Few artifacts survive from the pre-divergence era. Among them are the stitched chronicles of Ilra Wint, seamstress of Gratch Hollow. As restoration work continues on these fragile pages, more entries will be catalogued here.
What follows is one such entry.
From the Stitched Chronicles of Ilra Wint
I have written many names in these books, but Jon’s I write with care, for he was never meant to be here, yet now I cannot imagine the Hollow without him.
Jon is gentle in the ways many of us have forgotten how to be. He works with trowel and hoe the way I work with thread and needle, kindly, carefully, as if every growing thing deserves his patience.
In the garden, he goes barefoot. Always humming. Dirt up past his elbows while he tends the plants. Children know to bring him their broken things: toys with wheels hanging off, wind-ups that won’t wind, pieces gone missing. Each one gets mended the way he mends everything—slowly, without fuss.
Adults sometimes bring heavier burdens; he carries what he can and sets down what he cannot, but he always tries.
Some call him simple. I think they mistake gentleness for lack.
There is a steadiness in him—like a stitch pulled true—that keeps the rest of us from unraveling.
It was the chapel caretakers, Jon and Elira Vale, who found him. They had buried both their children only a year before, and grief had left their house silent. Grutžon gave them a second chance. The piglet they carried into the chapel gardens grew into a towering Goreborn, healing them as they raised him. Jon Vale — called Big Jon to set the two apart — passed when the boy was still young. Elira endured long enough to see him grown. He was the only child she raised to adulthood, and when she too was gone, he stayed.
Before her death, Elira asked Miran Vale — Grutžon’s cousin, and relic keeper of the chapel — to paint Jon’s likeness. She wanted him to always remember how handsome he was. Miran’s brush caught him as we know him: broad-shouldered, tusks small but true, eyes soft and heavy-lidded. The portrait still hangs in the reliquary, though Jon never speaks of it.
Now he lives alone, yet never apart. Bare-hooved in the soil, he tends the chapel grounds, he tends the chapel grounds, planting with patience, humming low as he works. He mends what is broken, offers herbs when he can, and helps wherever the village needs a gentle hand. Most of us accept him, though some keep their distance. Outsiders sometimes mock his face or his quiet, but Jon endures it without anger.
I have seen him with Sara, and I know their bond is true. She laughs brighter when he is near, and he watches over her without needing words. In a world that presses toward violence, Jon gives us something else: safety, rest, and a reminder that gentleness, too, is strength.
— Ilra Wint, stitched chronicles of Gratch Hollow
Written, voiced, and produced by Shawn Fitzmaurice
Voiceover Nerd Productions, Inc.
© 2025 Voiceover Nerd Productions — All Rights Reserved.
VoiceoverNerd.com
