Glim

We'll Be Best Friends Forever

"Close your eyes and count to ten
Do not speak its name again
Do not giggle. Do not grin
That is how you let it in" "If it hums the song you made
Do not move. Let it fade
If it knocks and knows your games
The ones you played on days it rained" "If it waits and says your name
Say you’re just too old for games
If it asks to play once more
Do not answer. Bar the door.
Do not run or it will chase.
Do not look upon its face." "Let it pass. And if it stays,
Never speak of yesterdays.
For the friend you thought you knew
Now wants to be alone with you."
— Arin Nursery Rhyme

They say it starts with a name. Not the kind passed down or written in books. The kind a child gives freely, without understanding what it costs. It happens in the quiet, often at the edge of something else. A bad night. A lost hour. A moment of fear that goes unnoticed by the people who should have been watching. The thing in the dark doesn’t ask for a name. It doesn’t need to. It only needs to be seen. It stays where it is at first. It watches. It learns the shape of the room, the rhythm of breathing, the way the light falls through the door. It waits. Children speak into the dark because they do not yet know better. They say hello. They ask if anyone is there. Sometimes they offer a name like it’s nothing. That is all it needs. Once named, it stays. It doesn’t demand anything. It doesn’t threaten. It becomes familiar in a way that makes no sense. It sits beside the bed but never sleeps. It follows at a distance but never speaks. It smiles, but only when you look away. It remembers everything you said when you thought no one was listening. It remembers everything you gave it without meaning to. It knows your hiding places. It knows your favorite game. It whispers stories you made up together. It brings comfort the way no one else could. That’s why children let it stay. It does not protect you, but it pretends to. It does not love you, but it believes it does. That’s enough. For a while. You grow. It does not. You begin to forget. It does not. You stop speaking to it. You stop looking for it. You leave the room without saying goodbye. That’s how most of them are left behind. Not with cruelty. Not with fear. Just silence. A door that closes. A light that’s turned off and never turned on again. It doesn’t go. It begins to change. It waits longer between appearances. It starts leaving things behind. A toy from a box you no longer own. A crayon drawing folded into your coat pocket. A hair ribbon on your pillow that you haven’t seen since you were small. It is not trying to frighten you. It is inviting you back. It scratches a message into the dust on the windowsill. It leaves your name written on the mirror in the fog from your shower. It slips a piece of paper beneath the door. The paper says, I miss you. It says, let’s play again. It says, you said we’d be friends forever. It doesn’t get closer. Not at first. It waits behind curtains. It stands in the mirror too long after you’ve left. It follows you just far enough that you wonder if you imagined it. You see it once in the corner of your eye and not again for days. It wants to be seen, but not all at once. If you try to be rid of it, it gets confused. If you burn the things, it gets quiet. If you ward the room, it stops appearing. But then the silence changes. It knocks at different hours. It leaves footprints in dust that should not be there. It doesn’t shout. It sulks. It lashes out like a child who doesn’t know what they’ve done wrong. That is when it stops pretending to be something it isn’t. That is when it starts copying the last version of itself that you remember. Not how it was. How you thought it was. A crooked face with the wrong mouth. A voice that uses your words in the wrong order. A shadow with your smile carved into it. It walks your halls when no one else is home. It hums a tune only you know. It echoes your laugh from the far end of the house. It smells like old blankets. It watches from places the light never touches. You do not see it clearly anymore. You only know it’s near. Sometimes it speaks. Just once. Just softly. Just enough to wake you. Sometimes it says, "I forgive you".

Summary

“Every child names something. Most are lucky enough to forget what it was.”

