The dream returned three nights later.
This time it had color.
Lila stood beneath a sky painted the deep indigo of coming storms, the kind that carried rain without anger. The eastern clearing spread before her, flowers glowing faintly as if moonlight lived inside their veins.
She was not afraid.
She was curious.
The child moved within her, calm and certain, and she felt that steadiness anchor her to the dream the way a hand anchors a boat.
A voice rose again.
Not words.
Not sound.
Feeling shaped like speech.
You chose to stay.
“Yes,” she answered.
The flowers bowed, petals touching the dark soil like reverence.
Then another presence joined the dream—softer, familiar, human.
A woman’s laugh she had not heard in years.
Her mother.
Lila turned, heart pounding, but the shape f
