when I went to sleep. Inside it, I found only a book with blank pages, and the feeling that they were not to remain blank. I glanced left and right but saw no one. Who left it? And what was to be written in it?
I stood.
The land was a quiet desolation, one that depressed me but that I had grown accustomed to. Trees that I was sure were supposed to be beautiful dotted the distance, thin and skeletal, their bark ashen-white, peeling like old skin. Ruins of noble stone columns that had once called the people to commerce, debate, worship, and sacrifice now stood at odd angles, half-buried in the moss, like the ribs of some dead civilization. Birds rarely sang here. Rivers mostly ran dry. A pale mist dominated the landscape, drifting low across the ground, coiling through hollows.
I walked.
Not because I knew where I was going, but because to stand still there felt like surrendering to the slow decay of the world. It was instinctual, what everyone did without really thinking. People did what others did. So did I.
Others moved through the Grey—shadows in the fog, draped in their own tunics or long robes. Some even wore silver masks. They walked aimlessly, at least so it seemed, rarely acknowledging me. When I spoke to them, it was merely superficial pleasantries or ramblings as if no authentic voice had ever come from my throat, and no meaningful recognition came from theirs. Those with masks were expressionless, mirror-like. When I passed too near, I caught glimpses of myself in them—not as I was, but as I feared to be: empty, hollow, forever wandering.
I kept my distance from the masked people after that.
As I walked this day, I slowly began to notice unusual things—small surprises—pleasant surprises, dare I thought—subtle and strange.
A cluster of violet, red, and yellow flowers bloomed between two stones—impossibly vibrant in a land so drained of life. They were the most beautiful flowers I could remember seeing. Where had they come from? I glanced further along his path. A broken harp sat on the steps of a ruined arch with strings still singing softly in the windless air as if caressed by an invisible hand. And not far from the harp, a stone glowed with a spiral etched in its center, warm to the touch when everything else was cold. These enigmas were most unusual, indeed. At least in the Grey-Beneath.
These were signs, I thought. Others would say that they could be explained, but I knew they were each calling. They were to be neither explained nor dismissed—but followed, discovered, and embraced. I did not know how I knew that. I simply did.
I looked up and contemplated the dull horizon and the landscape that hid a presence. For the first time, I began to sense the nearness of meaning that remained hidden yet still recognized. The Grey-Beneath had not been a prison as most had supposed. It had been a forgetting—a forgetting of presence, of meaning. A place of forgetting the remembrance. A womb of silence.
And amidst its quiet sorrow, something stirred. I shrugged and moved on. Everyone else was moving on.
Then, one evening—or something like evening, when the sky deepened to a dull violet and the air turned heavy with forgetfulness—I came across yet another strange sign—a pond filled with fresh water.
It was small, with a sparkling creek running down to it, one I had never seen before. In fact, I had never seen any of this before on my walks through the Grey-Beneath. The water was still, like glass. It reflected no sky, for the Grey-Beneath had no sky that could reflect. The water reflected a warm light from an unknown source.
I knelt beside it. The moment I did, the air changed. The mist cleared. And behind me, she appeared.
She was nearness first—warmth, scent, the salty breeze from a shore just out of sight. Then form. She emerged out of the landscape. She stepped through the fog like the ocean moves through night.
Aphrodite-She of the Sea-Foam and Smile, though I did not yet know her name.
Her hair shone with the sunlight of rosy-fingered dawn, sweet light not known in the Grey-Beneath. Her eyes held galaxies—sorrow and laughter, joy and mourning entwined. I looked at her as if I had known her before.
I could not speak.
“You have felt it,” she said. Her voice was angelic, wafting through trees and across meadows, bringing temporary relief to the landscape. “The ache beneath the Sky-Veil.”
I nodded. I could not do otherwise. She was presence appearing as truth. I did not attempt to calculate how her words fit into my understanding of the world I lived in. Her words were not propositions but revelations—unveilings of what lay hidden.
She knelt beside me. The light of her presence shimmered on the water. From its depths, she drew forth a single rose. Its petals were veined with light, and the scent it gave off was not only heavenly floral, but familiar—the scent of home, one I knew, though I had never seen it.
“This is remembrance,” she said. “Not of things once known, but of the hidden presence you understood on the path. She placed the rose in my hand. It did not wither.
“Keep it,” she whispered. “When the night grows heavy, and the Grey-Beneath presses against your soul—remember this moment. You are not lost. You are beginning.”
I looked up from the radiant, celestial rose. She was gone. Only the rose remained.
And in the stillness of the Grey-Beneath, I took my first step—not into certainty, but into the longing that would lead me home.
Enjoy “She of the Sea Foam and Smile (Aphrodite’s Gift)” from my album The Sky-Veil, available on my music site.
Purchase the album, The Sky-Veil here.
Lyrics ©Walter Emerson Adams. Music and vocals by Suno ©Walter Emerson Adams.
She stepped through fog like sea through silent night She of the Sea-Foam and Smile Her name unknown, her hair was gleaming bright By dawn’s first light, the world in blush beguiled Her piercing eyes - like galaxies and stars Where sorrow, joy, and laughter lay entwined She looked at him as though she knew his scars Did Aphrodite gift him grace, remind? “You felt the ache beneath all things” she spoke Her voice, an angel’s, wrapped around the trees She knelt, her presence shimmered on a brook She drew from depths her roses, blooms in three Their petals veined with light, their scent divine She whispered, “Keep them,” pressed them in his hand Then Aphrodite vanished into song She of the Sea-Foam and Smile
The Grey Beneath lyrics are so beautiful. You are on a very special journey. I will check out the music.