Walking through a wood alone, enveloped in the embrace of ancient trees and creeping moss, the natural beauty gives way to a suffocating fear that something is following close behind.

Musician Aidan Ashland found themself face-to-face with the thing we all fear, but have only glanced in our periphery. It was accompanied by something else, too —lymphatic tumors, nestled in their throat.

After surgery, Ashland found themself voiceless and haunted. In the absence of the tumors came a shadow, a sliver of smoke and fear, that grew and intensified into a corporeal creature as visceral as the cancer itself.

Aggrieved but inspired, Ashland wrote and dreamed and lived beside the being. In the process, they transfigured waking nightmares into introspective music about loss, love, and the intricacies of what we inherit from those who came before.

-Gaeli Love-Weiss