The Origins of Atmos

Weighed down with handmade leather bags, hides still attached, filled with small tools and scrolls, bedrolls, seasonal clothing, and rations, a group of men, women, and children approached the foothills of an impressive mountain range: The Singing Mountains. Their clothing itself was a kind of archive. Threaded through their garments and worn as jewelry that softly clinked as they moved, beadwork recorded what scrolls could not easily carry: knowledge gathered bead by bead from the stones, metals, clays, and glass of every place they had passed through. Each bead and each sequence had its own meaning, sometimes multiple. A person who knew how to read them could trace the entire journey in a single sleeve.

 

They varied in description. Some had the visage of the snowy northern tundras, others seemed favored by the sun in many ways. They had been traveling together for several generations, united by a common goal: to study and seek the secrets and teachings of The Winds.

 

Many travelers they had met along the journey mentioned these mountains in passing. Some told tales of medicinal plants, secret wonders, and music that seemed to originate from nowhere. Others spoke caution of missing wanderers and impenetrable peaks. Curiosity piqued, the group settled on the mountains as their next quest, certain there was knowledge of The Winds in their depths.

 

The range had proven itself a massive obstacle to traders and adventurers alike. Just on the other side lay Kyrene, the port city of opportunity and abundance. The mountain range spanned the entire landscape, forcing travelers to add months to their journeys walking or riding around it to reach the coast. Those who had tried to cross and find a shortcut rarely returned, and those who did brought back tales of mysterious encounters.

 

The scholars noticed something as they started to explore the mountains: sea birds. Arctic terns, specifically. Common along the coasts, but unexpected here. After many encounters and hours of observation, the terns proved intelligent and stubborn. For such small sleek creatures they were surprisingly adept at causing small troubles, perhaps a scroll snatched from someone’s pack and deposited on a ledge further up the hillside. The troubles almost always seemed problematic at first, yet tended to lead somewhere worthwhile further down the line. When one scholar climbed to retrieve a stolen scroll, they found a tucked away crevasse that allowed them to traverse deeper into the mountains. It was in this manner that the nomads and the terns began to develop a relationship of mutual observation and exchange.

 

The group eventually noticed a pattern: insight came when someone approached the terns with playfulness. “I suppose I shall follow this bird; perhaps it’s showing me the way.” Or, “I think this one is trying to tell me something.” For a group of scholars who operated from the analytical mind, always questioning, doubting, needing proof, this was not a natural place to act from.

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Some in the group had children with them, raised in community and on the road. One afternoon in a small valley they had discovered a half moon prior, a child was drawn into a game of hide and seek with one of the terns. All morning, music had been ringing through the valley. Not made by human voices, but like the melodies that drift through pipes and wind instruments in taverns, carrying stories. The group had grown used to hearing this sound during their mountainous exploration, yet had never found its source.

 

The child had been collecting jewel colored stones while the older nomads scribbled observations of plants and insects and worked on new beads to add to their persons. They noticed a tern watching from a nearby rocky perch. Taking one of the green stones from their bundle, they tossed it toward the bird. With a playful hop, the tern scooped it up and took flight, landing maybe a hundred paces away, turning to fix its singular gaze on the child as if to ask: "Are you coming?"

 

The child sprang up from the ground and scampered forward. The tern laid the stone at its feet, then floated a little further away before turning back. Like this, the child began to play fetch with the tern and was slowly led away from the group, the sound of music growing louder and louder. The tern hopped to one last rock and gazed back, its shiny eye gleaming with a trickster’s glee; neither malicious nor gracious, only with the excitement that comes with sharing a secret. It dropped the stone on the dirt.

 

It was in this manner that humans first discovered the hidden passageway.

 

That evening, after retrieving the child from where they had wandered off to, the scholars gathered around the fire. They discussed the passageway, reflected on all they had learned from the land and from the terns, and before their ritual wind practices and sleep, agreed: this was a place to settle. A place to house their discoveries of The Winds. Though not everyone wished to stay, some felt the road still calling.

 

They built a structure from the valley stones to house their scrolls and findings, then split. Those who stayed would continue learning from the terns. Those who left became guides, making the crossing through the hidden passage, spreading word as they went. Of the settlement in the impassable mountains. Of the hidden path. Of The Winds. Of Atmos. At this point, they had spent twenty-six moons in the valley, had named the terns Wind Travelers, and had bathed in a scalding spring that leaked into a nearby mountain stream.

 

The beadwork came down from their bodies and onto the shelves for the first time. For years, the records had lived on their persons because there was nowhere else to put them. Now there was. Something that had always been in motion finally had a place to be still.

 

Some paths are only visible once you have already begun to walk them.