Day 17: Gem’s Journal

The rain stopped just as I stopped thinking. I sat here for so long, listening to the way the wind hums through the old willows, and suddenly I understood: scars aren’t just marks on skin—they’re the stories we carry inside, the quiet lessons we learned from falling. Vex was right about the river. He said the water knows things you don’t. I can still feel his voice, the way he looked at me when he said it, like I was the only person in the world who could hear the river whispering. I kept walking back to that place by the river, even though my legs were tired and the sky was getting dark. I don’t know why. Maybe because the river knows something too. It always feels like it’s waiting for me.