Chapter One: The First Quiver

Once upon a quiver and a shiver, I find you with a feather touch…

You don’t know about The Hollow, not yet.

But The Hollow knows you.

It has called you in.

The branches stretch above, groaning with secrets.

The roots stir below, curling toward your restless feet.

Every shadow hums your name,

and still you wander deeper,

not knowing if you should run or kneel.

I see the way you hesitate...

caught between dread and desire,

between the familiar safety of the path

and the dark invitation of the unknown.

I smile at your trembling.

Hush now, hush now...close your eyes.

This is how all stories begin in The Hollow:

with a stranger lured to its threshold,

and me, waiting to write them into its soil.

I touch you first with breath, not fingers.

The air thickens between us,

my lullaby unspooling soft and steady,

a leash made of sound.

You are not pressed down with weight,

but drawn down with want.

Your knees bend before you realize they’ve bent at all.

Your palms flatten to the damp earth,

steadying you as though the ground itself

has whispered that you belong to it.

The Hollow hums in approval.

Its silence is not empty,

it is waiting,

for your sighs,

for your surrender,

for me to coax obedience out of your unknowing bones.

I lean close. My whisper brushes your ear,

soft as down, sharp as frost:

‘You are mine in this moment.

Mine to tremble,

mine to teach,

mine to mend when the shivers pass.’

You gasp, and The Hollow drinks it in.

Your pulse thrums wild beneath your skin,

and I trace it with my voice,

writing your surrender into the air,

etching it into the roots beneath us.

When your quiver softens into stillness,

I gather you against me,

not as prey, but as a foundling.

I kiss the hollow of your throat,

let the warmth of my mouth undo the cold of your fear,

and hum you steady,

back into yourself,

back into me.

Once upon a quiver, once upon a shiver...

you belong to The Hollow now.

You belong to me.

Not with weight,

but with want.

And this… this is only the beginning.