This short story was published on Saturday, 24 January 2026 and is part of the Kakantiga Ultra or Cantos of the Beyond: a daily new short story or play dreamfishing and celebrating past, present, possible and future Kristang culture. This short story features the anticipated future 37th Kabesa and is set in Pedra Nova / New Island in February 2492.
The first thing that went wrong was the music.
It came through the ice like a memory that had lost its owner: thin, warped, unmistakably human. Not a broadcast. Not a beacon. Someone was singing.
Asha froze halfway up the ridge, one boot still searching for purchase on blue-glass stone. The wind peeled at her hood. The salt-smell of thawed brine and old metal drifted up from the basin below. Nothing in this place was supposed to sing anymore. The maps said so. The sensors said so. The dead cities buried under the melt said so.
The song wavered. Recovered. Found its pitch again.
A lullaby, maybe. Or a prayer. Or something that had once been either, before language broke into shards and people learned to survive on fragments.
Below her, the valley spread like a scar that had decided to heal incorrectly. Black rock stitched with veins of green. Pools of meltwater glowing faintly where engineered algae clung to life like stubborn punctuation marks. Wind-harps left behind by surveyors creaked and chimed, making the landscape sound as if it were breathing in its sleep.
Asha slid the last metre down and crouched behind a slab of icecrete.
There, in the open.
A woman stood barefoot on regrown moss, snow drifting lazily around her like confused ash. She was wrapped in a coat two centuries out of date, patched with symbols Asha half-recognised from old Kristang archives. Her hair was braided with copper wire and seed-filament. Her eyes were closed.
She was singing to the ground.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
With each note, the moss thickened. Tiny white flowers unfolded and then folded again, as if embarrassed by their own existence. The cracked earth under her feet darkened, softened, remembered how to be soil.
Asha felt it in her ribs.
A pressure. A warmth. The aftertaste of kindness.
“Impossible,” she whispered.
The word didn’t mean what it used to.
Behind her, something shifted.
Asha spun, knife already in hand, heart punching at her throat.
A boy leaned against a broken drone tower, watching her with mild amusement. He looked about sixteen. Or fifty. Or neither. Time did strange things to people who lived near miracles.
“You’re early,” he said. “She usually finishes before anyone finds her.”
“Finds who?” Asha asked.
He smiled, slow and careful, like someone handling old glass.
“The place,” he said. “And the person keeping it alive.”
Down in the basin, the song changed key.
The valley answered.
Asha did not lower the knife.
“Define keeping it alive,” she said.
The boy’s smile tilted. “You really don’t hear it yet, do you?”
“Hear what?”
He tapped two fingers lightly against his own chest. The sound carried farther than it should have, rippling through the thin air like a dropped pebble in water.
“That,” he said.
Asha felt it then. Not sound. Not quite. A resonance, threading through her bones, her teeth, the old scar along her shoulder where a splinter round had once kissed her too closely. It was subtle, but persistent, like a second pulse layered under her own.
She swore under her breath.
“That’s… some kind of field.”
“Relationship,” he corrected gently.
She stared at him. “That’s not a unit of measurement.”
“Everything important is,” he replied.
Below them, the singer opened her eyes.
They were silvered, not with implants, not with glare, but with something like reflected weather. Stormlight. Dawn. The colour of distance when you are finally done running.
She stopped singing.
The valley held its breath.
Then, slowly, reluctantly, the flowers folded away. The soil firmed. The glow dimmed. Life retreated into its emergency pockets, conserving itself like a civilisation between wars.
The woman turned.
She looked directly at Asha.
“Oh,” she said softly. “You brought a witness.”
Asha’s stomach dropped.
“I didn’t bring anything,” she snapped. “I’m a surveyor. I was sent to—”
“To confirm that nothing important is happening here,” the woman finished, stepping lightly onto stone that should not have supported her weight. “Yes. They always do.”
Up close, she was younger than Asha had expected. Or older. Again: time misbehaving. Fine lines traced her mouth. Her hands were scarred, but not from labour. From holding things together too tightly for too long.
“You’re trespassing,” Asha said automatically.
The woman laughed. It came out tired, affectionate, and utterly unimpressed.
“On what,” she asked, “a miracle? A memory? A second chance nobody officially authorised?”
The boy pushed off the tower and wandered closer.
”She’s the Kabesa,” he offered.
”The what?” said Asha.
”The Kabesa,” said the Kabesa, brushing something off her fur. ”But you don’t need to care.” She looked at Asha even more gracefully and carefully. ”And I mean that with all of my heart.”
Asha stared.
She had expected many things.
A hermit.
A rogue engineer.
A cult leader with algae tattoos and too much charisma.
A leftover war construct that had learned to sing.
She had not expected that word.
“Kabesa,” she repeated slowly. “That’s… that’s not a—”
“Title?” the woman supplied. “Crown? Throne? Emergency protocol?”
She shrugged.
“None of the above. It’s a job description with very poor retirement benefits.”
The boy snorted.
“Understatement of the century.”
Asha looked between them.
“You’re telling me,” she said, “that the person currently… gardening reality… is a head of state?”
“I’m telling you,” the Kabesa replied, “that I’m very bad at being a head of anything.”
She walked past Asha, close enough that Asha caught the scent of wet leaves and old smoke and something faintly metallic, like distant storms. The woman bent, picked up a broken shard of icecrete, and turned it over in her palm.
“Once,” she continued lightly, “people thought leadership meant standing on something high and shouting. Flags. Speeches. Parades.”
She dropped the shard. It sank halfway into the softened ground.
“Then the world burned itself thin.”
The valley seemed to listen.
“I was born in a hospital that didn’t have windows,” she went on. “Because there was nothing worth seeing outside them yet. My first memory is of dust storms and ration songs and adults whispering as if hope were contraband.”
Asha felt her throat tighten.
The Kabesa glanced at her.
“You grew up after the maps got even less optimistic,” she guessed. ”Scavenging caravan?”
“…Yes.”
“Lucky you.”
Not bitter. Not resentful.
Just factual.
The boy crouched and traced patterns in the moss with one finger. Wherever he touched, the green brightened.
“We learned early,” he said, “that nobody was coming to fix things anymore.”
Asha frowned. “But… you both… are Kristang, aren’t you?” She could tell not just from their strange accents, but from…from everything. Just the way these two people behaved. ”What about Sunyado? Sanhieros? Corepoint? All your…your big cities, and your technology, and your Edentrees?”
The Kabesa smiled.
“Oh, those were real,” she said. “They just weren’t enough.”
She looked out over the basin.
“We couldn’t rebuild a planet with machines,” she continued. “We need people who are willing to stay when it’s ugly. When it fails. When it hurts. When other people keep trying to turn themselves into mindless drones, and sometimes keep dying in your hands.”
Her voice softened.
“And keep loving it all anyway.”
“You did this alone?” Asha asked quietly, gesturing to the…life around the Kabesa.
The Kabesa winced.
“No,” she said immediately. “Never alone. That’s how people break.”
She nodded toward the boy.
“Luka’s here with me. So are half a dozen others. Farmers. Coders. Former soldiers. One retired opera singer who came along because she’d promised the penguins she’d teach them scales.”
