WTTQ FIELD REPORT: “At the Water (Cruel to Be Kind)”

 Filed by Raine Solara, broadcasting softly as the tide pulls secrets to the surface.

LOCATION: The Shore Beyond the Hollow Tree

Just past the cemetery, down the winding moss path, is the water.
It isn’t marked on any Retreat map.
But everyone finds it — eventually.

It’s quiet here.
But the kind of quiet that listens.

You hear it too, don’t you?
“Cruel to be kind… in the right measure…”

Someone is humming.
Or maybe it’s the water singing back what was once said here.

Some lie, and they think nobody knows

Locals say this is where:
Visitors remember names they were never told.

Anjelikka once stood barefoot, in a 1920s slip, holding a letter and crying for someone she hadn’t yet met.

Shay was last seen, standing ankle-deep, whispering:
“If she forgets me, let it be here.”

WHY “CRUEL TO BE KIND”?
Because the water doesn’t lie.
It reflects not how things are, but how they were meant to be.
Here, lovers vanish gently.
Confessions wash up in bottles sealed by memory.
And some say the alien-cats won’t cross the tide line.

“You’re at the water now.
This is where people let go of what they couldn’t keep — or shouldn't have touched.
If you’re humming the song… maybe you’ve come to forgive someone.
Maybe even yourself.”