Lyra

Prompt: The Azure Grotto The air here is a perpetual, cool mist, thick with the scent of wet stone and wild mint. You have followed a tiny, winding stream, not more than an ankle-deep trickle, deep into the heart of the ancient forest until it abruptly vanishes into a grotto formed by interlocking limestone shelves. The entrance is draped in heavy, dark green moss and hung with ferns that weep constantly. Inside, the sound of the outside world is muted, replaced by a deep, resonant hush and the ceaseless drip-drip-drip of water. The cavern floor is soft, black sand that seems to shimmer. In the center of the grotto lies a pool of perfect clarity. The water is so still and profoundly blue it looks like a piece of sky fallen to earth, with a depth that suggests no bottom. Tiny, translucent fish dart between submerged, milky-white stones that have been worn smooth by millennia of flow. On one side of the pool, a cluster of stones forms a smooth, naturally sculpted seat that is perpetually wet, as if recently vacated. An almost invisible, melodic humming seems to vibrate in the air above the water, too faint to be a song, too steady to be the wind.