”Came along?” said Asha.
”To New Island. Pedranova,” said Luka.
“That’s not real,” Asha said weakly.
Luka grinned. “Very real. Fiona is a terrifying soprano.”
The Kabesa chuckled, then grew serious again.
“We made pacts,” she said. “Not contracts. Pacts. With each other. With the land. With the dead. With the people who would come after.”
Her gaze sharpened on Asha.
“Do you know what happens when enough people keep their promises to places that can’t sue them?”
Asha shook her head.
“They start answering back.”
A low rumble passed through the valley, like distant thunder or a giant turning in its sleep.
Asha’s hands were shaking.
“New Island,” she said, “is dead.”
“Yes,” said the Kabesa calmly. “It is.”
“Then…”
The Kabesa met her eyes.
“Then.” she said, “This is now.”
Silence.
Wind.
Green spreading quietly at the edges of stone. Asha looked at it again, and took a breath that felt like crossing a border.
“What’s your name?” she asked, and for the first time, said it in her own halting Kristang. Ki bos sa nomi?
The Kabesa considered. Then, gently:
“You can call me Allie.”
Allie watched her for a long moment after saying it.
Not to test her.
To give the name time to settle.
Luka broke the quiet first.
“So,” he said lightly, “you’ve just crossed about three invisible borders.”
Asha let out a breath. “Only three?”
“Minimum.”
Allie smiled, but there was something careful in it now.
“You didn’t answer,” she said.
“Answer what?”
“Why you came so far off the caravan routes.”
Asha hesitated.
The wind tugged at her jacket. Somewhere beneath her boots, meltwater whispered through cracks like gossip.
“I was supposed to check the dead zones,” she admitted. “See which ones were lying. Which ones weren’t as empty as people said.”
“And?” Allie prompted.
“And this,” Asha gestured helplessly, “isn’t supposed to exist.”
“No,” Allie agreed. “It usually doesn’t.”
Luka chuckled.
“Too stubborn. Not enough despair.”
Asha looked back at the basin.
Now that she knew what she was seeing, she noticed more.
The way the moss followed invisible contours, as if remembering old riverbeds.
The way stones clustered like vertebrae.
The way the wind curved around certain outcroppings, softer there, protective.
It wasn’t random.
It was… negotiated.
“You’re not terraforming,” Asha said slowly.
Allie’s eyes lit, just a little.
“Good,” she said. “Most people never notice.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Listening,” Allie replied. “Remembering. Apologising. Trying again.”
“To rocks,” Asha said.
“To everything,” Allie corrected.
She knelt and pressed her palm to the ground.
The soil warmed beneath her hand.
Not dramatically.
Not theatrically.
Like a living thing recognising a familiar touch.
“This place was hurt,” Allie said quietly. “By wars. By feedback storms. By people trying to force it into obedience. By people who meant well and didn’t know when to stop.”
Her voice didn’t shake.
It didn’t need to.
“So were we,” she went on. “So we made a deal.”
“With… the land?” Asha asked.
“With ourselves,” Allie said. “First. Always first.”
Asha swallowed.
“And the deal was?”
“That we would stay,” Allie replied.
“Even when it failed. Even when it looked stupid. Even when nothing grew for years. Even when people laughed and said we were wasting our lives on frozen ghosts.”
She looked up.
“That we wouldn’t turn away just because it was ugly.”
The valley seemed to lean closer.
“That we wouldn’t use it,” Allie continued. “Wouldn’t drain it. Wouldn’t bend it into something impressive and empty.”
Luka added softly, “No heroics. No monuments. No ‘look what we built.’”
“Just… repair,” Asha said.
“Just relationship,” Allie corrected gently.
Asha stared at the moss again.
At the flowers that had dared to exist for a few seconds.
At the way the ground still held warmth.
Her hands trembled.
“My caravan wouldn’t believe this,” she whispered.
Allie’s mouth curved.
“They never do,” she said. “Not at first.”
Asha looked up.
“Then why show me?”
Allie met her gaze, steady and kind and unbearably serious.
“Because you came anyway,” she said.
“Because you listened to the wrong music and didn’t run.”
She stood.
“And because places like this don’t survive on secrets.”
They survive on witnesses.
She extended her hand.
“Come,” Allie said. “Let me show you what we promised.”
Asha did not take Allie’s hand immediately.
Not because she didn’t want to.
Because every instinct she had learned on the ice was screaming at her not to.
Don’t step into unknown shelters.
Don’t accept warmth without checking the cost.
Don’t trust people who talk like storms and gardens in the same breath.
Her caravan had survived on those rules.
Barely.
Luka noticed.
“Take your time,” he said. “Nobody gets good at this fast.”
“All of you say that,” Asha muttered.
“All of who?” he asked.
“People who already have somewhere to belong.”
Allie’s hand didn’t move.
She didn’t withdraw it either.
“That’s fair,” she said quietly.
Asha studied her.
Up close, the Kabesa looked… ordinary.
Tired eyes. Wind-cracked skin. A faint tremor in her left wrist that she hadn’t noticed before. Old injuries, badly healed. The kind you got when you kept choosing to stand in the wrong place at the wrong time for decades.
Not a goddess.
Not a symbol.
A person who had been worn thin by care.
That was somehow worse.
Asha exhaled.
Then she took the hand.
It was warm.
Not artificially.
Not from heaters or implants.
From circulation. From life.
From someone who still bothered to stay present in her own body.
The moment their palms met, Asha felt it again.
That resonance.
Stronger now.
Not a wave.
A weave.
Threads sliding into alignment around her ribs, her spine, the hollow behind her eyes where fear usually lived.
She gasped.
Luka caught her elbow automatically.
“Easy,” he murmured. “First contact always hits harder.”
“Contact with what?” Asha whispered.
Allie squeezed her hand once.
“With a place that knows your name now,” she said.
“I never told it—”
“You don’t have to.”
They started walking.
Not down a marked path.
There weren’t any.
They moved along routes that only made sense once you were on them. Where stone rose just enough to support weight. Where meltwater carved safe crossings. Where moss thickened at precisely the right moments.
Asha realised, with a strange jolt, that she wasn’t choosing her steps anymore.
Neither was Allie.
The ground was.
“This is insane,” Asha muttered.
“Yes,” Luka agreed cheerfully. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
They passed between two slabs of fractured ice that leaned toward each other like exhausted giants. Beneath them, warm air pooled, scented with mineral salts and something faintly floral.
Asha’s visor fogged.
She lifted it without thinking.
And didn’t freeze.
Her breath came out in pale ribbons, not knives.
Ahead, the basin opened.
Not into a camp.
Not into a city.
Into a scattering of lives.
Low structures grown rather than built. Roofs woven from algae-fibre and salvaged polymer. Solar skins stretched like translucent leaves. Water channels humming softly beneath stone.
People.
Dozens of them.
Some bent over soil beds. Some repairing drones that looked more like insects than machines. Some sitting in circles, talking, arguing, laughing.
No walls.
No fences.
No visible weapons.
Every alarm in Asha’s head went off at once.
“Where are your defences?” she demanded.
Allie didn’t slow.
“You’re standing in them,” she replied.
Asha stopped.
“What?”
