There is a village.
Small. Quiet. Tucked into the hills where fog settles like a tired breath.
The people here know each other's names.
They laugh when the wind comes in too strong. They cry at funerals and don't pretend not to. They grow things. They live.
She lives here, too.
A girl with white hair and dark eyes that don't quite match. She walks the long path each morning to the orchard that's not supposed to grow this far north. She hums to herself. Off-key. No one minds.
She has a voice now.
It works fine.
She laughs at the baker's jokes. She helps patch the windows when storms blow through. She reads old books to children, even the scary ones with monsters in the walls.
Sometimes, when she's alone, she stares too long at fire.
Or thunder makes her hands twitch.
Sometimes she flinches when the wind changes too fast.
Or she finds herself whispering rules she doesn't remember writing.
She doesn't know why.
She dreams, sometimes.
Not often.
But when she does, it's always the same.
Ash, falling slow like snow.
A boy stands in it. Just beyond reach.
His face is wrong in ways she can't name—too blurred, too bright.
But something in her wants to kneel. To scream.
To go to him and ask: Why do I remember your absence like a wound?
He reaches out.
He says something.
She wakes before she can hear it.
One morning, while washing her hands, she looks at her reflection in the still water of the basin. Her fingers tremble. A name rises in her throat like smoke.
It doesn't come out.
It can't.
But for a moment, it almost does.
And she thinks:
I knew him.
Didn't I?
She closes her eyes.
I think I knew him.
I think I burned for him.
Twice.