Another night, the stories continued.
About ancient cities. Strange creatures. Distant wars. Places where the sky possessed colors Bella had never imagined. Of mysteries wee and wonderous, defying explanation but explainable only because of such characteristics.
Occasionally, Ikaris spoke of people, describing their peculiar habits and convictions with such precise detail that Bella began wondering whether he had secretly read an entire library of obscure historical fiction.
She never asked him where the stories came from.
At least not directly.
And he never volunteered an explanation. If she was being honest, Bella was uneasy about his lack of trust, though she slowly realized it was not a matter of trust as much as a matter of survival.
And when it was about survival, giving it to someone else was idiotic.
It was a peculiar arrangement, but one that suited them both.
For Bella, the stories became another reason to look forward to the evenings. For Ikaris, they became something far more important.
He began sleeping.
Properly.
The dreams did not disappear entirely, but they changed; sometimes, he forgot they were there entirely. Fading with the morning as dreams were meant to, especially the really good ones where feelings lasting was suffice to brighten a day.
Where once he had awakened with his heart racing and his sheets tangled around him, struggling to separate the memory of golden light from the reality of his bedroom, he now found himself sleeping through entire nights without interruption.
Sometimes he dreamed of nothing.
Sometimes he remembered fragments.
A battlefield. A woman's laughter.
The warmth of a hand resting against his face. But the memories no longer seemed determined to drag him beneath their surface. It was as though something inside him had finally discovered another way to breathe.
He did not understand it.
Not completely.
But he noticed the pattern.
On evenings when he spoke to Bella about the places he dreamed, he slept more peacefully afterward. The memories seemed less demanding once they had been given words, as though describing them to another person relieved him of some obligation to carry them alone.
It was a strange sensation.
He had spent years refusing to speak about his dreams, partly because doing so invited questions he could not answer, and partly because the few adults who had listened seemed more interested in deciding what was wrong with him than understanding what he had experienced.
Bella listened differently.
She asked whether the people in his stories were happy.
Whether they had families.
Whether the cities were beautiful.
She cared about things that had never seemed important when he remembered them alone. And somehow, through her questions, he began remembering different things.
Not merely the battles.
Not merely the destruction.
But the ordinary moments that existed between them.
The sound of a song sung in a deep forest trench at midnight.
The warmth of sunlight that shone through a bunker's cracks left by the previous dynasty.
The laughter of people whose names were sounds, and sounds were void, and void into constellations.
The evening that changed everything began without any indication that it intended to become significant.
A nightly outing, Bella had fallen asleep.
Again.
Ikaris had stopped finding it surprising, though he remained mildly sceptical about his willingness to cater to the whims of a girl named Isabella Swan. As if she was an exception amidst his rigid routine-like personality.
Three stories were usually Bella's limit; by the fourth, she was asleep against his shoulder.
He carried her home.
By now, the journey had become familiar enough that he no longer questioned the absurdity of his unconscious act of taking back alleys, grassy pathways, and jumping fences.
Bella, blissfully asleep, was unaware of just how much of the adventure occurred after her eyes had closed.
An hour later, Ikaris finally settled Bella into bed, she merely shifted beneath the blankets and murmured something that sounded suspiciously like his name.
He tucked her in, slipped through the window, closing it from outside; then, the next thing he remembered was bending his knees, toes meeting the ground in a suspiciously soft manner. As if he suddenly weighed a dozen less pounds.
The thought flashed and passed.
The streets were quiet.
The air was warm.
And for once, his thoughts were almost entirely his own.
He returned home shortly after midnight, approached the front door, and unlocked it with the practiced care of someone who had spent enough years living under other people's roofs to understand the value of not disturbing them.
The house was dark.
He stepped inside.
Closed the door.
Removed his shoes.
And turned on the living room light.
An old woman was sitting in the armchair.
Watching him.
Ikaris stopped.
She did not speak.
Neither did he.
For several seconds, they simply regarded one another, and something strange began unfolding in the quiet space between them.
It was not fear.
He knew fear well enough to recognize it—he could taste fear on his tongue like someone with asthma could feel the tightening of their chest.
Nor was it surprise, though discovering someone sitting in a darkened room at midnight would ordinarily have justified at least a modest reaction.
It was something else.
A sensation that something was missing.
Something important.
Something so obvious that his inability to identify it became almost physically uncomfortable. He had experienced the feeling before.
Rarely.
Perhaps twice in his entire life.
The first occasion had occurred when he was much younger, during his time at the orphanage, when a woman named Glenda had arrived one morning to deliver supplies.
She was an elderly woman with large hands, a habit of speaking to herself, and an unfortunate tendency to give the children sweets whenever the supervising staff were not looking.
Glenda had visited regularly.
Then one morning, she had arrived earlier than usual.
Ikaris remembered watching her from the corridor as she carried several boxes inside, her expression distracted and her movements unusually hurried.
