In the days that followed, the memory clung to her like morning mist. She found herself humming the tune the dream-girl had once sung, unsure whether it came from imagination or something older. The vibrations lingered in her chest, soft but unshakable. She began to follow them.
One evening, under the pear tree where the wind often spoke, she took a rusted tin pot and began to tap it with a spoon. A simple rhythm. Then another. The pulse soothed something ancient in her bones. She added her voice—low hums at first, then open-throated sounds that spilled from her without thought. Ashu circled her slowly, lying down beside her once she settled into the rhythm. The garden, the hills, the trees—they all seemed to listen.
Music became her bridge.
She bartered eggs and herbs for an old wooden flute, cracked at the mouth but still singing. The first notes were rough, trembling like a newborn fawn, but each day they grew stronger. She played to the trees, the clouds, and the ghosts that lingered in her memories. She taught herself the guitar, fingers fumbling on the strings, bleeding sometimes, but always returning. When words failed, she let melody carry what her soul could not yet name.
And when no one was watching, she danced—barefoot, wild, circling in the dust and dappled light. Sometimes she danced with tears in her eyes. Sometimes with laughter. Sometimes with silence.
With every note, she reached deeper into the memory of the girl she had once been. A healer. A dreamer. A weaver of songs that stitched the soul back together.
And piece by piece, Asiola was doing the same—threading her own spirit back into wholeness, one breath, one sound, one step at a time.
The music led her hands to new forms of expression. One morning, after a storm, Asiola wandered the forest's edge and found fallen branches, soft with age but strong enough to carve. She took them home, whittled them slowly into small shapes—circles, ovals, and uneven discs—then etched ancient symbols into them by firelight. Runes. She didn't know how she remembered them, only that they came to her like old friends whispering through the grain of wood. She kept them in a cloth pouch, drawing one at dawn and letting its meaning guide her day.
That night, as rain tapped gently on the tin roof and the fire dimmed low, Asiola dreamed again.
She was old—older than time, it seemed. Her back was curved like the crescent moon, her hands knotted with age, but her eyes were clear, sharp as obsidian. Around her stretched a thick, moss-covered forest, damp and humming with life. Trees towered like ancient guardians, their roots weaving through the land like veins of memory. Her cottage stood at the heart of it all—stone and wood, draped in herbs, bones, and feathers. Smoke curled from a chimney, and wind chimes made of antlers and shells sang softly in the mist.
People came from far away. Travelers, lost ones, seekers. They stepped into her presence with trembling hands and questions they could barely voice. And she answered—with bones tossed gently into an iron bowl, with runes drawn on bark and stones, with herbs crumbled between her fingers and songs hummed in an old tongue. Her voice was slow, cracked like dried leaves, but it echoed with truth. They called her the Moss-Witch, the Bone-Mother, the Listener Beneath the Roots. Few stayed long. Her power unsettled them, even when they came seeking it. But all left changed.
In the dream, Asiola felt the textures—the fur pelts under her feet, the cold bite of iron runes, the heat of firelight licking old stone walls. And she felt something deeper still: the calm of knowing, of being utterly aligned with what she was meant to be.
She woke before dawn, her heart beating with ancient rhythm.
She reached for her pouch of runes in the dark and spread them across the table. Her fingers moved instinctively, tracing the shapes, turning them face-up. Each one spoke. Each one had always spoken. She just hadn't remembered how to listen.
Until now.
Now she knew why the wood called to her, why the symbols rose in her mind like smoke, why strangers sometimes lingered at her gate and asked strange questions. That old woman in the mosslands had not faded. She had merely returned through her.
Asiola smiled softly, running her thumb over the worn edge of a carved rune.
Welcome back," she whispered to the runes.
The runes became her morning ritual, but the forest offered more. Not just symbols etched in wood, but signs carried on the wind and scattered underfoot. As if answering her awakening, the land began to speak in feathers.
Feathers began to gather in her pockets—gifts from the forest, she believed. A crow's black plume, two mottled eagle feathers, tiny sparrow tufts. From them she crafted a dreamcatcher, binding old wire into a circle, weaving thread through its center in a pattern her fingers knew instinctively. She placed a small seashell at the heart, ringed with glass beads in earth tones. It hung by her bed, swaying softly in the breeze. Since then, the bad dreams—of cold rooms and fading women—came less often.
Her house began to shift.
The blank walls, once echoing with emptiness, slowly bloomed with color. In a dusty crate, she found her old childhood canvases—long untouched but still holding potential. She painted over them with scenes that pulsed from her memory and spirit. Waterfalls rushing through mossy cliffs. Red-gold savannas bathed in sunset. Tropical birds mid-flight, wings wide and alive. A spiral of butterflies dancing through light. Each stroke filled the space with something more than beauty—each was a breath, a prayer, a claim of presence.
Her husband muttered now and then. Complained about the clutter, the feathers, the strange symbols. Grumbled when she brought home another bundle of herbs or salvaged wood. But he was too absorbed in his screen-lit world, surrounded by smoke and distant voices, to truly see the home rising around him. A home born not from comfort, but from need. From the stubborn, sacred urge to make something whole.
And so, she painted. She carved. She hung feathers like wards and let colors bloom like flowers on the walls. Bit by bit, she turned the bones of the house into a place that sang—quietly, insistently—with the sound of her soul returning.
The runes were not just markings—they were echoes of an ancient language, older than words, carved by those who once listened closely to the world. Each symbol held layers of meaning: protection, birth, endings, movement, truth. Used by the old Norse and Germanic peoples, runes were more than letters; they were spells, carved into stones, weapons, and bones to invoke forces beyond the veil. They were cast to divine fate, drawn to guide warriors, healers, and seekers. And though centuries had passed since they were widely used, their essence never faded. Asiola could feel it—that steady hum, like a distant drumbeat in her blood. As she burned the symbols into wood, it was less an act of creation and more one of remembering. The runes did not come from her; they came through her.