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Some places were never meant to exist.
Some souls were never meant to find refuge.
But sometimes... two errors recognize each other, and embrace.
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The forest no longer remembered her.
Thêkariel, which once cast her out to its edges like a stain that shouldn't grow, now breathed without trace of her passing. The roots that once trembled under her shadow twisted again with indifference. The ferns that used to enclose her no longer turned their gaze. It was as if Ae'lyra had never been born among them. As if the spiral on her forehead had been no more than a fleeting shadow in the cycles of flora.
And yet, she remembered every leaf.
Every crackle of damp soil.
Every corner where her small feet had once hidden from the world.
Every fruit that had seen her cry without voice.
But the world didn't remember.
And at six years old, she already knew what it meant to be completely forgotten.
Two years had passed since she had crossed the thresholds of the forest into the Jurassic chaos. Since language ceased to exist. Since survival became a series of silent rituals: smelling before stepping, observing without seeing, remembering without asking.
Now her bones were lighter.
Not from strength—
but from habit.
Ae'lyra's body no longer protested against hunger.
Nor against cold.
Not even against fear.
She only walked.
And that was her only way of existing.
The mountains bordering the forest's edge seemed asleep, but the tremor beneath their roots was not still. The air smelled of sulfur and damp stone. In the distance, the roars of predators blended with the guttural songs of featherless birds.
Ae'lyra walked forward, barefoot, without knowing why.
Her feet touched grasses that murmured in green tones, spiral-stemmed plants that only opened to pain. Insects with transparent wings floated around her but did not sting. Some rested in her hair, others on her shoulders, then left without farewell.
It wasn't acceptance.
It was recognition.
A creature that belongs nowhere...
sometimes isn't threatened because the world doesn't know how to attack her.
And then she felt it.
Not a sound.
Not a vision.
A smell.
Fire.
Not the chaotic fire of distant volcanoes.
Not the fire of something burning alive.
But domestic fire.
Fire that waits.
Ae'lyra's heart didn't quicken.
But her steps did.
Something deep within whispered that this fire... wouldn't push her away.
And so she arrived at a clearing where the earth sank slightly, forming a natural crater. In the center, among twisted roots and scorched rocks, stood a cave.
Not large.
Not beautiful.
But from it rose thick white smoke.
And a sweet scent, like cooked roots and boiled bone.
Ae'lyra stopped.
Not out of fear.
But because no one had ever cooked near her before.
The figure that emerged from the cave was small, broad in the torso, with ears long like those of an ancient bat. His skin was gray with green undertones, like worn stone. He didn't walk—he hovered slightly, though his feet touched the ground with slow grace.
A goblin.
But not a common one.
He wore a tunic of dead fern fibers, a belt of compsognathus teeth, and held a pipe that didn't burn, yet still exhaled smoke.
When he saw Ae'lyra, he didn't frown.
He didn't freeze.
He simply observed her, as if staring at a sound he couldn't make sense of.
And he spoke.
—"Are you broken too?"
Ae'lyra didn't answer.
The goblin nodded.
—"Good. The ones who aren't broken are useless here."
He turned and walked back into the cave.
He didn't invite her in.
Didn't ask her to follow.
Didn't reject her either.
He simply left the entrance open.
And for the first time in her existence, Ae'lyra felt curiosity.
Not for the fire.
Not for the goblin.
But for what it meant... to stay.
The cave wasn't deep.
But its walls felt older than the forest itself.
Ae'lyra took one step.
Then another.
Waiting for the air to reject her,
for the ground to split,
for some unseen force to push her out.
Nothing happened.
Only warmth.
A soft warmth, without teeth.
Not the heat of volcanic fires or predator breath, but like the warmth of a stone that's been sitting in sunlight for hours.
A warmth that didn't burn—only accompanied.
Inside, the ceiling was covered in glowing lichens, faintly lit in green and orange hues. In the center, a fire rested upon flat stones, surrounded by small bones arranged in spirals and circles: vertebrae of ancient birds, skulls of creatures without names, miniature jaws turned into necklaces, hanging from stalactites.
But there was no fear in the arrangement.
No violence in the trophies.
