I woke with a name in my mouth.
Not a word—just a breath shaped like someone who might have existed.
For a few seconds, I lay still and listened to the room.
The ceiling fan hummed like a small, obedient planet, circling endlessly over my head. The light that filtered through the curtains wasn't golden or gray, just undecided. It looked like the hour hadn't made up its mind about what kind of day it wanted to become.
The dream was already fading, but not fast enough.
Her laughter was still caught somewhere behind my ribs, like a melody stuck in an echo chamber. I could feel the weight of something soft—her hand, maybe—lingering against my palm. It didn't make sense. I haven't touched anyone in months.
I sat up.
The floor was cold. The clock said 6:42, but it might as well have been any time. I wasn't awake, not fully. I wasn't asleep either. I was in that thin, fragile layer of existence where memory pretends to be reality.
I told myself it was just a dream.
But the thing is—dreams don't leave warmth. They don't leave a scent of rain in your hair. They don't make you miss someone you've never met.
I walked outside, barefoot, into the courtyard. The air had that pre-morning chill, the kind that wakes the skin before the heart catches up. The city was still stretching itself awake—dogs barking in broken intervals, shop shutters groaning open, the quiet argument between light and shadow replaying on the street walls.
My apartment sat on a hill that overlooked a bus stop and a row of jacaranda trees. Every spring they bloomed like a slow fire. Now, their flowers had fallen, carpeting the road in violet bruises. The rain from last night had turned the petals dark and slick, as if the world had cried purple tears in secret.
And for a second—a single heartbeat-long second—I saw her.
Not clearly, not fully. Just the outline of a girl standing by the bus stop, hair tied in a loose knot, head tilted slightly, as if listening to something the world couldn't hear.
When I blinked, she was gone.
My chest tightened, not with fear, but with recognition.
The kind you feel when a stranger hums a song you thought only existed inside your head.
I went to the café down the hill, the one that always smelled like cinnamon and half-finished poems. The barista knew my order before I spoke. I didn't bother with small talk—I rarely do. People speak about the weather, about news, about what's "real."
But my mornings are filled with questions I can't ask out loud:
Why do some dreams feel more like memories?
Why do some ghosts refuse to fade?
The café's window faced the street. I sat there, tracing a circle on my cup's rim, pretending to read, and let the world pass through me.
Then—there she was again.
Across the street, under the jacaranda tree.
The same figure from the bus stop. The same stillness.
Except this time, her eyes met mine.
It wasn't a glance; it was an answer.
A small, quiet acknowledgment that broke something in me—a confirmation that the dream hadn't lied.
She smiled.
A small, almost apologetic curve of her lips.
And then she was gone again—no footsteps, no sound, just absence, as if the air had swallowed her politely.
My hands trembled. I spilled a little coffee, and the heat grounded me back to the moment.
Real or not, my mind whispered her name—Lyra.
I didn't know where that came from.
But I said it anyway, under my breath.
And the air shifted, like the world had just listened.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I found myself back on that hill from the dream—the same soft light, the same sound of rain whispering against the grass. Only this time, it felt more like a memory than a creation.
I saw us there, walking slowly.
Her hand brushing mine, the quiet rhythm of two people learning each other's silence.
She turned to me once, and said,
"Do you know what's strange, Aren? Every time I dream of you, I wake up crying. But I don't know why."
I didn't answer her in the dream.
I didn't know how.
Because the truth was—every time I dream of her, I wake up smiling, and that scares me more than anything.
I kept seeing her over the next few days.
Never fully. Always in motion, like she was made of wind and memory. Sometimes she'd appear reflected in a window, or walking past the edge of a crowd, or sitting by the river, sketching something invisible.
Each time, she'd glance back, and I'd feel that same pull, like gravity had a personal interest in the two of us.
I started writing again.
Not stories, not poems—just fragments.
Things like:
"If the heart remembers what the mind denies,
then maybe I've never been awake."
or
"She exists where the rain forgets to fall."
I wasn't writing for anyone. I was writing to survive her.
One afternoon, I went back to the hill.
The one from the dream.
It wasn't supposed to exist—I had never seen it before—but somehow I knew the path. My feet knew before my thoughts did. I followed the road up through the trees, the light shifting softer with every step. The air smelled of rain that hadn't arrived yet.
And then—there it was.
The same slope, the same breeze, the same impossible feeling.
The world looked exactly as it did in my mind.
Only emptier.
I stood there for a long time, listening.
The wind moved through the grass like a whisper of a name I couldn't pronounce.
I closed my eyes and said it again—Lyra.
This time, she answered.
A voice behind me, soft and trembling:
"You remembered."
I turned, and she was standing there.
No longer a blur, no longer half-made.
Her eyes shimmered with something between recognition and disbelief.
"Do I—know you?" I asked, though my heart already knew the answer.
She smiled, that same gentle apology from the café.
"Maybe not here," she said.
"Maybe not yet."
The wind carried her words away like they were never meant to be kept.
She looked at me one last time, then faded into the evening light, her outline dissolving with the sun.
When she was gone, the air felt different—lighter, but lonelier.
I stayed until the stars appeared, and when I walked back home, I wasn't sure what part of the day had been real.
Back in my room, I found something on my pillow.
A single violet petal.
Still wet, still cold from rain.
But it hadn't rained all day.
I sat there, holding it between my fingers, watching the edges curl in the warm air. It felt like a message, or maybe a memory, sent by the part of her that still remembered me.
I didn't sleep that night.
I didn't need to.
Because for the first time, I wasn't afraid of what was real or imagined.
I had seen her.
And that was enough.
If only for a second.
End of Chapter 1.