Part II

Chapter 6 Agueda and Baran

I open my eyes — and I am no longer by the water.

Warmth. Leather. Incense and old papyrus. Asdar stands before me, arms open, gaze pitched somewhere between hope and awe.

“You found the crossing,” he says.

“Or it found me.”

He gathers me close, the universe crackling quietly at our skin. Then he kneels — hands steady at my hips, lips pressed to my belly — and the chant comes in Dacian, the forgotten music of wolves and wind:

Pământ viu, suflet tainic, Umbrele te veghează, Sângele lupului te salută, Lumină veche, copil în ziuă.

(Living earth, secret soul — the shadows keep watch, the blood of the wolf greets you, ancient light, child of the day.)

He rises. Buries his face in my hair. Where you travel, there are no wolves. But my spirit follows.

In the hush that follows, two names arrive from the space between planes.

Agueda — goodness that endures, light through old wood, palm trees with the sun pressing low.

Baran — rain, the charged air before the downpour, the force that sweeps the old away so the new can breathe.

I hold them both. Storm sheltering rain. Rain sheltering storm.

I close my eyes. Release the breath I have been holding since Kaolack.

---

I open my eyes.

Embers. Karim’s snores. The cloth still warm around my shoulders.

A dog barks once in the middle distance and stops. The night holds its shape.

I lie down and sleep without dreaming.

I.Ph.

Full chapter on Ream — https://reamstories.com/phaedrasfables/public