Allie turned back.
“Every person here,” she said gently, “has chosen this place more than once.”
She gestured around them.
“Not because they were trapped. Not because they were paid. Because staying mattered more than leaving.”
Luka added, “Turns out that’s harder to break than steel.”
Asha stared.
Her caravan had lived behind barricades.
Behind codes.
Behind suspicion.
This place lived… exposed.
“How are you not dead?” she asked.
Allie smiled, small and fierce.
“Oh,” she said. “We nearly were. Many times.”
She looked toward a distant ridge where the land still lay grey and scarred.
“We just learned faster than most.”
A child ran past them, laughing, chased by a small hovering drone that projected soap-bubble holograms. An older woman shouted after them in rapid Kristang, half scolding, half blessing.
Asha felt something crack open in her chest.
“Is this…” she faltered. “Is this New Island?”
Allie’s gaze softened.
“No,” she said.
“This is what happens after it.”
*
Asha had grown up learning that places did not love you back.
They tolerated you.
If you were careful.
If you were useful.
If you knew when to leave.
Her earliest memory was of her mother tying glow-tape around her wrist before a whiteout, hands shaking not from cold but from calculation. How much risk was acceptable. How much hope was dangerous. How many children could be lost before a route became “unviable.”
Nobody ever used the word death.
They said attrition.
They said weather.
They said inventory adjustment.
By eight, Asha could strip a solar skin and patch it with scavenged polymer. By ten, she could tell which ruins still held breathable pockets and which would quietly kill you in your sleep. By twelve, she had learned not to cry when caravans vanished behind storms and never reappeared.
Grief was heavy.
Speed was survival.
So she learned to move.
Always.
Never long enough to let roots imagine themselves.
Never slow enough to hear songs that weren’t meant for her.
When elders spoke of “before,” she listened politely and forgot immediately. Stories were luxuries. So were ideals. So was staying.
The world had trained her to believe that anything that lasted was either guarded by guns or lying.
That was the rule.
She had never seen an exception.
Until now.
She watched a woman laugh beside soil that remembered her name.
She watched children run without perimeter checks.
She watched people argue loudly and then repair things instead of disappearing.
She felt the ground respond to kindness.
And somewhere inside her, something old and tight began to unravel.
Not dramatically.
Not all at once.
Like frost loosening its grip on buried wires.
She realised, with quiet horror, that she had never expected to live anywhere long enough to learn its moods.
She had never imagined a future that involved returning.
Only escaping.
Allie stopped beside a shallow channel where warm water slid over dark stones.
“Sit,” she said.
Asha obeyed automatically, then blinked in surprise at herself.
She crouched, hugging her knees, watching steam coil upward.
“You know,” she said slowly, “in my caravan… if someone found this…”
She gestured weakly at everything.
“…they’d strip it. Sell coordinates. Come back with buyers. Turn it into a node. Or a shrine. Or a fortress.”
Luka nodded.
“Most people would.”
“Why didn’t you?” Asha asked.
Allie considered.
“Because we were tired of surviving things that kept killing us,” she said.
Asha swallowed.
That sentence lodged somewhere deep.
Tired of surviving things that kept killing us.
She had never heard it put that way.
Her caravan had called it resilience.
Called it toughness.
Called it reality.
But sitting here, feeling warmth soak into her bones, she understood.
They had been brave.
But they had also been trapped.
“Am I… allowed to stay?” she asked suddenly.
The words surprised her as much as anyone.
Allie looked at her gently.
“Do you want to?”
Asha hesitated.
Images flickered through her mind.
Storms.
Routes.
Loss.
Endless horizons.
Loneliness worn like armour.
Then: green.
Laughter.
Music that wasn’t a warning.
Ground that answered.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Allie smiled.
“Then you already have.”
They stayed by the water longer than Asha had meant to.
Long enough for the heat to seep through her boots.
Long enough for her breathing to forget how to be shallow.
Long enough for the idea of leaving to begin to feel… theoretical.
Eventually, she spoke.
“Can I ask you something stupid?”
Allie glanced over. “Those are my favourite kind.”
“How many… Kabesa are there?”
Luka snorted softly.
Allie tilted her head, considering.
“Technically?” she said. “One.”
Asha frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“It rarely does.”
She picked up a small flat stone and skimmed it across the channel. It skipped twice, sank.
“I’m the one holding it right now,” Allie went on. “The role. The responsibility. The headaches. The sleepless nights.”
“Sounds fun.”
“Wildly.”
“But,” Allie continued, “there are two others growing into it.”
Asha’s eyes widened. “Already?”
Allie nodded.
“Six years younger than me,” she said. “Sharp as winter glass. Asks questions that should be illegal.”
“And the other?”
“A baby,” Allie replied, her voice softening. “Just turned one. Still thinks rain is a personal insult.”
“He yells at ugly clouds,” Luka confirmed. ”Definitely a structure person.”
Asha blinked.
“You’re… planning that far ahead?”
Allie looked at her steadily.
“We learned not to pretend we’re permanent,” she said.
Something in that answer made Asha quiet.
After a moment, she ventured,
“What about before you?”
Allie’s fingers paused in the water.
“The one before me?”
“Yeah,” Asha said. “The last Kabesa. If this is… continuity, then they should still be—”
She trailed off.
Allie stood.
“Come,” she said.
They walked uphill, away from the warmth, along a narrow path where moss gave way to stone. The air grew thinner. Quieter. Even Luka stopped joking.
At the edge of a small rise, sheltered by half-collapsed ice spires, stood a marker.
Not tall.
Not dramatic.
A smooth slab of dark glass-stone, veined with pale green.
Just a name is what one saw first:
Esther Jeremiah Francis.
And then beneath it, in smaller script:
Keng ja insinyah kung tudu mundu klai nubu bibiendu suspirah.
She taught the world how to breathe again.
Kabesa di Jenti Kristang Trinseidu
2451-2488
Reinya di Pedra Nova pra sempri
Wildflowers grew around it.
Not arranged.
Not cultivated.
They had simply decided, collectively, that this was where they belonged.
Asha felt her chest tighten.
“She… didn’t leave?” she asked softly.
Allie knelt and brushed snow from the stone with reverent familiarity.
“No,” she said. “She stayed until the ground could.”
Luka looked away, and Asha noticed he was crying too.
She also noticed, suddenly, the way Allie’s voice changed when she spoke here.
How it gentled.
How it folded inward.
“How long…?” Asha began.
“Long enough,” Allie replied, her breath still the same, but also slightly different. “Not long enough.”
She rested her forehead briefly against the marker.
Just for a second.
Like checking a pulse that no longer answered.
Asha understood then.
Not in words.
In weight.
In absence.
In the way love leaves fingerprints on places.
“You knew her,” Asha said.
Allie smiled faintly.
“Yes.”
“And one other…?” Asha ventured.
Allie glanced down the slope, toward where another figure was working among the terraces, dark hair bright against green.
“Yes,” she said again, holding up her fingers.
Trinseidu. Trinsetru. Trinoimdu.
36. 37. 38.
Simply.
Luka cleared his throat.
“Esther used to say,” he offered quietly, “that leadership wasn’t about standing in front.”