Everything inside the cave seemed...
at peace.
As if bones here weren't symbols of death—
but of what no longer needed to fight.
Ae'lyra stepped further in, her bare feet silent.
She didn't speak.
She didn't know how.
And still, the cave accepted her.
The goblin didn't look up from the pot he stirred.
The broth inside was dark and sweet-smelling, made of roots Ae'lyra didn't recognize and slices of mushroom that hissed when submerged.
Strips of meat floated slowly, surrounded by floating petals and something that shimmered like powdered stone.
Mëkhael spoke without turning.
—"You'll eat."
Ae'lyra didn't answer.
He tapped the rim of the pot with a claw.
—"Not because you deserve it.
Because the forest spit you out.
And things it spits out come here, sooner or later."
He poured the stew into a small bowl carved from a dinosaur's horn.
Then set it near the fire, not too close to her, but close enough.
—"If you eat it, you stay.
If you don't, I won't ask why.
But the next time you collapse out there, don't expect the mountain to care."
He returned to his corner.
Did not look at her again.
Ae'lyra stared at the bowl.
The scent was warm and strange.
Like something she couldn't remember,
but wanted to.
She sat.
And ate.
Slowly.
Silently.
As if no one had ever watched her be real.
And the fire... didn't judge.
Ae'lyra stayed.
Not for the warmth.
Not for the food.
Not even for the safety.
She stayed because no one asked her to leave.
The cave was not a home in the human sense.
It was a collection of secrets:
shelves carved into stone walls held bowls made from fossil shells;
strange bones hung like wind chimes, clinking softly when the fire crackled;
and on one corner, a stone table held artifacts she could not name.
There was a small box made of tree bark that opened with a breath,
a tooth that vibrated when touched,
and a cloth that, when held between the fingers, made her forget where she was for a second.
Mëkhael called them "accidents."
—"The world drops them sometimes.
They don't belong to this cycle.
Neither do we."
He never asked her name.
Never gave her one.
But when he spoke, he called her:
—"Girl-Who-Sees-Without-Looking."
And Ae'lyra did not correct him.
Because it was true.
Beneath the cave, the earth was not dead.
Sometimes, at night, Ae'lyra would lie on the stone floor and feel the heartbeat of something massive, something buried deep beneath the rock. A sleeping beast. Or perhaps a god that no longer remembered its own body.
She would place her palm flat on the ground, and the pulse would rise through her bones.
She never feared it.
Because it never moved faster.
It just was.
Like her.
One day, while Mëkhael boiled strips of root over a bed of glowing moss, Ae'lyra reached toward a fruit on the stone shelf.
Before she touched it, he spoke.
—"That one dreams."
She looked at him.
—"You can eat it. But you'll see things."
Ae'lyra blinked once, slowly.
Then she picked it up and bit.
It tasted like silence.
Like time folding in half.
And for a moment, she heard voices... but none of them were her own.
When she opened her eyes again, she wasn't afraid.
Mëkhael nodded.
—"Good.
Most run the first time."
That night, Ae'lyra didn't sleep curled up in the corner.
She sat by the fire.
Her eyes, still covered by the blindfold, turned toward the flames.
And Mëkhael, quietly, placed a small bone near her.
A charm.
It had no magic.
No glow.
No sound.
But it was warm.
She held it.
And for the first time in years, her fingers didn't tremble.
Days passed.
Or what passed for days in that part of the world.
There was no sun above the cave—only shifting clouds and far-off glows.
But inside, time moved differently.
Mëkhael cooked.
Cleaned.
Chanted to the bones.
Tended the fire with root oils that smelled like wet bark and bitter fruit.
Ae'lyra watched.
She didn't help.
He didn't ask.
But sometimes she brought things.
A stone that sang when touched.
A dead leaf that had not crumbled after rain.
A feather longer than her arm, striped with green and ash.
Mëkhael never thanked her.
But he placed each one somewhere meaningful.
That was enough.
Ae'lyra began to explore the edges of the crater.
She never went far.
Only to where the moss grew darker, thicker, and hummed beneath her steps.
The trees here were different—
shorter, rounder, older in a stranger way.
