The glade was quiet again.
Since the storm had passed, a hush had settled across the trees, like even the leaves were holding their breath. I wandered the familiar path with bare feet, the soft earth still damp beneath me, cool and grounding. Mist curled around my ankles like silent whispers. The sky above was a pale violet, painted by the first hints of dawn, and everything felt as though it was waiting—though I didn't know for what.
My dreams had changed.
Every night, I heard her.
Not in words, not in memories. In music. A melody so fragile, so haunting, that it seemed stitched together with threads of longing and light. It drifted to me in sleep, winding through the silence like wind through harp strings.
And I knew it was her.
Liora.
She was gone, but not gone. Not in the way people disappear and never return. She lived in the spaces between waking and dreaming, in the hush of the trees and the warmth that lingered just behind my heartbeat.
Her song was made of all the moments we never got to say out loud.
It began softly—four notes, rising and falling like a breath. Then it deepened, sweet and aching, swelling like a memory blooming into life. The first time I heard it, I woke up crying. The second time, I woke with her name on my lips.
And now… now I followed it.
Each night, it carried me somewhere deeper inside the dream. The forest transformed in sleep—no longer quite the same glade I knew, but a mirror of it, enchanted. The trees shimmered silver, and the stars hung low like lanterns. The river there sang with her voice, and the hollow stones whispered in her laugh. I walked barefoot in those dreams too, but I was never alone.
She was there.
Not always as a figure, not always as a face. Sometimes only as presence, sometimes only as music. But I felt her beside me, brushing fingers against mine without touch, wrapping warmth around me without arms.
Last night, she said something.
Not with words, but with her song.
She told me not to forget the garden.
The garden where she first kissed me. The one hidden past the veil of vines, where we planted dreams and named the stars we couldn't see. It had long been overgrown in the waking world, claimed by wild ivy and time. But in the dream, it was still alive.
Still ours.
I took the path now in waking that led to it, though I hadn't walked it in moons. My heart beat faster with every step, like it remembered what I was returning to. Ferns brushed my knees. A fox darted between roots. The air smelled of lavender and old rain.
The vines parted like curtains.
The garden was smaller than I remembered. Wild and tangled. But under the thorns and creeping green, I could see them—our stones. The ones we painted and buried with words like "forever," "stay," and "more than magic." I knelt beside one half-buried, brushed dirt away.
The word carved there: Home.
I closed my eyes. Her song returned like a breeze.
And then I heard it—not in sleep, but here, now.
A single note, carried by wind. It didn't make sense, and yet it did. My breath caught. I looked up. And there—there was the hummingbird.
The same one she had whispered to. The one that only came when she was near.
Its wings beat like a heartbeat. And in its path, it left behind a shimmer of light—like the notes of her song trailing through air.
I followed it.
Deeper into the garden, beyond where I thought it ended. Brambles parted. Flowers bloomed at the edges of my steps. And there, beneath a willow that hadn't grown there before, was a blanket. Woven with the colors of dusk. On it, a book.
Her book.
The one she never finished.
I picked it up with trembling hands.
Inside, her handwriting curved like wind-carved branches. She had written letters I never received. Words she had meant for me, pages soaked in petals and love and longing.
"I see you in the rain. I see you when the forest breathes. You live in the ache behind my smile."
"This pain is sweet because it was born from love."
"And if I do not return, promise me you will keep singing."
My tears blurred the ink.
And then I heard it again—her song. Clearer this time. Stronger. As if she stood behind me.
I turned.
She wasn't there. Not fully. But her shape shimmered like moonlight on water. Her hair danced in wind that didn't touch the trees. Her eyes—those silver eyes—met mine.
"Liora?" I whispered.
She didn't speak.
She sang.
No words. Just the music. The same notes from my dream, only now they wrapped around me like an embrace. I pressed my hand to my chest. My heart was singing too.
And then she smiled.
A smile filled with all the softness we had shared. With the pain, too. But also with peace.
She stepped closer. I felt her warmth.
Then she lifted her hand and placed it over mine, over my heart. Her touch wasn't touch, but it was real. Real enough. The music in the air slowed, a lullaby now, fading softly into hush.
She leaned in.
And whispered, not with sound, but with soul:
"I never truly left."
Then she was gone.
But something stayed.
The music remained in my chest, a thread that would never fray. The book in my hand glowed softly, as if blessed by starlight. And in that moment, I understood.
Her song was now mine.
To carry forward. To sing in silence. To remember in joy.
I sat beneath the willow, closed my eyes, and let the melody flow from me. It came not from memory but from something deeper—from love, from loss, from everything between.
And as I sang it, I felt her again.
In every note.
In every breath.
In every piece of the world she had touched.