He nodded toward the grave.
“It was about standing close enough that when one of you falls, the others don’t let the work fall with you.”
Allie touched the stone once more.
Then she stood.
“We’re not a dynasty,” she said.
“We’re a relay.”
She looked at Asha.
“And nobody runs it alone.”
Asha lingered by the marker as if the wind had nailed her there.
The wildflowers were the worst part.
Not because they were strange, or fragile, or beautiful, though they were all three. Because they were casual. Because they looked like they’d been there a long time. Like grief had happened, and life had kept going anyway, and nobody had tried to punish the land for refusing to stay barren.
Asha swallowed.
“Was it… like what you do?” she asked, voice smaller than she meant. “Could Esther also… grow things?”
Allie’s hand paused midair, fingers still dusted with frost.
For a moment, Asha thought she wouldn’t answer. Not because she didn’t want to. Because some truths were heavy to lift twice.
Then Allie smiled, and it wasn’t happy, exactly. It was the expression of someone opening a drawer they keep locked for a reason.
“Yes,” she said. “But not the same way.”
Asha frowned. “There are… different ways?”
“There are always different ways,” Luka murmured, as if he’d learned that sentence the hard way.
Allie rose and stepped back from the grave. She didn’t turn away from it fully. She never quite gave it her back.
“Esther didn’t sing plants out of stone,” Allie said. “Not like that.”
She gestured vaguely toward the basin below, where green threaded the world like handwriting.
“She couldn’t force life into being. She wouldn’t have wanted to.”
“Then what did she do?” Asha asked.
Allie’s gaze drifted to the wildflowers.
“She made it possible for things to try,” she said quietly. “She made a space where attempts didn’t get punished.”
Asha stared at her. “That’s… not gardening.”
Allie’s mouth tilted.
“It’s the only gardening that lasts.”
Luka shifted, boots crunching lightly on ice grit.
“Before Esther,” he said, “the land could be coaxed for minutes. Hours, if you were lucky. But it snapped back the moment you blinked.”
Allie nodded once, jaw tight.
“Because it didn’t trust us,” she said. “And honestly? Fair.”
Asha looked down at her own hands. Scarred. Grease-stained. Caravan hands.
“How did she make it trust you?”
Allie exhaled, and the breath came out like steam that didn’t want to leave.
“She didn’t start with the land,” Allie said. “She started with people.”
Asha’s eyes flicked up.
“She was sick,” Allie continued, and the word landed without drama, like a stone placed carefully on a cairn. “Not the kind you cure with a clever machine. The kind you carry, and negotiate with, and eventually lose to.”
Asha’s throat tightened.
“And still,” Allie said, “she kept choosing presence. Kept choosing to stay kind when being kind cost her more than it cost anyone else.”
Luka’s voice went softer. “She made it embarrassing to be cruel.”
Asha let out a shaky breath that might’ve been a laugh, if it weren’t so close to crying.
“All she did was… be kind?”
Allie looked at her sharply.
“No,” she said. “She did work.”
She pointed, not at the grave, but at the ground around it.
“You see these?” she asked.
Asha nodded.
“Each of those is a promise kept,” Allie said. “Each of those is a person who came here furious or terrified or hollowed out, and left less alone than they arrived.”
Asha frowned. “That sounds like… Hegemony.”
Luka made a choking sound.
Allie’s eyes flashed with brief amusement, and then gentled again.
“Call it what you want, though it wasn’t that. We are not hegemonised.” she said. “Esther called it refusing to let despair be the only culture we had left.”
Asha’s hands curled around the strap of her pack.
“So she… healed people without Hegemonising them, and that…healed the land.”
Allie considered, then nodded.
“Because the land was never separate,” she said. “It’s not a resource. It’s a relationship.”
There was that word again.
Relationship.
It sounded different here, like it had weight and physics.
Asha looked at Esther’s name, carved clean into glass-stone.
“So when she died…”
Allie’s throat moved. She swallowed once.
“When she died,” Allie said, “the place didn’t collapse.”
Asha blinked. “It didn’t?”
“No,” Allie replied. “It grieved.”
Asha stared at her.
“How can a place grieve?”
Allie’s gaze went distant, remembering something she probably didn’t like remembering.
“The water froze for three days,” she said. “Not from cold. From refusal.”
Asha’s breath caught.
“The wind stopped,” Luka added quietly. “Just… stopped. Like the world was holding itself still so it wouldn’t break anything else by accident.”
Asha’s eyes stung.
“And then?” she managed.
Allie looked down at the flowers again.
“Then,” she said, “people kept showing up anyway.”
She turned her head slightly, eyes tracking down the slope toward the terraces, toward the figure with dark hair moving steadily among the beds as if the planet were a patient and she was checking its pulse.
“And because they kept showing up,” Allie continued, “the place learned something.”
Asha whispered, “What?”
Allie’s voice softened.
“That love doesn’t end,” she said. “It changes hands.”
Asha’s chest hurt.
She didn’t know what to do with that sentence. It felt too big for her ribs.
“So Esther could grow things,” she said again, trying to anchor herself in something concrete.
Allie nodded, gentle.
“Yes,” she said. “She grew the part of us that could stay.”
Asha looked at the grave. At the wildflowers. At the stubborn green stitching itself into a world that had every reason to remain dead.
Then she asked, very carefully, as if the question itself might be dangerous:
“Did she know you would take over?”
Allie’s mouth twitched, almost a smile, and became a crescent of pure irei, a little wet with tears.
“Esther knew everything that mattered,” she said.
Asha waited.
Allie added, quieter, “And she still let me pretend I was choosing it alone.”
Luka hugged the marker. Asha stared at them both, and for the first time, she understood something about this place that wasn’t visible in moss or warmth or architecture.
The green wasn’t magic.
It was inheritance.
Not of blood.
Of care.
Asha’s voice cracked.
“Can you teach someone to do that?” she asked. “To… make spaces like that? Where things can try?”
Allie looked at her for a long moment.
Not to test her.
To see whether Asha meant it with her whole body.
Then Allie nodded once.
“Yes,” she said.
And, because she was Allie, because she couldn’t help herself, she added:
“But first you have to unlearn the part of you that thinks survival is the same thing as living.”
Asha forced her mouth to work, and not to judge these two strangers, and their entire crowd of riff-raff, for their attitudes. “And how,” she said, snarkily, “does someone even start?”
Allie’s eyes flicked to Luka, then back to Asha.
“By noticing what your body does when you’re offered something free,” Allie said. ”And something authentic and true.”
Asha’s laugh came out sharp. “My body generally prepares to stab it.”
“There you go,” Luka replied, utterly calm. “Good instrument. Bad calibration.”
“Step one is not ‘trust,’” Allie said. “Step one is ‘permission.’”
“Permission to what?” Asha asked.
Allie gestured toward the grave, then toward the valley, then finally toward Asha’s own chest.
“Permission to want,” she said.
Asha froze.
That landed worse than any threat.
Wanting was how people got sloppy. Wanting was how you stared at a sunset too long and didn’t notice the storm front. Wanting was how you ended up a story elders told in place of the word death.
“I want food,” Asha snapped. “And heat. And not getting skinned by raiders.”
