Long ago, when the world was still young, there lived in Lithuania a people called the Romuva. These Romuva were creatures half man, half woman, half animal, half rock, half water, half grass, and they had the gift of seeing what was invisible, like silence, wind, and emptiness, but also the souls of beasts, the spirit of trees, and the intelligence of stones. In truth, this people and the world were one, and when a Romuva was born, the earth would carve a cradle for them between a rock and a tree, and when a Romuva died, the earth would carve a tomb for them between a spring and a mountain.

But one day, the waters submerged the land, and the village of the Romuva was swallowed beneath the depths of a vast lake. Years passed, then centuries, and only the willows, the stones, and the animals kept alive the memory of the earth's first inhabitants. The humans who now populated Lithuania had no inkling that beneath the green, icy waters of this lake, a people awaited rebirth into life. Only a few intrepid divers who dared to venture into the lake's depths claimed to have glimpsed strange creatures at the bottom of the water, but no one ever believed them.

However, it came to pass that an unprecedented drought forced the populations to draw water from the lake to survive. Within a few years, it was completely drained and dried up, revealing to the astonished eyes of humans the existence of the Ancient People of the Romuva. To survive the flood, they had taken on the form of the clay from the depths of the waters, the flexibility of algae, and the wisdom of fish. But their indeterminate form unsettled the humans, who imprisoned the Romuva. The youngest were forced to take human form through barbaric treatments, but the elders, unable to adapt, transformed into colossal clay figures that dried up in the sun. And the ancestors of the village became motionless statues exhibited as curiosities.

Only one Romuva managed to escape from the laboratory where they were tortured, and to remain free, they followed the current of a river and turned their back on humans. Alas, the metamorphosis had already begun, and they gradually lost the beautiful soul of the Ancient People, woven with the wind of the plains and the streams of the mountains, with the song of wolves and the murmuring of willows. Thus, they transformed into a soulless human, of ghostly pallor, whom everyone mistook for a resurrected corpse.

And the Romuva began to wander through cities and villages, deep forests and frozen lakes, in search of the ancient soul of the Ancient People, and the populations who saw them tirelessly roaming began to call them "The Walker." They encountered the cruelty of men, they were scratched by barbed wire in fields, they stumbled upon walls, they were chased by dogs, they breathed the foul air of immense cities, they wept over dried-up streams and slaughtered animals, but they found not their soul.

Yet it was indeed there, but finding it was not an easy task because it hid away from sight. It nestled in the hollow of a sidewalk, in the shadow of an abandoned house, or in the memories of a dusty attic. It had to be sought where no one expected to find it, for example, in the suspended dust when the sun was at its zenith or in the droplets of a morning mist. The secret of the lost soul lay in its complicity with chaos, its lifelong friend, which helped it to hide in the intangible, in what humans could never touch. It had the power to merge among the smallest molecules of bodies, just as in the farthest cosmos. In reality, it would have liked to incarnate again and escape its despairing solitude, but no one was capable of seeing it anymore, for humans no longer knew how to look. Once, in the time of the Ancient People, it was everywhere, reigning over the world like a prolific insect. It could be found resting on the bark of a tree, in spring torrents, or in the dazzling colors of a wheat field. Then the Romuva had been swallowed, and their distant descendants had gradually lost their soul by forgetting to look at the world because they had not understood that the world and the soul were one and that by destroying the former, they destroyed themselves.

And it was precisely this deafness to the world that humans had inoculated into the Walker and that had spread within them like leprosy. And because they no longer had eyes to perceive the pain and beauty of the world, the last of the Romuva was condemned to wander eternally in search of their soul.

It is said that on certain evenings, in the deep forests of Lithuania, between dusk and darkness, one can see the silhouette of a strange creature striding along. It is even said that sometimes the trees weep as it passes by.

Text written by Egle Simkus with Mey Sareoua