The Spell We Like to Say But Not to Tell

Words / 2025 Variety

Lead-in

Four people geological in their permanence have discovered the same unsayable truth—that being rooted means loving what leaves, that staying turns you into an ocean's river carrying invisible tides between here and elsewhere. They live on their different rocks while tourists flow over them like water, each visitor taking memories while the residents send their love to all the places they're not, overthinking every angle of light that the travelers will never see, blessed or cursed with the totality of consideration that comes from witnessing whole cycles instead of single incidents.

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The Story

Kerren is an ocean's river with a spell, though Lake Superior has no ocean and they have no words for what moves through them. Their hands know it—this carrying of saltwater inland, or maybe freshwater to seas that don't exist yet.

They like to say but not to tell.

Morning. Tourists already gathering at the overlook.

The spell remains intact because they refuse to tell it, to make it a story that could be understood and therefore diminished.

In San Diego, Coline tastes the difference between those who arrive and those who remain. The tourists order fish tacos with the excitement of discovery. She eats them with the weight of knowing Tuesday's fish, Wednesday's lime, Thursday's cilantro dying in heat.

She's not just in this place but of it. Geological in her permanence while others flow over like water.

Her tongue carries the spell—expression without capture, naming without colonizing.

Seagulls fighting over tourist chips. The eternal performance.

Bastien watches visitors photograph his Quebec City, their cameras hungry for memories to take. He sits with fabric that holds forty winters, threads that remember when the tourists weren't here, when the rock was just rock.

He's existing as tributary and source, carrying something between seasons that the passing people will never notice.

This is why he maybe thinks too much.

Ice melting on cobblestones. Each drop a small leaving.

Wind through things that stay.

Elias knows the burden and gift of being rooted. In Copenhagen, they listen to the canal boats full of tourists seeing an incidence, an experience, while they see the whole cycle—morning light, noon light, evening light, no light, morning light again.

The overthinking comes from this split existence. They are an ocean's river flowing on a rock fixed.

They love the elsewhere while being desperately here.

Boat engines. Happy voices in languages that will leave.

But then the heartbreak happens, and it happens every morning for all four of them.

Kerren presses their palms against cold window glass and gives their love to everyone who is somewhere else. To forests they'll never see. To lakes they'll never touch. To people waking up on different rocks.

Those who stay are loving outward, sending affection to the absent.

Coline understands this inverse homesickness—not missing where you're from but aching for everywhere you aren't. Her kitchen window faces west toward places she's never been, and she sends her love there while cutting onions, while boiling water, while watching steam rise and disappear.

It's the opposite of tourism. Instead of taking memories from a place, she's sending love to all the places she's not at.

Onions releasing their spell. Eyes watering with elsewhere.

Bastien's needle moves through fabric like he's stitching a map of absences. Each stitch a somewhere else, each thread a path he won't walk. The tourists outside his window are collecting Quebec to take home. He's giving his love to their homes, to the places they'll return to.

The rock doesn't move. The tourists flow over it like water.

But the rock loves what the water touches.

Noon sun. Every shadow at its smallest.

The four feel it simultaneously—this weight of seeing every angle of light, every shadow, every phase. Tourists see the golden hour and leave. Residents see the gray hour, the blue hour, the hour with no name, the hour that hurts, the hour that heals.

Kerren watches Superior turn seven different colors before lunch, each color a different way of thinking too much about everything under the sun during the day.

In San Diego, Coline tastes what the tourists miss—the way salt changes with barometric pressure, how the ocean's flavor shifts when submarines pass far offshore, the particular sweetness in air just before rain that might not come.

She likes to say these things but not to tell them. Saying acknowledges the spell's existence without explaining it.

Pelican diving. The sound of perfect aim.

Bastien holds fabric up to changing light, watching it become different things. Tourists would see blue cloth. He sees morning blue, grief blue, winter blue, the blue of rivers that remember being glaciers.

This totality of consideration—it's why those who remain can't stop thinking about all of it.

Elias plays notes that tourists think are for them. But the notes are for Copenhagen at 3 AM, for Copenhagen when it's raining, for Copenhagen when everyone who visits has gone home and the city breathes just for those geological enough to hear it.

They're blessed or cursed with something unsayable.

Canal water lapping. The same sound. Never the same sound.

Afternoon tilting toward evening. Light getting honest.

The divide becomes visible in the golden hour—those who pass through taking photos, those who remain knowing this light is already changing, already leaving, already becoming tomorrow's different gold.

Kerren thinks: We become the fixed point that loves what moves.

No. Not thinks. Knows. Not knows—carries.

Coline watches tourists eat sunset dinners, celebrating the day's end. She's already tasting tomorrow's dawn, already sending her love to the meals being prepared in other time zones, already aching for flavors that exist in elsewhere.

The staying that enables leaving. The here that makes elsewhere possible.

Moths beginning. The night shift of attention.

Bastien understands something through his fingertips—the fabric doesn't miss the sheep, the sheep don't miss the grass, the grass doesn't miss the rain. Only those who stay miss everything, love everything, think too much about everything.

His hands are rivers carrying spells between what is and what isn't here.

In Copenhagen, Elias stops playing but the music continues—boats humming, water speaking, the city's night spell that tourists sleep through. They're awake with it, geological in their listening, loving every sound that's happening somewhere else while being desperately here with these sounds.

The moon rises and the four think about everything under it, which is the same everything that was under the sun but transformed by different light, different shadows, proving that those who stay see too much, feel too much, know too much about the whole cycle.

Silence approaching—

Not silence. The quiet that residents recognize.

Kerren at their window: sending love to Grand Marais's sister cities they'll never visit.

Coline at her stove: tasting the salt of oceans she'll never see.

Bastien at his table: stitching paths to places he'll never walk.

Elias at their instrument: playing songs for listeners who are elsewhere.

They are ocean's rivers with spells they like to say but not to tell.

Tourists arrive and leave these places.

They are living here on these rocks.

And so they give their love. Always outward. Always to everyone who is somewhere else.

This is why they maybe think—

Too much about—