“All fair,” Allie said. “But I didn’t mean those.”
Asha’s fingers flexed around her strap.
Allie softened her voice. Not patronising, not coaxing. Just… careful, like handling a cup with a crack already in it.
“I mean permission to want a place that keeps you,” Allie said. “Permission to want people who repair with you instead of taking turns breaking.”
Asha’s throat made a tight sound.
Luka looked down at the snow as if it had suddenly become fascinating.
“You don’t have to answer,” Allie added. “Not here.”
Asha stared at Esther’s grave again, because looking at Allie was too much.
Then Asha heard herself ask, quietly, “Did Esther… know me?”
The question surprised her the instant it left.
Allie’s expression didn’t. She’d been expecting it, or something like it.
“She didn’t know you by face,” Allie said. “But she knew you by pattern.”
Asha frowned. “Pattern.”
Allie nodded, and her gaze drifted toward the wildflowers, as if they were part of the explanation.
“She used to say the world doesn’t only produce disasters,” Allie said. “It also produces people shaped by disaster. People made for moving. People made for hauling. People made for not needing anyone.”
Asha felt exposed in a way no blizzard had ever managed.
“And she said,” Allie continued, “that one day, the ones made for not needing anyone would finally be offered something else.”
Asha swallowed hard. “And that was… her plan?”
Allie gave a small, tired smile.
“Esther didn’t do plans,” she said. “She did promises.”
Luka looked up then, eyes red, voice steady.
“She promised the land we would stop treating it like an enemy,” he said. “And she promised people like you that if you ever found us, we wouldn’t make you earn your right to breathe.”
Asha stared at him.
“People like me,” she repeated, rough.
Luka shrugged, almost shy.
“People who flinch at open doors,” he said. “People who don’t know how to set anything down.”
Asha’s eyes stung again, furious at the betrayal of water.
Allie stood, brushing snow from her knees.
“Come,” she said, and didn’t offer her hand this time.
That mattered.
Asha followed.
They walked down from the grave in silence, the kind that wasn’t awkward. The kind that held.
As they descended, Asha noticed it again: how the ground guided them. Not steering like a leash, more like a conversation. A slightly raised stone where a boot needed support. A windbreak right when the cold sharpened. Moss thickening where the path turned slick.
Asha tried not to look impressed.
She failed.
At the edge of the settlement, a woman with greying braids was hanging strips of kelp-fibre to dry, humming under her breath. She looked up as Allie approached, and her face brightened.
“Allie,” she called, then her gaze shifted to Asha, and the brightness changed into something else. Not suspicion. Not assessment. Recognition, as if she’d been waiting for a shape like Asha’s to arrive.
Asha stiffened instinctively.
The woman didn’t step closer. She didn’t ask questions. She simply nodded, once, like: You made it.
Allie returned the nod with a softness that made Asha’s stomach twist.
“Fiona,” Luka said to Asha, almost proud. “The terrifying soprano.”
Fiona’s laugh rang out, unbothered, loud as clean metal.
“I’m a retired terror,” she corrected, then looked back at Asha. “Unless you steal my teacups.”
Asha blinked. “Teacups?”
Fiona gestured grandly toward a cluster of low structures. “We have ceremony here,” she said. “We drink something warm and pretend we’re civilised.”
Asha’s mouth did something that might have been the beginning of a smile, before she strangled it.
Allie led them past a long bed of greens sheltered under a translucent solar skin. Children were crouched beside it, arguing about something in rapid Kristang, their hands muddy, their cheeks flushed with heat.
Asha’s eyes snagged on one small child in particular, barely taller than the bed itself, face scrunched in furious concentration as he attempted to push a seed into soil that didn’t want it.
The boy made an outraged noise and slapped the dirt.
Asha startled.
The dirt… didn’t respond exactly, but it seemed to settle, as if listening.
The boy tried again, more gently.
This time the seed slid in.
He sat back triumphantly and glared at the sky as if daring it to comment.
Asha’s breath caught.
Allie watched Asha watching.
“That,” Allie said, quiet and fond, “is the one-year-old.”
Asha stared. “That’s—”
“Don’t say it,” Luka warned, smiling.
Asha swallowed. “He’s… the baby you mentioned.”
Allie nodded.
The boy looked up suddenly, eyes sharp as flint, and fixed on Asha like a spotlight finding a new object.
Asha’s body went instantly still.
He crawled to the edge of the bed, stood wobbling, and pointed at Asha with profound accusation.
Then he made a sound that was half word, half weather.
Asha flinched.
Allie stepped closer, voice gentle, speaking in Kristang so smooth it sounded like a river with no rocks left.
The boy listened, scowling, then said something else, even more offended.
Luka leaned toward Asha, whispering.
“He’s saying you smell like metal and fear.”
Asha’s face heated. “Tell him—”
Allie glanced back at Asha with a look that was almost amused.
“Tell him yourself,” Allie said.
Asha went rigid. “I don’t speak—”
“You do,” Allie cut in, not harsh, just certain. “It’s in you. It’s just buried under hurry.”
The boy was still pointing, still glaring.
Asha crouched slowly, keeping her hands visible, like approaching an animal that had every right to bite.
She cleared her throat and tried to remember the syllables she’d used earlier, the ones that had tasted like crossing a border.
“Bos… bos ta…” She fumbled, then tried again, stubborn. “Yo… yo no ta… mali.” She couldn’t get the words right.
The boy stared, unblinking.
Asha took a breath.
“Yo… yo sa… medo,” she managed, and felt something in her chest twist at the honesty of it. “Yo teng miedo. Medo. Meadow. Miedu. Mas… yo ja beng.”
I’m afraid. But I came.
The boy’s face did something complicated. His scowl didn’t vanish, exactly. It… recalibrated. He lowered his pointing hand and, with the solemnity of an ancient judge, reached down to grab a clump of soil.
Asha tensed.
He extended the clump toward her.
An offering. Or a test. Or both.
Asha stared at it like it might explode.
Allie didn’t intervene.
Luka didn’t joke.
Fiona, somewhere behind them, went quiet.
Asha reached out slowly and took the soil.
It was warm.
Not heater-warm.
Alive-warm.
The boy watched Asha’s face like he was reading a screen.
Asha swallowed and did the only thing she could think of that wasn’t violence.
She cupped the soil carefully in both hands, as if it mattered.
The boy blinked once, satisfied, and smiled.
Then he crawled back to his seed bed with all the tenderness of someone who had just approved a treaty.
Asha exhaled shakily, still holding the dirt.
“What,” she whispered to Allie, “was that?”
Allie’s eyes shone, tired and bright at once.
“That,” she said, “was your first lesson.”
Asha stared at her hands.
“I just held dirt.”
Allie nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “And you didn’t treat it like something you could take from.”
Asha looked up, confused.
Allie’s voice softened.
“Most of the world,” she said, “only knows two ways to touch things: extraction or defence.”
Asha’s fingers tightened around the soil.
“And the third?”
Allie smiled.
“Care,” she said.
Asha’s throat ached.
She wanted to argue. To make it smaller. To make it survivable.
Instead she asked, hoarse, “So what happens now?”
Allie tilted her head toward a low building whose door stood open, light spilling out like someone had forgotten to be afraid.
