The morning came softly, on a hush of wind that swept through the open window, fluttering the curtains like wings. I sat alone in the glade, knees drawn to my chest, the damp grass clinging to my skin. Dewdrops shimmered on every leaf, and scattered across the clearing were the remains of yesterday's blossoms—pink, white, and gold—petals she had touched.
She had walked here.
I could still see the shape of her footprints where the grass leaned toward the center, where magic and memory lingered like the scent of her hair.
"Liora…" I whispered into the wind, as if the breeze could carry my voice to wherever she had gone.
Her name no longer hurt like it once did. It ached differently now—like the silence after music, the shadow of a smile left behind on lips that had once known laughter.
The others didn't understand. They thought her leaving was final.
But I had seen the way the flowers followed her steps, how the trees leaned in when she passed, how the air trembled as though it knew it was holding something sacred. Love like that doesn't simply vanish. It leaves marks. It leaves petals.
I picked up one of the blossoms—delicate, rose-colored, still warm—and closed it in my palm.
Around me, the glade was blooming in strange ways. Vines wound themselves into soft spirals, blossoms opened without sunlight, and birds sang lullabies in languages I didn't recognize.
Her magic wasn't gone.
It was changing.
Just like me.
"Do you remember," said a voice behind me, soft as breath, "the first time we found this place?"
I turned. It was Elian.
His hair was damp from morning mist, curls pressed to his forehead. He knelt beside me without waiting for permission, his gaze on the same spot mine had been moments before.
"She danced," I said. "Under that tree."
"The firelight tree," he murmured. "She told me it only bloomed for the one you loved."
"She never told me that."
"She didn't need to."
We sat in silence. The kind of silence that speaks. That listens.
Then he said, "She left something for you."
I turned sharply. "What?"
"She asked me to give it to you when the flowers bloomed again." He reached into his coat and pulled out a folded piece of parchment, yellowed at the corners, sealed with a pressed petal.
I took it with trembling hands. My fingers knew the shape of her handwriting before I even unfolded it.
My dearest heart, it began.
If you're reading this, it means the forest has spoken, and you've come back to the place where we last shared our breath. I'm sorry I couldn't stay. But I couldn't bear to let you carry the weight of my pain. I needed to go so that I could remember how to bloom again—so that you could too.
You once asked me if love survives parting.
It does. But not by waiting.
It survives by planting itself in the soil of memory, and letting you become someone new from its roots.
If you walk forward, you'll find me. Not in the way you remember—but in every petal, every whisper, every place we made sacred with our hands.
I will always be walking ahead, scattering blossoms in my wake.
Come find me.
Love always,
Liora
My eyes burned, but the tears didn't fall. Not this time.
Instead, I stood.
I looked around the glade—the way the flowers had grown in rings, the way the light streamed in from above like something divine. The path forward was no longer hidden. It was made of petals.
She had left a trail.
"Will you come with me?" I asked Elian.
He didn't hesitate. "Always."
Together, we stepped through the edge of the clearing, where the trees opened just wide enough for two. The petals cushioned our feet like blessings. We walked past the stones she once painted with starlight, past the pond where we watched fireflies flicker like dreams, past every echo of her I thought I'd forgotten.
And there—at the place where the river forked, where a single tree bent toward the sun—we saw her.
Not standing.
Not waiting.
But etched into the world.
A necklace of blossoms hung from a branch, woven in the same pattern she used to make when she braided my hair. Beneath it, a bundle of parchment, bound in green thread. I picked it up with reverence, as though it might dissolve in my hands.
This one wasn't a letter.
It was a map.
Drawn in ink and color, marked by hand with little symbols—leaves, stars, hearts, and wolves. Each one a memory. Each one a step.
Elian leaned over my shoulder. "She wants us to follow."
"She's leading us somewhere."
"To the next place," he said. "To who she became."
And maybe to who we're supposed to be.
My heart beat slower, stronger.
I pressed the map to my chest and looked up at the sky. It was bluer than it had been in days. Clearer. And from the branches above, a final blossom floated down and landed in my hair.
She was here.
Not gone.
Transformed.
Elian reached for my hand.
I took it.
And we stepped onto the path she had made for us—petal by petal, memory by memory—walking forward into the place where love doesn't vanish.
It becomes the way.