Brammelwurz and the Lost Hour

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Brammelwurz Deep in the forest, where the light dances between the branches like fleeting thoughts and even the moss seems to listen, wanders Brammelwurz. A stooped gnome with a beard of soft moss, in which glowing mushrooms grow. Small stars sparkle in his pockets—crystallized spores of memory. No one knows how old he is. Some say he is older than the first forgotten song. Others believe he is a tree's memory come to life. Brammelwurz hears what the forest floor thinks. He understands the language of decay, the dreams of spores, the trembling in rotten branches. On his back, he carries a web of spider silk. Within it rest special mushrooms—some whisper in sleep, others store images: a lost kiss, a last glance, the laughter of a child who never was. He wanders silently, rarely speaking, often forgetting the path, but never a secret entrusted to him by the moss. His feet know every branch, every crooked leaf, every still stone. He carries time not in clocks, but in colors, sounds, and smells. One morning, as the dew hung on the fern like forgotten tears, Brammelwurz found something that didn't fit. A single mushroom, pitch-black, with silver grooves like trembling runes. It smelled of nothing, sounded of silence. When Brammelwurz touched it, he grew cold inside. No whisper, no image. Only emptiness. A brief pain in his chest, then nothing. That night he realized: An hour was gone. Not stolen. Not lost. Erased. And not just from him. The forest itself forgot. Animals stood still. The wind lost its way. A root grew backward. Brammelwurz knew: The mushroom was not a keeper. It was a devourer of time. It began to speak to the shadows. When dusk came and the forest gave way to gray-tinged breath, Brammelwurz would sit on a moss-hugging stone and listen. The shadows answered not with words, but with rhythms—the throb of a forgotten memory, the rustle of a movement that never happened. He scattered spores on the forest floor and watched them slowly trace circles—patterns that contained stories no one had written down. On one particularly quiet evening, he heard a laugh that was not his. It was young, clear, and as distant as an echo underwater. Brammelwurz followed the sound, but it led nowhere. Only to an old glade where the mist gathered like dusty memory. There grew a mushroom, small, inconspicuous, with a tiny golden veining. It flickered when touched, and within it reflected the moment that had once been lost—not entirely, only fragmented, but alive. Brammelwurz nodded. He did not take the mushroom. Some things, he knew, must stay where they're found—so they can take root. He returned home and didn't speak of it. And when glowing spores dance through the air, he's sometimes seen. Whoever meets him is brought back a memory. Not as a word. But as a feeling—warm, gentle, fleeting. Like a drop of time.