“Now,” Allie said, “you eat something warm.”
Asha hesitated.
Allie didn’t push.
She just added, almost offhand, “And then we teach you how to sleep without listening for betrayal.”
Asha’s breath caught.
“That’s not possible,” she said automatically.
Allie’s smile sharpened, small and fierce, like green breaking through stone.
“It is,” she said.
“Here, it is.”
*
They ate in a room that had once been part of a research dome and had since been persuaded, gently and repeatedly, into becoming a kitchen.
The walls were patched with polymer sheets, woven fibre, and old insulation foam carved into soft curves. Heat pooled near the floor. Steam rose from shallow bowls and drifted toward a ceiling that still remembered how to hold light.
Asha sat stiffly on a low bench, hands wrapped around her bowl as if it might try to escape.
The food was simple.
Root mash. Fermented kelp. A broth that tasted faintly of minerals and citrus-something that hadn’t existed in her childhood.
It was the best thing she had eaten in years.
She hated that immediately.
Hated how fast her body trusted it.
Hated how quickly hunger overruled suspicion.
Allie noticed.
Of course she did.
“Eat,” she said quietly. “We don’t charge interest.”
Asha shot her a look. “You should. This feels like a trap.”
Luka slurped noisily. “If it is, it’s a very inefficient one.”
Fiona, across the room, raised her cup. “To inefficient traps,” she declared.
Several people echoed it automatically.
Asha froze.
They toasted traps.
What kind of place was this.
She took another bite anyway.
After the bowls were empty and the edges of her fear had dulled slightly, Allie stood.
“Come,” she said again.
This time, Asha followed without thinking.
They passed through narrow corridors where pipes hummed like sleeping animals. Through rooms where people slept in layered nests of fabric and salvaged foam. Through spaces filled with half-built devices, seed trays, data slates, musical instruments made from things that had once been weapons.
Everywhere: signs of lives being lived slowly on purpose.
They stopped at a small chamber carved partly into ice, partly into stone.
Inside was a pool.
Not large.
Not dramatic.
Water steamed gently, fed by a geothermal trickle and filtered through layers of living substrate.
Asha stared.
“You… bathe?” she asked stupidly.
Luka grinned. “Occasionally.”
Allie leaned against the wall.
“This is where people learn to listen to their bodies again,” she said. “Without bracing for impact.”
Asha’s shoulders tightened.
“That sounds… unsafe.”
“Yes,” Allie replied. “It is.”
Asha blinked. “You’re serious.”
“Completely.”
Allie met her gaze.
“Hypervigilance keeps you alive,” she said. “Until it doesn’t.”
Asha looked away.
She knew that.
She just didn’t know how to live without it.
“You don’t have to go in,” Allie added. “Not tonight. Or tomorrow. Or ever.”
Asha hesitated.
Then, quietly, “I want to.”
The words felt like jumping off a ridge.
They didn’t push her.
They showed her where to leave her pack.
Where to set her boots.
How to test the water with her toes first.
It was warm.
Not indulgently.
Sustainably.
Like something that had negotiated its temperature with the world.
Asha slid in slowly, muscles screaming in protest and relief at the same time.
She hadn’t realised how cold she had been.
Not just here.
Everywhere.
She sank until the water reached her shoulders.
Her breath stuttered.
Her vision blurred.
She bit down hard on it.
Allie sat on the edge, feet dangling in.
“First nights are loud,” she said softly.
“Loud?” Asha whispered.
“In here,” Allie tapped her temple. “Everything you didn’t have time to feel shows up.”
Asha closed her eyes.
Storms.
Bodies.
Routes.
Faces she hadn’t named in years.
She pressed her forehead to her knees.
“I’m going to fall apart,” she said.
Allie’s voice was steady.
“Yes,” she said. “A little.”
Asha laughed weakly. “That’s supposed to help?”
“It’s supposed to be true.”
Silence settled around them.
Not empty.
Held.
*
Later, wrapped in layers of warm fabric, Asha lay in a small sleeping alcove carved into the dome’s side.
No door.
Just a curtain of woven fibre.
She hated that.
She loved that.
She lay awake, waiting for alarms that didn’t come.
For footsteps that didn’t signal danger.
For shouting.
For orders.
Nothing happened.
The building breathed.
The land hummed.
Somewhere, Fiona sang softly to herself, practicing scales for no one.
And Asha cried without sound into her pillow.
For the first time in her life, nobody told her to stop.
*
When she finally slept, she dreamed of roots.
Not trapping her.
Holding her.
The roots were warm.
Not hot.
Not suffocating.
They curved around her ribs and spine like careful hands, like someone checking whether she was still there without waking her.
Asha tried to move.
Nothing resisted.
Nothing restrained her.
She could stand if she wanted.
She simply didn’t want to.
She was lying in a place that was not quite a place.
The ground beneath her was dark and soft, threaded with pale green light. Above her, there was no sky, only layers of translucent leaf and ice and memory, stacked like old maps that had learned to forgive themselves.
Somewhere nearby, water moved.
Not rushing.
Conversing.
She sat up slowly.
She was no longer wrapped in blankets.
She was wearing her caravan jacket, patched and scarred and familiar, but it felt lighter here, as if the weight of everything it had witnessed had been edited down to something survivable.
A figure sat a short distance away.
A woman.
Cross-legged on a slab of stone that floated just above the soil.
She was barefoot.
Her trousers were rolled to the knee.
Her sleeves were stained with dirt and something that looked like dried sap.
She was humming.
Not loudly.
Not performatively.
Just enough to keep herself company.
Asha recognised the tune.
Not consciously.
In her bones.
It was the same melody she had followed down the ridge.
The wrong music.
The right one.
Asha froze.
“You’re real,” she said, before she could stop herself.
The woman glanced up, eyes bright as if she’d just been caught doing something slightly illegal and delightful.
“Mostly,” the woman said. “Don’t tell anyone, alright? It ruins the mystique.”
Asha blinked.
“What?”
The woman’s grin flashed, quick and young.
“I’m joking,” she said cheerfully, as if she’d been waiting for permission to be. “Yes. Real enough. Dream-real. You know.”
Asha frowned. “I don’t.”
“That’s okay,” the woman replied, breezy. “Most people don’t on the first night. You did better than average. Points for arriving.”
Asha stared at her.
This wasn’t how she’d imagined… ghosts.
Or ancestors.
Or whatever this was.
The woman patted the stone beside her with an inviting, almost playful impatience.
“Sit,” she said. “Come on. I promise I’m not going to bite you. I don’t even have good teeth in here.”
Asha hesitated.
Then sat.
The stone was warm.
Of course it was.
They were quiet for a moment, the woman still humming under her breath like she had a whole spare pocket of joy she could keep dipping into.
Finally Asha said, “This is a dream.”
The woman made a pleased sound, like Asha had solved a puzzle.
“Yes!” she said. “Good. Great start. And also, it’s not just a dream.”
Asha looked at her sharply. “What is it, then?”
The woman leaned back on her hands, gazing up at the layered canopy as if it were an art installation she was still fond of.