They pulsed with sap that glowed faintly, as if remembering sunlight they had never truly seen.
Some nights, she lay against their bark.
Listened.
They spoke slowly.
Not in words.
But in warmth.
She did not reply.
She only pressed her forehead to the trunk and let the quiet bleed into her.
One morning, she found a creature by the spring.
A small, feathered thing with a broken wing—
its body trembling, eyes wide, trapped in the curve of a root.
It didn't cry.
Ae'lyra sat near it.
Waited.
The bird didn't move.
But its gaze locked with hers.
She didn't see its past.
Nor its death.
Only the now.
And when she blinked, it crawled forward—
slowly, carefully—
and rested against her knee.
Mëkhael saw them from afar and said nothing.
That night, he added a second bowl by the fire.
Ae'lyra never asked what the cave was.
She didn't ask why it existed.
Why Mëkhael lived alone.
Why the fire never burned out.
And he never told her.
Because nothing here tried to define itself.
Nothing tried to teach her anything.
It only was.
And for the first time...
so was she.
It began with a shadow.
Not one cast by fire,
nor by body.
A presence.
Ae'lyra felt it one dusk while fetching water.
The moss under her toes stiffened.
The spring rippled, though no wind touched it.
And somewhere in the treetops, a bird stopped mid-song.
She stood still.
Behind her blindfold,
the vision stirred.
But she didn't lift it.
She knew this watcher was not a beast.
It was not hunger.
It was memory.
And memory did not want her healed.
When she returned to the cave, Mëkhael was waiting by the fire.
He didn't ask.
He only said:
—"They know."
Ae'lyra didn't move.
Mëkhael stirred the pot slowly.
—"When things that don't belong find peace...
something always comes to question it."
She sat beside the fire.
The bird crawled onto her foot.
Mëkhael looked at her—truly, for the first time.
—"I've seen creatures like you.
Ones that walk through time.
Ones that carry too much.
Most of them don't stop walking."
She tilted her head.
He looked away.
—"I hope you don't start again."
That night, there were no stars.
The sky above the cave was a smear of thick gray, heavy with silence.
Ae'lyra did not sleep.
She sat by the fire.
The bird beside her.
Her blindfold still on.
And she whispered—not with voice, but through thought, sent out into the dark:
"If you take this from me...
I will never forgive you."
No one answered.
But the fire burned a little brighter.
And that was enough.
At dawn, the watcher returned.
Ae'lyra stood outside the cave, barefoot in the morning mist. The bird still slept inside, curled in moss. Mëkhael did not rise, though she knew he was awake.
The wind was wrong.
It moved without direction.
The trees bent not with breath, but with warning.
And then, it came.
Not a creature—
not even a shape.
A fracture.
The air in front of her shimmered like a mirror cracking,
and through it stepped possibility.
It had no eyes, but it saw her.
It had no voice, but it spoke.
—"You are not meant to be."
Ae'lyra said nothing.
The fracture pulsed.
—"You walked away from fate.
You abandoned your path.
The spiral was never meant to rest."
She stepped forward.
Her blindfold remained.
And yet, she saw everything.
She saw the thousands of versions of herself—
the ones who never found Mëkhael,
the ones who kept walking until their feet forgot the earth,
the ones who never ate, never paused, never hoped.
And for the first time...
she chose.
—"I am still walking," she whispered.
Not with lips.
With will.
—"But I now walk toward something."
The fracture trembled.
Behind it, echoes screamed.
She didn't flinch.
The bird behind her stirred.
Mëkhael's breath held.
The fire did not dim.
And the fracture—
collapsed.
Like it had never been real.
Like the world, for once,
let her stay.
That night, Ae'lyra did not sit by the fire.
She sat with Mëkhael.
He handed her a carved wooden bowl—one he hadn't used for anyone else.
She drank slowly.
She looked toward the bones on the ceiling.
The walls.
The roots.
The fire.
The bird.
The silence.
And for the first time in her entire life—
in all her thousands of memories, her infinite futures,
her unbearable truths—
she felt small.
And safe.
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Some stories begin with pain.
Some with fire.
Some with silence.
But hers...
began again with kindness.
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