por Bill Tiepelman
Echoes of Autumn and Dawn
She stood where the worlds divided, her bare feet pressed against the cracked threshold of an invisible seam, stitched together by the unseen hands of gods who had long since forgotten they made her. On her left, the light — gold, radiant, alive — streamed through towering trees whose leaves whispered the secrets of endless beginnings. On her right, the dark — indigo, reverent, tender — cradled crimson boughs heavy with sorrowful wisdom, the kind only endings ever truly know. In her hands she cradled a bouquet, roses too real for this place: thorns bloodied by choices unmade, petals bruised by hopes too fragile to survive the crossing. Her dress, woven from light and shadow, flickered with each heartbeat — a heartbeat she was no longer sure belonged to her, or to the aching universe that breathed through her skin. Two faces rose behind her — great earthen visages, carved by the slow, patient chisel of time itself. One wept golden sap from hollow eyes, the other bled crimson mist. They were her ancestors, her descendants, her twin reflections stretched across lifetimes she could only half-remember. She was their echo; they were her memory. And in the silence between their thunderous existences, she was given a choice. To remain. To bridge. To become the song of seasons, the living testament to the impossible reconciliation of contradictions: morning and mourning, birth and decay, fire and water, reaching for each other across the chasm of entropy. As she stepped forward, roots tangled around her ankles, pleading and promising. The trees, ancient and unknowable, whispered in a tongue older than the soil beneath her toes: "Choose wisely, for your choice will echo beyond the stars you can see and the ones that have already died for you." Her heart faltered. Not from fear — no, she had shed fear long ago — but from the terrible beauty of knowing. Of seeing too much. Of feeling the pull of both creation and destruction within her marrow. She could not take the first step without betraying one half of herself. She could not stand still without betraying them both. Overhead, the sky split — not with anger, but with possibility. Through the crack poured stardust older than grief, carrying with it a voice, not heard but understood: "You are the daughter of collapse and the mother of rebirth. Choose, and choose wholly." She closed her eyes. She opened them. She lifted one foot, trembling but resolute, toward the twilight beyond the seam... She stepped — not onto ground, but into memory. The air thickened, trembling around her like the skin of a drum, humming with the echoes of every soul who had ever chosen, or failed to choose, before her. Each heartbeat became a drumbeat. Each breath a symphony. She was no longer merely standing between light and shadow; she was becoming the space where they met, where they clashed and caressed and collapsed into something utterly new. Through her feet, she felt the lifelines of planets pulsing, dying, birthing. Through her hands, she cradled stars not yet born and empires already turned to dust. Her body became a bridge, and the terrible, magnificent weight of existence pressed into her bones, branding her with its eternal demand: Be more than the sum of your contradictions. Be the thread that sews the torn fabric of becoming. The two faces loomed closer now, no longer silent sentinels but living memories. They whispered truths she had tried to forget: how every beginning is a wound, how every ending is a kiss. How love and loss are not opposites but mirror images gazing endlessly at each other across time’s vast hallways. And above it all, the breach in the sky widened, pouring silver rain onto her upturned face. Each droplet whispered names — names she had worn in other lifetimes, names she had forgotten, names she had yet to earn. Some were cruel. Some were beautiful. All of them were hers. In that moment, she saw herself: not as a single woman bound by flesh, but as an endless, spiraling constellation of choices, regrets, desires, and dreams. She was not standing between autumn and dawn — she was the autumn and the dawn, the hand that closed the door and the hand that opened the window. She realized that the choice was not about which side to favor, which face to love, which future to birth. The choice was simply this: Would she remain divided forever — or would she embrace the unbearable wholeness of who she truly was? The roots around her ankles loosened, not in surrender, but in offering. The trees bent low, their branches brushing her hair in reverent benediction. The faces closed their hollow eyes and waited, neither demanding nor pleading. The universe itself seemed to hold its breath. With a smile — the kind born only after knowing true sorrow — she knelt. She pressed her palm into the cracked seam of the world, feeling its roughness, its scars. She whispered not words, but understanding, into its depths. She gave it everything: her hopes, her failures, her fury, her forgiveness. She gave it the music of her unspoken poems and the weight of her silent screams. And the world answered. From the fissure bloomed a tree unlike either of its ancestors. It bore leaves that shimmered like prisms, shifting from gold to blue to red to colors no human tongue had ever named. Its bark was etched with the fingerprints of galaxies. Its roots drank from the dreams of dead stars. Its branches reached not just across seasons, but across the very curvature of time itself. She rose. She was no longer a bridge, nor a seamstress, nor a daughter of collapse. She was the seed and the soil, the ache and the awakening. She carried within her the silence of endings and the laughter of beginnings, braided together so tightly they could never again be torn apart. The faces crumbled into dust, their task complete. The sky stitched itself closed, leaving only a faint scar — a reminder that even healed wounds remember being broken. The trees sang, not with leaves or wind, but with the silent thunder of new possibility. And as she stepped into the vastness, the bouquet in her hand unraveled into starlight, scattering across the firmament to seed new worlds — each one bearing the faint, eternal whisper of her name. She was autumn. She was dawn. She was the echo, the song, the silence between stars. She was the choice made whole. Epilogue: The Silent Orchard Centuries later, when the world had forgotten her name but not her story, travelers would stumble upon the place where the golden and crimson woods once met. They would speak in hushed voices of a single tree that stood apart — a tree whose branches shimmered like broken rainbows and whose roots hummed underfoot with a pulse older than any living memory. No birds dared build nests in its boughs. No storms could twist its trunk. It belonged to neither season nor soil. It simply was — as she had been, as she still was, somewhere beyond the trembling curtain of reality. Some said if you pressed your ear to its bark on a cold autumn morning, you could hear the laughter of dawn mixing with the sighs of falling leaves. Others claimed that if you wept beneath its canopy, your tears would vanish, lifted into the sky to become new stars — tiny testaments to choices made and paths walked bravely, even when unseen by any eyes but your own. And though her name was lost to time, her echo remained, not carved in stone nor sung in legend, but sewn into the fabric of being itself. Every sunrise. Every withering leaf. Every trembling hand reaching for hope against despair — they bore the invisible fingerprint of a woman who chose wholeness over comfort, unity over certainty. It is said — by those who still listen carefully enough — that when you stand very still between the hush of ending and the hush of beginning, you might hear her whisper: "You are more than you fear. You are all that you remember, and all that you dream. Step forward, beloved echo. The universe is listening." Bring the Echo Home Carry a piece of this cosmic journey into your own sacred spaces. Let Echoes of Autumn and Dawn remind you — every day — that beginnings and endings live intertwined within you. Explore our curated collection featuring this stunning artwork: Woven Tapestry — wrap your world in the shimmering embrace of gold and twilight. Metal Print — breathe life into your walls with this luminous, durable masterpiece. Fleece Blanket — wrap yourself in the comfort of stars and ancient forests. Beach Towel — take a little magic with you wherever your soul wanders. Greeting Card — send a whisper of light and shadow to someone who understands. Every piece is a portal — a reminder that you, too, are an echo worth remembering.
