Chapter 4
The tide had receded, but it had not left quietly.
Amira stood at the edge of the cove, her knees soaked with saltwater and grief. Around her, the sea had returned to its steady hush, but within her, a war still thundered. The spirits were gone — or had they truly gone? Their echoes still lingered in the palms of her hands, in the soles of her feet, in the rhythm of her breath.
She could still feel their touch — light as wind, heavy as truth.
The silence that followed was not peace. It was the silence of a soul rearranged. The kind that comes after you've said a name you never thought you'd dare to speak aloud. A name that once meant terror, now whispered redemption.
Elias was somewhere behind her, watching. She had not turned to him. Not yet. She couldn't.
She feared that if she did, she'd collapse. Or cry. Or run into his arms and forget that she was not the same woman who had stood trembling before the spirits only minutes ago.
She had called them. She had faced them. She had heard their grief.
And worst of all—she had understood it.
"Amira," Elias finally spoke, voice softer than the tide. "They heard you."
She still didn't turn. Her eyes were fixed on the gold glints in the water, the last trace of supernatural presence fading with the sun.
"I didn't speak for them to hear," she said. "I spoke so I could listen to myself again."
The walk back to the lighthouse was wordless. Not cold — just… reverent.
Elias kept a gentle distance. He understood that something sacred had happened in the cove, and he would not disturb its residue.
Inside, she collapsed on the woven mat on the floor. The mat her mother used to carry to the river. The mat her grandmother had woven, thread by thread, while singing lullabies she'd forgotten the meanings of.
Amira laid there, staring at the ceiling, her chest rising with slow, deliberate breaths.
Flashback – The Dream of the Matriarch
That night, sleep did not come, but a dream did.
She was a child again, standing before the sea. But this time, she was not alone. There was a woman beside her — old, tall, draped in cloth that shimmered like stars dipped in ash. Her hair was threaded with shells. Her eyes were storms contained in silence.
"Your voice is not new," the woman said. "It is returned."
"Who are you?" Amira asked.
"I am the first to be silenced. And the last you must remember."
The woman reached out, placing a palm against Amira's chest.
"Here," she said. "The echoes begin here."
Amira woke with tears streaming silently.
She went to the basin, splashed water on her face, and then lit the old oil lamp in the corner. She opened her mother's journal — the one she had carried but never read — and began to write.
Not spells. Not poems. Names.
The names of the women whose stories she now held inside her body like marrow.
Names no longer drowned.
The Return of Ordinary Sound
Morning came with birdcalls and fishermen's whistles. The village below stirred as though nothing had happened — as though the ocean had not just turned into a mirror for the dead.
But Amira had changed. And when she stepped outside, others could feel it.
Old Mama Dogo, who hadn't spoken since her son was taken by the sea, whispered as Amira passed:
"We remember again."
Children stared, unsure whether to bow or smile.
Amira didn't need them to understand. Not yet. Understanding would come. For now, all that mattered was that she had returned to herself.
Elias's Confession
At dusk, Elias finally broke the stillness between them.
"I wasn't meant to stay," he said. "The sea called me too."
Amira didn't answer right away. She simply watched the horizon.
"But you did stay," she said eventually.
"I stayed because you sang their names. And in that song, I found my own."
Amira looked at him then, really looked. He was no longer just a lighthouse keeper. He was something more now — witness, companion, echo.
Final Scene – The Gathering Begins
By nightfall, word had spread of what happened in the cove.
Women began arriving. One by one. Old. Young. Silent. Loud. Broken. Whole. All carried pieces of stories never told.
They gathered by the lighthouse, under the open sky, around a small fire lit by driftwood and memory.
Amira stood before them, journal in hand.
She did not read aloud. Not yet.
She simply said:
"This is the place where forgetting ends."
And the wind whispered back:
"Let the remembering begin."
✨ End of Chapter