Page 17 of A Taste of Silver
The air tasted of winter mornings and kept promises. Each breath filled my lungs with something more than oxygen, anticipation, perhaps, or the echo of laughter from years that had been stolen from me.
Above, the sky couldn't decide what it wanted to be. Midnight blue bled into pearl gray which fractured into veins of gold before cycling back to darkness. Stars pulsed in rhythms that matched my heartbeat, growing brighter when I inhaled, dimming when I released the breath. They weren't arranged in any constellation I recognized. They spelled out words in languages I'd never learned but somehow understood.
Welcome home, they said.Welcome back. We missed you.
"This isn't real."
The words vibrated in my chest, a chord struck from a dozen different strings at once. The sound didn't echo. It settled onto the garden, my doubt clinging to spider silk like dew, each drop showing a face I almost recognized as my own.
Seven years old, eyes wide with wonder. Twelve, reaching for something just beyond the frame. Seventeen, weeping silver tears that left tracks of light down my cheeks. Now, lost between who I'd been and who I was becoming.
The images dissolved when I blinked, but their weight remained, pressing against my sternum like hands trying to push something out or pull something in.
Movement in my peripheral vision. Not sudden, nothing here moved suddenly. Everything flowed like honey poured over glass, deliberate and inevitable.
He emerged from the space between two mirrors that hung from nothing, supported by air that had decided to be solid for this single purpose. First a shoulder, then an arm, then the rest of him stepping through as if doorways were suggestions rather than necessities.
The serpent was gone. In its place stood a young man, similar to the one I’d just seen, but a little older, and my chest seized with a recognition my mind couldn't name.
His hair was silver, but not like Melora's gray. This was the raw, painful silver of a fresh wound, moving like it was alive. The angles of his face were too sharp, all cheekbone and jaw, a beauty that promised it could break you and not even notice. Beautiful, yes, but beautiful the way storms were beautiful. The way broken things were beautiful when they caught the light just right.
His clothes seemed cut from the shadow itself, moving like liquid when he walked. No ornament, no decoration. He didn't need any. His presence decorated the space around him, made everything else seem more real by comparison.
But his eyes.
Actual stars, burning in the void of his gaze, constellations that wheeled and turned when he tilted his head. Looking into them was like falling up, gravity reversing until I had to dig my toes into the uncertain ground to keep from floating away.
"Aurea."
One word. Two syllables. A lifetime of waiting compressed into the shape of my name.
My body knew that voice even if my mind claimed ignorance. Every cell aligned toward the sound like flowers turning toward sun. The silver markings on my arms flared bright enough tocast shadows that shouldn't exist in a place made entirely of light and reflection.
"Don't—"
I meant to say don't come closer but the words dissolved before they formed. In this space, lies couldn't take shape. Even lies to myself.
He moved toward me, and he didn't just walk. He flowed across the glass-like ground. Roses of silver bloomed in his footprints, only to crumble to dust a heartbeat after he passed.
"Do you know where you are?"
His voice here wasn't the serpent's whisper or the boy's laughter from my recovered memory. This voice belonged to someone who'd learned to speak around the edges of screaming, who'd practiced words in empty mirrors for centuries with no one to hear them.
"A dream."
"No." He stopped just beyond arm's reach, and the distance felt both infinite and insignificant. "Dreams are what your mind creates to process the day's debris. This is memory. My memory. Your memory. The memory of what we built together before?—"
"Before the Sundering."
Something shifted in those star-filled eyes. Pain, maybe, though on his face it looked more like worship.
"You're starting to remember."
"Fragments. Pieces. Nothing that makes sense."
"Then let me show you."
He extended his hand, palm up, fingers steady despite the tremor I detected in his voice. His skin looked pale as moonlight, veins visible beneath the surface carrying something that wasn't quite blood, more like liquid starlight.
