The fire crackled low, casting flickers of gold and shadow across Amara's face. She sat with her knees drawn to her chest beneath the blanket Liora had once stitched from scraps of wildflower-dyed cloth. The colors had faded with time—but they still carried warmth. The warmth of hands held in silence. The warmth of eyes that didn't look away.
But Liora was not here.
The hollow of the glade, once filled with laughter and hushed words, felt too wide tonight. Even the stars were quiet. Amara ran her fingers over the edge of her journal, its pages warped by rain and tears.
She had come back to the Firelight Tree. Not to chase after the past—but to finally face it.
She opened the book to a page Liora had once written on. Her handwriting curled like vines—elegant and delicate. Amara read the words over and over.
> "Some stories aren't forgotten. They're just buried too deep to reach. But I think, maybe, you always knew mine. Even before I told you."
Amara shut her eyes. She could feel it. That moment. The moment Liora almost told her everything.
It was the night after the Wish Tree had whispered.
The memory surged forward like a tide.
---
They had stood at the riverbank, the moonlight silvering their skin, making Liora seem almost made of mist.
"I have something I should have told you," Liora had said, voice trembling with a weight she couldn't yet drop.
Amara had waited. Heart trembling like a bird caught between staying and flying.
But Liora only stared at the water, watching the way it swallowed stars.
"What is it?" Amara had asked.
Liora's lips parted… and closed again.
Instead, she whispered, "If I tell you, I'm afraid I'll disappear."
---
Now, curled by the fire, Amara whispered aloud into the quiet, "You were already disappearing."
She stood. The wind stirred the firelight, and leaves trembled in the darkness beyond.
She took the journal and walked toward the hollow where the Heartstone once lay—where Liora had first taken her hand and said, "Magic doesn't lie. But it does forget."
The moss was soft beneath her bare feet. The trees leaned in, silent watchers. Above her, the sky turned a deeper shade of night.
And there, waiting like it had never left, was a small bundle tucked inside a nest of roots.
Amara knelt.
A ribbon held it closed—frayed, dyed with indigo and ash. Her fingers shook as she untied it.
Inside were pages—dozens—bound with forest thread.
Liora's voice, at last, had been written.
The first line:
> "This is the story I never told you, because I was afraid it would change how you looked at me."
Amara sat, and the forest stilled, as if it, too, was ready to listen.
---
> "I was born of the forest, not the village. My mother was a whisperer—one of the last. She could speak to the trees, and they would answer in leaves and light. But whisperers weren't meant to love villagers. When she fell in love with one, the forest warned her.
'Choose the roots or the river,' it said.
She chose him anyway. And when I was born, the forest didn't forgive her."
Amara's breath caught. Liora had told her she felt different. That the forest didn't always protect her.
> "The villagers forgot her name. Even my father did. Not by choice, but by the forest's will. It made them forget. So she raised me in the shadows of trees. I grew up knowing love without names, warmth without belonging.
And when she faded—faded like a fog in the sun—I was left behind. Half of me belonged to the forest. Half of me belonged nowhere."
A single tear slid down Amara's cheek.
She turned the page.
> "That's when I first saw you. At the edge of the glade. You were picking flowers and humming. And the trees whispered: 'She remembers. She sees you.'
I didn't understand it then. But I do now.
You were the first to look at me and see. Not as a spell, not as something forgotten. But as a girl. A girl who loved music and storms and the sound of your laugh."
Amara closed her eyes, clutched the pages to her chest.
This was more than a story.
It was a heartbeat.
---
Morning came quietly, the light sifting through pine needles, soft and silver.
Amara walked back to the village slowly, carrying the bundle like a fragile flame.
There were others who should know the truth. Eira. Kellan. The villagers who had forgotten too much for too long.
But first—there was a grave near the old willow tree where Liora had left petals last spring. No one knew the name carved into the bark. But now Amara did.
She placed a page from the journal there, under a smooth stone.
"I see her," she whispered.
And for the first time, the wind did not howl.
It sang.