The morning air was cool and fragrant with lavender. Asiolla stepped outside her modest cottage, the wooden door creaking softly behind her. Morning light spilled gently across the fields, the soft purple blooms swaying in the breeze, releasing their calming scent into the crisp mountain air.
She stood barefoot on the cool grass, breathing deeply. Her arms moved in slow, deliberate stretches—a quiet ritual, a conversation between body and spirit. Each motion was both grounding and remembering.
Near the edge of the garden, the spring gurgled happily, its cold water rushing over smooth stones. Asiolla knelt and cupped it in her hands, letting its chill bite her skin and awaken her senses. Despite the peace of this place, a quiet ache lingered in her chest—a shadow of something lost, something forgotten.
Yet here, among the lavender and the silence, she had made a life.
The cottage, built from warm wood and stone, stood tucked beside the field, embraced by wildflowers and the hum of bees. Inside, small jars of dried herbs lined the windowsills, and bowls of beads in every shade waited patiently to become bracelets. Her days followed gentle rhythms: morning movement and meditation, afternoons in the garden or wandering for wild plants, evenings by the fire with a journal and soft music humming from the old speaker.
Alone, but not lonely.
She had learned to live this way after heartbreak taught her that not all love heals. Some connections leave bruises beneath the skin, and some silences are safer than words. For now, solitude was her softest place.
The villagers nearby knew her only as the woman who lived by the lavender. Some were curious, some cautious. But they left her in peace, and she welcomed it.
During meditations, fragments drifted to her—flashes of something ancient. Wings. A marble table. A flower that never wilted. Sometimes, the sound of a voice calling her name. These glimpses stirred something deep, a puzzle without edges. She wrote them down in her journal at night, unsure if they were dreams, memories, or something stranger.
That evening, she sat by the fire, its light flickering across her thoughtful face. The journal lay open in her lap, her handwriting looping across the page:
"Saw the flower again. Still blooming. Still untouched by time."
She closed her eyes and let herself drift—not asleep, not awake. The scent of lavender curled around her, comforting and ancient. Somewhere inside, a part of her stirred.
Something was waking up.
She rose from the fire slowly, her joints stiff from stillness. Outside, twilight had deepened, and the lavender fields glowed faintly in the silvering dusk. Fireflies blinked lazily between the stems, and the breeze had grown cooler, carrying the scent of moss and wet stone from the spring.
She walked outside barefoot, letting her soles touch the soft, earthy ground. Her fingertips brushed the lavender as she passed. It grounded her—this life of touch and scent and quiet—yet it felt, at times, like borrowed peace.
Asiola wandered toward the stone path that curved around the spring. She crouched by the water again, watching it swirl in endless motion. The flow of it reminded her of something—an ancient current, not of water but of energy. The thought vanished before she could hold it.
She dipped her hand into the stream and pulled out a smooth, dark stone. As she turned it over in her palm, a strange warmth bloomed in her chest. Not from the stone, but from something beneath it. A memory?
Suddenly, her breath hitched.
A flicker—barely a flash—of an image passed through her: a white pillar. A green and peach dress. A voice shouting, "Go. Bring them back."
She sat down hard on the earth.
It faded as quickly as it came, like fog at sunrise. But her hands trembled slightly. She wasn't sure if it was fear, awe, or both.
"I don't know who I am," she whispered to no one, "but something in me remembers."
The sky above her was now deep indigo, scattered with early stars. She walked back toward the cottage with the stone still clutched in her hand. Inside, she placed it on the wooden table beside her journal, where crystals and beads were laid out in soft spirals.
She stared at the stone for a while, then began stringing beads onto a thread. Lavender-colored glass, pale rosewood, a single silver charm in the shape of a spiral. Her fingers moved slowly, intuitively. As if they had done this before, long before.
When the bracelet was finished, she tied it and slipped it onto her wrist. It felt… right.
Not beautiful. Not powerful. Just true.
She sat back and closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of dried herbs hanging above the hearth. Somewhere beyond the cottage walls, an owl called into the darkness. A rustle in the trees answered, but no wind stirred.
And still, within her, something moved—quiet as the stars, steady as the stream.
She did not know it yet, but the shards were returning.