There is a creature that breathes in symmetry, that feeds on dissonance, and rejoices in repetition. This creature makes circular the arrangement of things, makes bedfellows of beginnings and endings. Sustained on these, it farms a garden of dovetails, ripples, renewals, parallels, round trips, refrains, reprises, encores. It puts the circles in tree trunks and the spirals in seashells, puts the inevitability in sleep and the curve on the planets, and keeps the seasons always stepping in each other’s footfalls and the sun and moon chasing after one another evermore. Drawing circles, sustaining cycles. 

One might call this creature time, and another might name it divinity, another still happenstance, coincidence, serendipity, luck, magic. One might call it all these things and refuse to iron out the contradiction. One might sympathise with this beast, whatever its name—there is a humanity to the desire for order, for repetition, for eternity. 

Perhaps it is a want for balance, when so much is beyond the control of the individual animal, when to live is to be at the mercy of countless chaoses. A messy, odd, shapeshifting, unknowable thing is living. Existence is vast and endless and does many things we cannot hope to understand, like making creatures that breathe symmetry and eat dissonance and not tell us its name. 

One might call it harmony. One might call it blasphemy. One might dedicate their life to it with worship and prayer, seeking its grace. One might refuse its existence altogether, daunted by the very thought of something with so much power. When such a thing is nameless, it is really of very many names (a contradiction this creature finds particularly delicious). 

In one time in one language, this creature was called Ciorcaliath—the Grey Circle. This name is as apt as any other, which is to say it will always fall short, but served the purpose of the people who used it well enough. The Grey Circle, while understood to present in many things, was usually only invoked in reference to the tying together of two people. This union was neither joyous nor harrowing, but like life itself, was both and much more. 

The Grey Circle manifests this way when two people cross paths like opposing ocean currents, unyielding and irreconcilable, so different and so alike, overlapping. Like water, they push and spin and together they create a circle, like a whirlpool, and this ring binds them together like no other could. They cannot be untangled as long as the Circle continues, and the Circle dines well on their tangling and on its own continuation. 

One might call this nature. One might call it fate. One might call it a leash, a cage, or certain doom. 

It does not care what it is called. This is how the Circle moves.