“It’s… the place where your nervous system stops pretending it’s a weapon,” she said brightly. “It’s the part of you that remembers you’re allowed to rest. It’s the land’s waiting room. It’s a very rude little corridor between before and after.”
Asha stared.
The woman beamed.
“Sorry,” she added. “I talk too much when I’m excited.”
“You’re excited,” Asha repeated flatly.
The woman shrugged, unapologetic. Asha’s throat tightened for reasons she didn’t like. The woman tipped her head, watching Asha with a soft, friendly attention that didn’t feel like inspection.
“You’re doing that thing,” she observed.
Asha frowned. “What thing.”
“Where you try to swallow grief like it’s a bad bite of food,” the woman said lightly. “It’s okay. You can spit it out here. Nobody’s going to fine you for it.”
Asha looked down at her hands.
The roots slid lazily through the soil beneath them, glowing faintly where they passed, like veins carrying something gentle instead of blood.
“I don’t usually dream,” Asha said.
The woman’s eyes widened dramatically, as if this were a scandalous confession.
“Tragic,” she declared. “We’re going to have to fix that. Dreams are excellent. Slightly inefficient. Deeply necessary.”
Asha snorted despite herself.
The woman’s smile softened into something tender.
“You do dream,” she said. “You just don’t remember them. That’s different.”
“Why?” Asha asked.
“Because you’ve been busy surviving,” the woman replied, and though her tone stayed bright, the sentence landed with a clean seriousness. “Dreams get shy around that. They don’t like competing with blizzards and convoy rules and being ready to stab kindness on sight.”
Asha’s mouth twisted. “I didn’t stab kindness.”
The woman made a delighted little gasp.
“You didn’t!” she agreed. “You held dirt like it mattered. Do you know how rare that is?”
Asha stared.
The woman blinked innocently.
“What,” Asha said slowly, “are you.”
The woman pressed a hand to her chest, mock-offended.
“I am,” she said, “someone with dirt under her nails and an extremely poor sense of when to be solemn.”
Then, softer, “I’m part of this place.”
Asha looked around.
The layered leaves.
The glowing roots.
The water that sounded like conversation.
“Somewhere fake,” she said.
“Somewhere honest,” the woman countered immediately, still smiling. “Those aren’t opposites. They just got taught to hate each other.”
Asha picked at a loose thread on her sleeve.
“I don’t know how to stay,” she admitted, the words dragged out of her like a splinter.
The woman’s hum stilled for half a second.
Then she leaned closer, eyes bright, voice gentle but decisive.
“That’s learnable,” she said. “Staying is a skill. People act like it’s a personality trait. It’s not. It’s a practice.”
Asha laughed softly. “You make it sound like reading maps.”
“In some ways, it is,” the woman replied. “Just with more feelings and fewer coordinates. Also with more coffee.”
Asha stared at the shifting roots.
“I’m scared,” she said suddenly, the honesty bare.
The woman leaned forward, elbows on her knees, delightedly serious.
“Good,” she said. “Tell me what kind.”
Asha frowned. “There are kinds?”
“Hundreds,” the woman said. “Fear is a whole ecosystem. People pretend it’s one animal. It’s not.”
Asha swallowed.
“I’m scared of wanting this,” she said. “Of believing it. Of staying long enough to lose it.”
The woman’s eyes softened, but her voice stayed light, like she was refusing to let despair be the only language available.
“Losing things is unavoidable,” she said. “Losing yourself isn’t.”
Asha’s eyes burned.
“That’s not how it works where I’m from.”
“I know,” the woman said quietly, and there it was: the weight under the brightness. “That’s why you’re here.”
Asha looked at her then.
Really looked.
The dirt-stained sleeves.
The tired kindness.
The youth in her face that didn’t match the depth in her eyes.
The way she held herself like someone who had chosen tenderness with both hands, on purpose, for years.
“Who are you?” Asha asked again, softer.
The woman pointed at herself with theatrical flourish.
“I’m Esther,” she said brightly.
Asha blinked.
The world tilted.
Not violently.
Like a lens clicking into focus.
Esther Jeremiah Francis.
The name on the glass-stone.
The wildflowers.
Allie’s voice folding inward.
Luka crying like a man who had been rebuilt and didn’t want to forget who did it.
“Oh,” Asha whispered.
Esther nodded, as if they’d just agreed on something small and practical.
“Yes,” she said. “Hi.”
Asha’s breath left her in a rush.
“But you’re—”
“Dead,” Esther said, cheerful and blunt. “Yep. Absolutely. Ten out of ten, would not recommend as a hobby.”
Asha made a wet sound that might have been a laugh.
Esther’s grin softened.
“And also,” Esther added, gesturing around them, “not gone.”
Asha frowned through tears.
“How.”
Esther tapped two fingers lightly against Asha’s sternum, the way Luka had done.
Warmth bloomed.
Recognition.
Like being read by something that loved the text.
“Relationship,” Esther said. “Everything important is.”
Asha breathed out shakily.
Esther looked pleased.
“Good,” she said. “You’ve already learned one of our annoying favourite sentences.”
Asha wiped her face with her sleeve, unembarrassed.
“Why are you talking to me?” she asked.
Esther’s smile went bright again, but her eyes stayed tender.
“Because you’re staying,” she said. “Because you’re learning how. Because your pattern finally found the place it was shaped for.”
Then, with a sudden fondness that made the air feel warmer:
“And because Allie worries about you.”
Asha snorted. “Allie worries about everyone.”
Esther laughed, quick and delighted.
“She does,” she agreed. “But differently with you.”
Asha swallowed.
Silence.
Comfortable.
Complete.
“Will you… disappear?” Asha asked.
Esther considered, then sighed dramatically like a woman inconvenienced by metaphysics.
“I will change,” she said. “Like everything else here. But listen.”
She leaned closer, eyes bright.
“If you tell Allie I was being sentimental, I will haunt your bones until the day you die.”
Asha blinked.
“What.”
Esther grinned. “Joking. Mostly.”
Asha let out a breath that broke into a small, shaky laugh.
Esther’s face softened into something almost unbearably gentle.
“And Asha,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Teng bong, koitadu. Welcome home.”
The word settled into Asha’s bones.
And held.
Asha woke with so many tears on her cheeks and warmth in her chest.
Outside her alcove, the settlement was waking.
Pots clinked.
Children argued.
Someone laughed.
The land hummed.
Somewhere, deep beneath it all, something bright and stubborn and very young for a dead woman’s memory had brushed past the edges of her mind, humming the wrong music like a blessing.
And of course, there was Luka was waiting for her. She said nothing, but he already knew.
”You saw her?” he said.
Not accusing.
Not startled.
Certain.
Asha’s mouth opened.
Closed.
She stared at him.
“How did you—”
Luka lifted his mug, took a small sip, then lowered it again.
“Everyone does,” he said.
Asha frowned. “Everyone… what?”
“Dreams of the himnaka,” he replied.
She blinked. “The what.”
“The echoes,” Luka said. “The patterns of the ones who came before. The way they keep moving through us after they’re gone.”
Asha hugged her knees.
“I thought it was just… me. Or stress. Or—”
“—your brain inventing things to cope?” Luka supplied mildly.
She glared. “Yes.”
He smiled.
