After a few days, the two of us set out. The field stretched endlessly ahead, tall grass whispering against our feet, the morning sky pale and wide above us. I walked in step with Mousikí — a habit I'd fallen into without quite noticing — watching the way the light caught the honey-gold of his hair and turned it almost bronze. He had his flute tucked into his belt and his hands clasped behind his head, the picture of someone without a single care in the world. I knew better by now. "So where exactly are we headed?" I asked, keeping my voice soft against the quiet of the field. Mousikí was quiet for a moment, his gaze fixed somewhere on the horizon. "Selinófoto Cove," he said at last. The name fell from his mouth with a strange weight — like something he'd been turning over in his mind for a long time. "Geira and Panoúkla have always wanted to go there. It's said to be the birthplace of Vildora's magic — the place where the first song was ever sung, where the first breath of life took hold." He paused, something flickering behind his mismatched eyes. "I have a hunch that's where they are." I let the words settle, watching the grass bend and sway. The birthplace of Vildora's magic. Of course they'd go there, of all places. "How did you meet them?" I asked. "Geira and Panoúkla." The change in him was immediate. His easy stride faltered — just slightly, just for a step — and something in his shoulders drew inward, like a door swinging shut before you could see what was behind it. He dropped his hands from behind his head, gaze falling to the path ahead. "It's a long story," he said quietly. I glanced at him sideways. The field was wide and the road was longer. "We have time." He didn't answer right away. His jaw worked, and for a moment I thought he might actually tell me. Then he exhaled through his nose — a short, careful sound — and shook his head. "A long story," he repeated, and the finality in his voice was gentle but unmistakable. I let it go. For now. We walked in silence for a while, the kind that wasn't entirely uncomfortable — just full of things unsaid. The sun climbed a little higher. A bird called somewhere in the distance. I turned the question over in my mind, reshaping it, before I tried again. "Then why is Forá after you?" I asked. "You, and Geira, and Panoúkla. She named all three of you when she woke up. She was furious." I paused. "She called you cowards." Mousikí's step slowed almost imperceptibly. His jaw tightened. I watched the muscle in his cheek flicker, watched his gaze go somewhere far away — somewhere that had nothing to do with the field or the morning or me. "Even longer story," he said at last. His voice was quiet. Flat in a way that wasn't cold, but careful. Like someone pressing a hand against an old wound to check if it still hurt. It clearly did. I didn't push. I had learned, in the short time I'd known him, that Mousikí wore his cheerfulness like armor — bright and well-fitted, rarely showing what it was protecting. Whatever lay beneath the story of Forá and the three of them, it wasn't something he was ready to hand over in the middle of an open field in the morning to a sixteen year old girl. But I filed it away. The way his stride had faltered. The way his voice had gone flat. The way he hadn't looked at me once since I'd said her name. Forá had called them cowards. And whatever they had done — or hadn't done — it was still eating at him. I looked back to the horizon, where the faint shimmer of distant water might have been the sea, or might have been the light playing tricks. "You'll tell me eventually," I said. Not a question. Not a challenge. Just a quiet certainty, offered gently. Mousikí glanced at me — a quick, sideways look, unreadable as ever. Then, almost despite himself, the corner of his mouth curved. "Maybe," he said softly. And we kept walking. But eventually, he spoke. "You know how Geira and Panoúkla used to resurrect children into the immortal world?" His voice was measured, careful — the voice of someone choosing each word like stepping stones across deep water. "Do you know why they stopped?" I tilted my head, thinking. The answer that came to me first wasn't academic — it was personal, sudden, and sharp. I remembered what it was to be mortal. I remembered the cold, and the dark, and then — Ying. Ying, who had given up everything to pull me back from the edge of it.
Was she okay? Was she— I pushed the thought down, hard, and focused on the question. "Was it because they believed children deserved the chance to reunite with their loved ones?" I asked. "That bringing them back would take that away?" Mousikí was quiet for a moment. Then he shook his head, slow and heavy, like a man setting down something he'd carried too long. "Not exactly." He exhaled — a long, soft sound that carried the weight of something he clearly didn't want to explain, but had clearly decided he must. "Years before you were even born, Geira and Panoúkla resurrected a girl named Kala." The name fell between us, quiet and unremarkable. Just a name. But something in the way he said it made me feel the edges of something enormous behind it. "She had a difficult life," he continued, his voice dropping lower. "Her mother died bringing her into the world. Her father died in a war she was too young to understand. And then Kala herself — she suffocated. Buried alive in hot sand." He paused, jaw tight. "She was barely a teenager who had lost everything before she was old enough to grieve properly." I said nothing. The field moved around us, indifferent and golden. "Geira and Panoúkla saw something in her — potential, or perhaps just pity, I've never been sure which — and they chose to resurrect her. Not as a child this time. As something more." He glanced at me sideways, his mismatched eyes unreadable. "They made her the goddess of time. Forá." The name hit me like cold water. I stopped walking without meaning to. "Forá," I repeated. "Kala is Forá." Mousikí nodded. "Was Kala," he corrected quietly. "She hasn't been Kala in a very long time." He kept walking, and I fell back into step beside him, my mind turning the shape of it over. "The problem was that Geira and Panoúkla made a mistake. When they resurrected her, when they gave her divinity and power and an eternity stretched out ahead of her — they forgot to wipe her memories." I felt the weight of that settle in my chest.