She had smiled when she saw him.
He had smiled back.
And then he had gone to school. He never saw her again. At the time, he had accepted her absence without question. People disappeared from the orphanage all the time, and the adults rarely considered it necessary to explain why.
But something about that morning had remained with him.
A detail.
A movement.
An expression.
He could remember everything with remarkable clarity, and yet whenever he examined the memory, he encountered the same frustrating certainty that something important had happened directly in front of him.
Something he should have noticed.
Something he had somehow failed to understand.
The second occasion had been considerably less dramatic.
During an examination, his pencil had fallen from the desk.
He had retrieved it.
Continued writing.
And finished the paper.
Only the following day had he realized that he had completed the remaining questions in pen, despite explicit instructions that the examination required pencil throughout.
The result had been disastrous.
Several sections were not counted, and his final score had fallen so far below expectations that the school administrators apparently concluded he was not suited to the gifted program located a few miles away.
Ikaris remembered staring at the results.
Not because he particularly cared about the program.
But because he could remember picking up the pencil.
He could remember holding it.
He could even remember the slight indentation it left against his fingers.
Yet somewhere between retrieving it and continuing the examination, he had apparently abandoned it without realizing.
The mind, he had concluded, was a remarkably unreliable instrument.
And now—
Now he felt that same sensation.
Only stronger. Much stronger.
He looked at the old woman.
Then around the room.
The furniture was familiar. The curtains were closed. The television was off. Nothing appeared out of place. And yet something was wrong. Not with the room.
With his understanding of it.
What did I miss? He examined her face.
The lines around her eyes.
The silver hair.
The hands resting quietly in her lap.
He knew her.
Of course he knew her.
She was the elderly woman whose house he occupied, the person who had agreed to provide him with somewhere to live when the alternatives had become increasingly unpleasant.
He knew her habits.
Her voice.
The peculiar way she arranged the cups in the kitchen.
But for some reason, the sight of her sitting beneath the light filled him with an almost unbearable sense of recognition.
Not recognition of her face.
Recognition of something behind it.
Something he could not name.
The old woman smiled. "I see you, little golden light."
Ikaris stared.
The words settled into the room with a weight they had no right to possess.
"What did you call me?"
She tilted her head. "Little golden light."
He remained still. "Why?"
Her smile widened. "Because that's what you are."
He looked at her more carefully. "That is not an explanation."
"No," she agreed pleasantly, almost whimsically. "Suppose it isn't."
His fingers tightened slightly around the keys in his hand.
He could hear the clock.
The faint hum of the refrigerator.
His own breathing.
Everything was ordinary.
Everything was wrong.
"Do you know something about me?"
The question emerged quietly, each word deliberate.
The old woman watched him.
Then her expression changed.
Not dramatically.
But enough.
"You should stay away from the little hollow girl."
Ikaris felt something inside him become very still. "Who?"
"The hollow girl."
"I don't know anyone by that description."
"Oh, but you do."
He said nothing.
The old woman leaned forward slightly. "Her scent lingers on you now."
Bella.
The thought came immediately.
And with it, something sharp.
Something protective.
He took a step toward the chair.
"Are you speaking about Isabella?"
She smiled sadly.
"Such a sweet little thing. All that emptiness, and she doesn't even know what she's missing."
Ikaris examined her expression.
Her breathing remained calm.
Her eyes were clear.
There was no obvious sign of confusion, though he was well aware that age could produce peculiar disturbances in perception and memory.
Perhaps she had awakened from a dream.
Perhaps she was experiencing an episode of disorientation.
But the words—
Little golden light.
Hollow girl.
They felt familiar.
Not because he understood them.
Because something inside him seemed to.
"What do you mean by hollow?" he asked.
The old woman looked toward the window. "Nothing good ever comes of a hollow and a light meeting. One reaches for what it lacks, and the other gives until there's nothing left to give."
Ikaris remained silent.
She looked back at him. "Wouldn't want your shine to dim so soon, would we?"
His expression hardened.
"I am not convinced."
The old woman regarded him for a long moment.
Then she laughed softly. "Ah, that familiar accent."
Not mockingly.
Almost fondly.
"There you are."
Ikaris frowned. "What?" He paid attention to his pronunciation, it felt different but he could not tell how. Perhaps, in the way his tongue curled, as if wanting to speak something else entirely, but English was what emerged from his lips.
"Always so certain." She reached toward him. Her hand trembled. "Always thinking you can hold the whole world together if you just stand still enough."
He stared at her fingers.
Something moved.
Not in the room.
In him.
A sensation like the sudden recognition of a song he had not heard since childhood, except he could not remember the melody, and the memory seemed to exist somewhere deeper than thought.
The old woman's face changed.
Or perhaps it did not.
He could no longer tell.
For one impossible instant, he thought he saw another face beneath hers.
Younger.
Familiar.
Beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with the arrangement of her features.
And then—
Something snapped.
