The sky above the glade was soft and gray, like ash stretched thin across the heavens. No birds flew. No clouds danced. Only the hush of stillness, the hush of absence.
Auri stood at the edge of the forest clearing, her fingertips brushing the petals of a wilting rosebush. The garden had once burst with color—fire lilies, wind orchids, silver daisies—but now it sagged with the weight of days without her. Without Lyra.
Each step Auri took forward felt like threading herself through a web of memories. Every stone remembered the warmth of Lyra's bare feet. Every tree whispered her name. She had planted dreams here. Laughed here. Kissed here. Loved here.
But now, it was a sky without wings.
"Why did you bring me here?" Auri whispered. Her voice cracked. She hadn't spoken aloud to the wind in weeks.
Hope didn't answer. She simply stood a few feet behind Auri, quiet and gentle, her cloak of dusk-colored leaves trailing behind her. Her presence had grown softer since Lyra's fading. Less flame, more shadow.
"I thought I was ready," Auri said, turning to face her. "But nothing's changed. It still hurts. Everything."
Hope stepped forward, her boots brushing aside fallen twigs. "Because what you had was real. And what's real... never truly leaves. Not even when it breaks."
Auri didn't know how to explain that the ache wasn't just in her heart. It lived in her skin, in her bones, in her breath. Every morning felt like waking without sunlight.
They walked slowly through the glade, past the tree that once held their ribbon vows—now faded to pale threads. Past the pond where their laughter had rippled across the surface. Past the firelight tree.
There, Auri stopped.
The tree stood taller than the rest, its bark a weave of silver and crimson veins. It pulsed faintly, as though the magic it once held was retreating inward, grieving too.
"I remember when we carved our initials here," Auri said, resting her palm against the trunk. "She pressed the blade into my hand. Said it was only fair I scar it too."
Hope nodded. "She believed scars were sacred. Proof of love's fire."
Auri laughed weakly. "She would."
She sat down beneath the branches, drawing her knees to her chest. The weight of the past settled on her shoulders like a cloak too heavy for the season. And still, she wore it.
"I feel like I'm forgetting her," Auri confessed, her voice raw. "Her voice. Her breath. The way she looked at me when she thought I wasn't watching."
"You're not forgetting," Hope said gently, sitting beside her. "You're grieving. And grief... it distorts things. It makes love feel like smoke."
A silence grew between them, not awkward, but aching.
"Do you ever wish you could go back?" Auri asked. "To the first time you met someone. Before all the hurt?"
Hope's eyes glazed, as if she were seeing far beyond the glade. "I used to. But then I realized that the hurt is part of the love. Without it, there's no weight. No meaning."
Auri nodded slowly. "She used to say we were both wings of the same bird. That without her, I wouldn't fly."
Hope reached into her satchel and pulled something small from within—a bundle wrapped in pale linen. She handed it to Auri.
"What is this?"
"Something she left for you."
Auri's heart stuttered. Her fingers trembled as she unwrapped the cloth.
Inside lay a pendant: a silver feather, delicate and impossibly light, strung on a faded blue thread. Etched into the back were the words: Fly, even when I can't.
A choked sound escaped Auri's throat. Her vision blurred.
"She asked me to give it to you if..." Hope paused, steadying her voice. "If she couldn't."
Auri pressed the pendant to her heart. It felt like her chest would shatter. But in the cracks, something new stirred. Not quite hope. Not yet. But the memory of light.
"She believed in you," Hope whispered. "She believed you could carry her magic forward. That you were the sky she chose."
"But I don't feel like the sky," Auri said. "I feel like a cage."
Hope didn't argue. She only held Auri's hand.
They stayed beneath the firelight tree until dusk bled orange across the leaves. Somewhere in the distance, the wind stirred a song that Auri remembered but couldn't place. It sounded like Lyra's hum.
When they rose to leave, Auri paused one last time at the edge of the glade.
"I used to think love would always end in flight," she said. "Now I wonder if it ends in falling."
Hope shook her head softly. "Not falling. Just changing altitude."
As they stepped back into the woods, the feather pendant swayed gently at Auri's neck, catching the final golden thread of sunset. And for the first time in days, she looked up.
The sky was still empty.
But it no longer felt hopeless.
It simply waited.