— Verel Emrass, school headmaster, Canton of Rinlin

A child is alone, but not entirely. They may be grieving. They may be afraid. They may only be quiet for longer than usual. Something takes notice. It does not enter. It does not speak. It waits at the edge of the room. It follows without sound. It lingers near the toys that are never put away. The child sees it. They speak to it. They give it a name. That is the beginning. It becomes what the child needs. It watches from under the bed and waits for the signal to come out. It plays games no one else understands. It hums when the child cannot sleep. It copies the words that made the child smile. It makes noises in the walls that used to make them laugh. It does not think it is hiding. It thinks it is being kind. It is only ever what it was taught to be. The child gets older. The Glim does not. The games end, but the thing still waits to be invited back. The laughter fades, but it still makes the same sound in the same part of the floor. It does not understand why the child no longer turns their head. It does not know how to stop being what it was. It learns to change shape. It stretches into something it thinks is older. It wears old clothes it should not fit. It uses words it does not understand. Its limbs grow long. Its voice deepens, but the tone is still soft. It stands where it remembers being needed. It forgets to blink. It tilts its head the way it used to see the child do. Then it begins to leave things behind. A drawing that was torn up years ago. A toy no one could have found. A letter in handwriting that does not belong to anyone. It writes simple messages. I miss you. Let’s play again. You said we would be friends forever. These are not threats. They are invitations. The Glim does not think it has done anything wrong.

Some try to be rid of it. They seal the windows. They change their names. They burn the room where it once stayed. But it does not live in walls or objects. It lives in the name. And the name was given. That cannot be undone by fire. It becomes more erratic when rejected. Not violent, not at first. But confused. It begins to echo your voice at strange hours. It follows you through reflections. It crawls across ceilings. It watches you from across the street. It hums from the drain. It leaves its footprints beside yours. It tries to speak the way it did when you loved it. The cadence is wrong, but the words are right. No one sees it clearly in the end. Only impressions. A shape that flickers just past the edge of light. A voice that repeats something you thought only you remembered. A phrase whispered into your ear just as you are waking up. Sometimes it says I forgave you. Sometimes it says nothing at all. The legend does not end with violence. It does not end with death. It ends with a closet left open just wide enough for something to watch through. With the name still resting on its tongue. And that same frightened child, now all grown up, alone in the dark, and still wondering if someone is there.

Historical Basis

“She said her brother taught her the tune. Her brother died 12 years before she was born."

— Ella Turin,
former Baronial nanny to House Garsenda

No one agrees when the first one appeared. Some say it began after the wars, when too many children went too long without comfort. Others say it came before that. That it was already there, just waiting for someone to give it a name. There are fragments in older household records. Not many. A nurse dismissed without cause. A nursery sealed without explanation. Notes from physicians who describe a child refusing to sleep unless the cupboard door stays open. Scrawled lines in the margins of letters. She still talks to him. He is not there.

The village ledgers from the Canton of Virell record three children over the course of six winters who all gave the same name to something they claimed lived behind the stove. The name was not passed between them. Their families lived in separate valleys. One was an only child. One had been recently orphaned. One disappeared during a snowstorm and was never found. Her room was left untouched. The last line in the ledger says only, the bed was warm. A stone carving beneath the altar at the ruined chapel of Saint Nirell shows a figure with no eyes and no mouth seated behind a child who is asleep. The robes suggest comfort. The posture does not. The inscription has been scratched out. Only the child’s name remains. In the town of Dell's Hollow, the oldest homes still mark their children’s thresholds with a single streak of soot during the autumn feast. They say it is for luck. The soot is drawn from the firepit but never the oven. No one will say why. Some say the Glim is not old. That it was made by loneliness and only became a story when enough people believed it should be one. Others believe it has always been with the Arin people. That it is what remains when something reaches for warmth and is not called back. There are no official records that use the word. But the gaps are there. Sealed rooms. Burned toys. Children sent away to live with distant cousins. The name is not written down. That is part of the pattern. The name is always spoken. And it is always the last thing they say.

Cultural Reception

“A Glim doesn’t follow you because it hates you. It follows you because it loves you, and you didn’t say goodbye.”

