In all the world, there is said to be nothing more beautiful than a sunrise above the mists on Lake Vaurokash. During this time, the Sun is great in size, its colour more golden than gold itself, its brilliance filling the space with energy and hope. In the Sun’s embrace, the forever young, newly-born age rejoice immensely at its own awakening. A secret space, hidden deep in the sky where stars still twinkle, vaults over the lake’s benevolent surface. Its crystal-clearness fills with light, like a glass jug that overflows with ice-cold waters from a mountain stream.
In the night, the mists and meanders brimmed with dancing hosts of sparkling beings, who now, deeply moved, laugh and cry at the end of the night and the morning’s fleeting delight. Their tears fill up the lake that otherwise has no spring or source.
The legend has it that whoever dies at the lake’s shore is forever freed from the heaviness of the muddy banks of his own body, the magic of the place transforming him into a bird-like spirit with light wings. During the day, it floats on the crystal vault of the heavenly dome, watching the beauty of the world’s arrangement, only to retire into the lake’s glowing waters for the night, taking on the shape of a silvery fish. And when, moments before dawn, thousands of fountains burst out of the water and the spirits begin their dance, it springs from below, joining in the eternal merrymaking.
Much is said about the real nature of this lake – that all other lakes feed of its waters and that both gods and men carry in themselves a memory of Vaurokash, though the paths to its shores are lost to them. It is said the only accessible path leads through the dawn above the lake, and that precisely at dawn an ancient gate opens in the lake’s waters, beckoning the pilgrim into an already vanished world: a living memory floating in the darkness that is Lake Vaurokash – its tender mist, its grassy shores scattered with hosts of forget-me-nots, and endless flocks of bird-spirits greeting the dawn with their cries.
