Smoke and Wings
POV: Diana
The smoke didn’t vanish.
It hung in the air above Cael’s crib like breath made visible. Soft gray-white tendrils curled with eerie grace, never rising or falling, just drifting as if waiting for permission to settle.
Then from within it…
A shape.
Small.
Delicate.
The outline of a child faint as frost on glass took form round cheeks, short limbs, and wisps of hair that shifted with the smoke. No face. Not truly. But presence.
And then it whispered
“He remembers me.”
The voice was like wind brushing through tall grass.
Cael stirred in his sleep but didn’t wake. He smiled curling deeper beneath the blanket like he knew who had come.
I stood frozen. Not out of fear but reverence. Grief I hadn’t claimed yet swelled in my chest like a song that refused to
