The Things Solara Buried With Her Hands
A Private Memory from the Day Before the Fracture
Date: Maelis 12, Year 199 PCR
Location: Solara's Garden, Outer Veilguard Hills
Time: Sunset
There was no war in the garden.
Not yet.
Just fading light between the sun and the moss-shaped stones, and the sound of one mother tearing a letter into pieces.
Solara's hands didn't shake as she burned them—one corner at a time, glyphscript flaring gold as it vanished.
She watched the fire quietly.
Then looked down at her palms.
The ink was still there, smudged at the edges.
Even after flame, she could still feel what she wrote.
And that terrified her more than any Choir.
—
Zephryn was asleep in the next room.
Twelve paces away.
Curled up in an old netcloth blanket, pulse rising and falling without rhythm. Like his body kept forgetting which tempo to follow.
She used to hum him steady when he was younger.
But lately…
The hums didn't work anymore.
They just echoed.
Like his pulse had started listening to something older.
—
She turned back to the dirt patch near the flame bowl.
Kneeling slowly.
She didn't write anything this time.
Just pressed her finger to the soil and traced the curve—
Once.
Twice.
The ∞.
It didn't glow.
But it knew she meant it.
—
Her whisper followed.
"Your name was never meant to fit inside the Doctrine."
She smiled softly, the way mothers do when they've already said goodbye three times and no one noticed.
"I keep pretending I'll be here when it matters."
"I won't be."
—
She stood.
Looked toward the small silhouette of him through the cracked doorway—blanket over one shoulder, arm crooked above his head.
And then looked at her hands again.
—
"I taught you to cast," she whispered.
"I taught you to laugh."
"I taught you to lie, just a little, so you wouldn't give away your light too easily."
"But the one thing I didn't teach you—"
She closed her fists.
"—was how to live after I'm gone."
—
A soft breeze pushed past the doorway.
It carried a small hum.
Faint.
But she felt it.
The ∞ behind her pulsed once.
So did the ink on her hands.
So did the space in her chest where a mother's courage used to be.
—
"I never wanted you to be strong," she whispered.
"I wanted you to be remembered."
She stepped into the doorway.
Paused.
Looked back only once.
And the dirt glyph behind her scattered.
—
Zephryn shifted in his sleep.
Just enough to whisper one word.
Not to her.
Not to himself.
To the part of the world that already knew it would lose her.
"Mom…"
—
Solara didn't cry.
She just sat beside him.
And kept her hands open, flat against the floor, like they were ready to hold something—
One last time.
—
End of Echo II