When Seloria opened her eyes, the sea was still.
Not the stillness of death, but of peace — pure, impossible peace.
No current stirred her hair, no voices whispered through the deep. The water was clear as crystal, and for the first time since the drowning of Elaria, sunlight filtered down from above, scattering gold upon the sand.
She gasped softly. It was warm.
She rose slowly, her gown drifting around her like pale silk. The ruins that once surrounded her were gone. In their place grew meadows of coral and drifting gardens of light — the sea reborn, soft and alive.
For a moment, Seloria could only stare. The world had changed. The sea had been freed.
But where Lyrielle's light once shone — there was nothing.
She swam upward, searching. Every flicker of movement made her heart leap, but each time it was only the glint of a fish's fin, a ripple of light across coral. The remembered dead were gone; their soft glow had vanished.
The sea no longer remembered.
"Lyrielle," she whispered, her voice breaking the silence like glass. "Where are you?"
Only the hush of waves answered her.
Seloria's chest ached — not from pressure, but from the unbearable quiet. The sea felt… empty. Beautiful, yes, but hollow in its perfection. Every echo of sorrow, every tremor of love, had been washed away.
Her tears floated upward, turning to pearls as they rose.
Days passed — though time no longer carried meaning. Seloria wandered the sunlit waters, searching for traces: a glimmer, a whisper, a dream.
Once, she thought she heard a familiar hum beneath the surface of her mind — a melody that Lyrielle used to hum when the tide sang against their windows. She followed it across reefs and valleys, through shifting curtains of light, until she found herself before a vast shell half-buried in sand.
It pulsed faintly with silver glow.
Seloria knelt beside it, trembling. "Lyrielle…?"
She pressed her palm to the shell's smooth surface.
A heartbeat. Faint, but there.
And then — a whisper. So quiet she almost thought it memory.
"The sea sleeps. Dream with it."
Seloria's eyes widened. "You're here," she whispered. "You're still here."
"Only in the dream," came the faint reply, "where memory hides when the world forgets."
Seloria closed her eyes, her voice trembling with desperate tenderness. "Then take me there. I don't want a world that forgets you."
The shell's glow deepened. The sand stirred around her, and a current like breath wrapped her body, pulling her into darkness once more.
She opened her eyes — and found herself standing upon the shore.
Moonlight spilled across the waves. The wind carried salt and silence. And there, at the edge of the water, stood Lyrielle.
Her form was soft and uncertain, her gown the colour of mist. She smiled as Seloria approached, eyes filled with sorrow and light.
"Seloria," she whispered. "You came back."
Seloria ran to her, taking her hands, feeling warmth — real warmth. "I thought I'd lost you."
Lyrielle's gaze softened. "You did. Everyone did. The sea has forgotten me — but dreams remember what the world does not."
Seloria shook her head. "Then let us live here, in the dream."
Lyrielle hesitated. "Dreams fade, Seloria. Even now, the tide is pulling me away."
"Then I'll hold you," Seloria said fiercely. "I'll hold you until the tide forgets how to move."
Lyrielle laughed softly — a sound like rain upon glass. "You always were stubborn."
They stood there together, the wind wrapping around them like a vow reborn.
"If love must die," Lyrielle whispered, "then let it dream."
"Then let it never wake," Seloria answered.
The waves rose gently around their feet, luminous and calm, as the world above shimmered between waking and sleep.
And somewhere, deep within the sea, the first memory — the memory of a queen's grief — sighed and began to dream again.