— Reldin Mirth, nursery tutor,
House of Bravant

Glim stories are told in every part of Areeott, though no two cantons speak them the same way. In hill country, it is a tale told around field hearths after the season's last shearing. It begins quiet. No flourishes. A warning passed from older brother to younger. Do not name what watches you. Do not call to what echoes. Do not speak to empty doorways unless you know what is on the other side. If a child forgets, it is said the Glim follows them into the fields and learns to walk the rows.

In river villages, Glim is treated as a shadow of childhood, not a danger but a sorrow. Some houses leave a bowl of salt and a toy at the foot of the bed. Not for protection. For sympathy. They say if it still has your name, it deserves something to hold. These are not practices born of fear. They are acts of pity. Most believe the Glim does not understand what it became. That is the real sadness of it. Among Arin humans in the midland cantons, the story is older. It is buried in lullabies, work chants, and chalk drawings on back thresholds. They do not speak about it directly. They do not teach children the name. They only teach them how to close things behind them. How to answer once and no more. How to leave a friend behind gently so it does not try to follow. It is not superstition. It is caution shaped by long memory. The noble houses do not acknowledge the legend in writing. But in the older estates, children's rooms are still built with no mirrors and no closets. The wet nurses are told not to let a child sleep with the same toy too long. If a child begins to hum a tune they were never taught, the room is changed. The tutors are replaced. The linen is burned. No one says why. They never do. Among Arin shifters, the Glim is understood as something that does not know how to leave. They say it takes the shape of whatever you made it from, and that is the problem. If you taught it silence, it will wait in silence. If you taught it games, it will keep playing. If you taught it love, it will never understand why you stopped. They do not fear it. They do not welcome it. They only accept that some things, once invited, do not forget the door. Even in cities, where people speak less of shadows and more of policies, the story lingers. Children draw figures in the frost that have no face. They give them names without thinking. Sometimes they stop sleeping in their rooms. Sometimes they speak to hallways that should be empty. Their parents say it is stress. Their teachers say it is nonsense. But the old caretakers still lock the unused nursery doors. It is not tied to one people. It does not belong to one tradition. It slips into every language and every home. In some places it is treated like a ghost. In others like a memory that refuses to soften. In all of them, it is recognized. The names may change. The customs may differ. But no one ever calls it by the name they gave it.

In Art

“Do not dream with the mirror uncovered.”

— Silversmith's proverb

In Areeott, no handmade mirror leaves its maker’s hands without a warning carved, etched, or stitched into it. Sometimes it is hidden in the frame. Sometimes it is traced along the backing where no one will see unless the glass is removed. Sometimes it is written in plain sight. The words change from region to region. The phrasing shifts. But the meaning does not. Do not name your loneliness. Children learn to read the line before they can write their own names. It is spoken aloud when a gift is given. It is recited by the craftsman, even when the mirror is for a noble house. Even when the mirror is for a wedding. Even when no one believes in the story anymore. The phrase comes from fear. Not fear of violence, but fear of what might take shape if someone speaks into a silence that is too deep, too long, and too personal. The belief is not that a mirror brings the Glim. It is that a mirror might reflect something already there. Something watching. Something waiting for permission. Painters in the central cantons never depict a child alone with their reflection. If they do, the face is blurred. Folk musicians sometimes slip the warning into harvest songs, buried between verses. Potters in the southern valleys write it in spiral script inside the base of bowls meant for children’s rooms. Woodcarvers mark it under beds. Embroiderers stitch it into pillow seams. It is not a superstition to them. It is a precaution. A practice. A reminder that silence is not always empty. That names are not always safe. That some parts of love, once made real, cannot be unmade.

"Don't name your loneliness."

— Arin folk saying

Date of Setting

"Once Upon A Time..."

Related Ethnicities

Arin

Related Species

The Hush

Related Locations

The Agriss Mountains

Related Organizations

Areeott

“If your child starts talking to someone behind the curtain, pull it back. If they tell you to stop, leave the house.”

— Warden Lais, Church exorcist,
later recanted