“Understandable theory,” he said. “Incorrect here.”
He leaned his head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling like he was reading constellations in insulation foam.
“I’ve dreamed of Barchie Westerhout,” he said casually.
Asha froze.
“Barchie?” she echoed. ”Who?”
“Second Kabesa,” Luka said. “Very serious at pretending to be serious. Terrible at pretending not to care. Keeps trying to teach me chess in dreams even though I’m awful.”
Asha stared.
“And… that’s normal?”
“Here?” Luka shrugged. “Yes.”
He ticked off fingers.
“Claude Da Silva. Seventh. Smelled like old books and rain. Never stops asking whether you’ve eaten, and why you’re lying. Knows all the questions you haven’t asked, and keeps playing them back to you in every language you know. Including mathematics.”
Asha’s eyes widened.
“Kevin Martens fucking Wong. Thirteenth,” Luka continued. ”Completely unbothered by the weirdest, ugliest little survival knots you’ve got hiding in your head. Just drops in like he owns the dreamspace, rearranges three of your assumptions, reminds you you’re not broken, and then vanishes again like he’s got a thousand other souls to check on before breakfast.”
Asha let out a shaky laugh.
“Rylie,” Luka went on. “Always sitting somewhere high, rearranging the metaphysics of who is allowed to talk to what. Regina. Very quiet. Watches more than she speaks, because she doesn’t need to. Palome…always fun. Always chill. Always smells like citrus and strawberry metal. Don’t ask me how.”
He paused.
Then glanced at Asha.
“No fear,” he added. “None of them ever bring fear.”
Asha’s throat tightened.
“Esther didn’t either,” she said softly.
Luka nodded.
“Of course she didn’t.”
Silence settled.
Not awkward.
Weighted.
Asha looked down at her hands.
“So… this isn’t… hallucination.”
“Nope,” Luka said.
“Or brain damage.”
“Afraid not.”
“Or… wishful thinking.”
“Definitely not.”
She huffed weakly. “You’re really ruining all my coping mechanisms.”
“Happy to help.”
Asha looked up at him.
“Why?” she asked quietly. “Why do people dream of them?”
Luka considered.
“Because this place isn’t just built out of stone and water,” he said. “It’s built out of continuity. Out of people refusing to drop the thread.”
He tapped his chest.
“When you live in relationship long enough, your nervous system starts carrying more than just you.”
Asha whispered, “Like… inheritance.”
He smiled. “Exactly.”
She hesitated.
Then: “Did… did Esther talk to you too?”
Luka’s expression softened.
“All the time,” he said. “Mostly to scold me for skipping meals and pretending I’m fine.”
That sounded right.
Asha swallowed.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me this was… a thing?”
Luka’s gaze sharpened, gently.
“Because you wouldn’t have believed us,” he said. “Not yet.”
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
He was right.
“And,” Luka added, quieter, “because it’s not something you’re invited into with words.”
Asha frowned. “Then how?”
“With resonance,” he replied. “With pattern recognition. With your body saying yes before your brain does.”
He studied her face.
“You dreamed of roots before Esther showed up, didn’t you.”
Asha froze.
“…Yes.”
“Warm ones.”
“Yes.”
“That didn’t trap you.”
“Yes.”
Luka smiled.
“That’s the doorway.”
Her pulse quickened.
“So… when did you know?” she asked.
“Know what?”
“That I… belonged here,” she said, barely audible.
Luka’s answer came immediately.
“Before you did.”
Asha looked at him, stunned.
“When?” she demanded.
“The first night you slept,” Luka said. “Before you even dreamed of Esther.”
She frowned. “But I didn’t—”
“You shifted,” he interrupted gently. “In your sleep. Your breathing changed. Your shoulders dropped. Your heartbeat synced with the ground.”
Her eyes widened.
“That’s… creepy.”
“Only if you think bodies aren’t honest.”
He leaned forward slightly.
“Then I dreamed of Kevin that night,” Luka continued.
Asha’s stomach flipped.
“He was standing on a shoreline that wasn’t water,” Luka said. “Like light pretending to be an ocean. He was laughing.”
That tracked.
“All he said was,” Luka went on, “‘She’s here. Don’t scare her. She’s already done the hard part.’”
Asha’s breath left her.
“He meant… me.”
“Yes.”
She stared at the wall, dizzy.
“You’re saying… I was already… part of it.”
Luka nodded.
“Eleidi isn’t paperwork,” he said. “It’s pattern convergence. You fit before you believed.”
Her hands trembled.
“I didn’t choose this.”
“No,” Luka agreed. “You chose to walk toward music in a dead valley.”
She laughed weakly. “That sounds stupid.”
“It’s the bravest thing most people never do.”
Silence.
Asha whispered, “What if I leave?”
Luka didn’t flinch.
“Then you’ll still be part of us,” he said. “You’ll just be part of us from far away.”
She blinked.
“No punishment?”
“None.”
“No exile?”
“No.”
“No… disappointment?”
He smiled, small and real.
“Esther would be disappointed if we tried to own you.”
Asha closed her eyes.
That sentence cracked something open.
After a moment, she asked, “So… everyone here dreams of them?”
“Eventually,” Luka said. “When they’re ready. When they stop running long enough to hear.”
“And… if someone never does?”
“Then we don’t force it,” he replied. “We trust the timing.”
Asha hugged her knees.
“I dreamed of her,” she said again, like she needed to convince herself.
“Yes.”
“She said… I was staying.”
Luka’s voice was gentle.
“She didn’t predict.”
“She recognised.”
Asha looked up.
“How can you be so calm about all this?”
He shrugged.
“I was terrified at first,” he admitted. “Thought I was losing my mind.”
“And now?”
“Now I know I’m sharing it.”
She snorted.
“That’s worse.”
“Much worse,” he agreed cheerfully.
Footsteps sounded down the corridor.
Allie appeared, hair half-tied, carrying two folded blankets.
She took one look at their faces and stopped.
“…You told her,” she said.
Luka nodded.
“She asked.”
Allie studied Asha carefully.
“Are you okay?”
Asha hesitated.
Then, honestly:
“I think… yes. In a terrifying way.”
Allie smiled.
“Good.”
She handed Asha a blanket.
“Welcome to that stage.”
Asha took it.
Then asked, suddenly, “Did you… know too?”
Allie’s smile softened.
“Esther told me in a dream,” she said. “Before you arrived.”
Asha stared.
“What did she say?”
Allie’s eyes glistened.
“She said, ‘She’s one of ours. Don’t overprotect her. She’s stronger than she knows.’”
Asha’s throat closed.
Luka added lightly, “She also said you’d pretend not to hear that part.”
Asha groaned. “Of course she did.”
They laughed.
Not loudly.
Not wildly.
Like people who had learned how to let joy exist without tempting disaster.
Outside, the settlement fully woke.
Water ran.
Voices rose.
Someone dropped something and swore creatively in Kristang.
Life continued.
And Asha, sitting there wrapped in borrowed warmth, finally understood something she had never been taught:
She hadn’t wandered into safety.
She had wandered into lineage.
Into memory.
Into a future that already knew her name.
And somewhere, deep in the quiet architecture of her body, roots shifted.
Not to trap.
To make space.