He was carrying her.
Ikaris blinked.
The stairs rose before him, the old woman resting comfortably in his arms, her head against his shoulder.
He had no memory of lifting her.
No memory of crossing the living room.
No memory of deciding that she needed to be taken upstairs.
And yet here he was.
Walking.
Slowly.
Carefully.
His body moved with an ease that seemed almost independent of conscious thought, adjusting his hold whenever she shifted, ensuring that her legs would not strike the railing.
He should have been frightened.
He knew that.
A sudden interruption in memory, particularly one accompanied by involuntary behavior, was not something he could reasonably dismiss.
But he felt no fear.
Only tenderness.
An extraordinary, overwhelming tenderness that seemed to fill every part of him.
He looked down.
The old woman was watching him.
Her expression had softened, and for a moment he thought he saw tears gathering in her eyes.
"Such a good boy," she whispered.
His chest tightened.
The words hurt.
Not unpleasantly.
But with the peculiar ache of remembering something beautiful that had been lost for so long that its absence had become ordinary.
He carried her into the bedroom.
The room smelled faintly of lavender and old furniture, its curtains drawn against the night, the small bedside lamp casting a warm circle of light across the quilt.
He lowered her onto the mattress.
Gently.
As though she were something precious.
Then he arranged the pillows beneath her head, pulled the blanket over her legs, and tucked it around her shoulders.
He moved without hesitation.
Without calculation.
It was unlike him.
Or perhaps—
Perhaps it was more like him than anything he had ever done.
The thought appeared and vanished before he could examine it. The old woman closed her eyes. Her cheeks had acquired a delicate flush, a beautiful shade of red that seemed almost youthful against her pale skin.
She looked peaceful.
And Ikaris felt something inside his chest open.
A feeling so vast and unfamiliar that he could not determine whether it belonged to love, grief, or some impossible combination of the two.
He wanted to protect her.
He wanted to sit beside her until morning.
He wanted to ensure that nothing would ever disturb her sleep.
And beneath those desires was something stranger still.
The conviction that he had done this before.
Not once.
Not twice.
But countless times.
In another room.
Beneath another sky.
For someone whose name he could almost remember.
The old woman stirred.
Her fingers moved against the blanket.
And his chest clenched.
The words came before he could think.
A melody rose in his throat, soft and hesitant at first, then steadier as something deep within him recognized its shape.
He began to sing.
My love, leave yourself behind
Beat inside me, leave you blind
The sound surprised him.
He knew the song.
Or at least he knew that he knew it.
Yet he could not remember learning it, and the familiarity of the melody seemed to belong to the same impossible place as the memories of distant cities and golden skies.
He sang quietly, watching the old woman's face as her breathing settled into a slow, peaceful rhythm.
My love, you have found peace
You were searching for relief
Then he moved.
Not toward the door.
Not immediately.
He began straightening the room.
A book lay open beside the bed, its pages bent beneath the weight of another volume. He closed it carefully, placed a marker between the pages, and arranged both books on the bedside table.
A cardigan hung over the back of a chair.
He folded it.
A glass stood near the lamp.
He moved it farther from the edge.
These were small things.
Unimportant things.
The sort of domestic gestures he rarely performed unless someone specifically requested them.
But tonight they felt necessary.
And strangely familiar.
He continued singing.
You gave it all
Gave in to the call
You took a chance and
You took the fall for us
The old woman smiled in her sleep.
Ikaris stopped beside the window.
For a moment, the room seemed to change around him.
He could almost see another bedroom, one filled with warm sunlight rather than lamplight, its windows opening onto a garden he could not identify.
There was laughter somewhere.
A woman's voice.
The rustling of curtains.
And a child—
No. Not a child.
Something else.
The memory slipped away.
He closed his eyes.
What am I forgetting? The question returned with such force that he nearly spoke it aloud.
He knew there was something here.
Something important.
The old woman.
The song.
The strange tenderness moving through him.
All of it belonged together.
He could feel the connection.
But whenever he attempted to examine it, his thoughts seemed to slide away from the answer, as though his mind had constructed an invisible wall around something it was not yet prepared to remember.
He opened his eyes.
The room was ordinary again.
The old woman slept.
And he was still singing.
Tonight, you will sleep for good
You will wait for me, my love
He crossed toward the dresser, straightened a small framed photograph, and paused to examine it.
The picture showed a younger woman standing in a garden, smiling toward someone outside the frame.
He did not recognize her.
Yet his fingers lingered against the glass.
His chest ached. He placed the photograph down.
Then looked toward the bed.
The old woman's expression was peaceful.
And suddenly, inexplicably, he wanted to cry.
Not because he was sad.
He did not feel sad.
But because the affection filling him seemed too large for the body expected to contain it, and somewhere beneath that affection lay a sorrow so ancient that he could not imagine where it had begun.
He swallowed.
The melody continued.
His voice remained steady.
He crossed the room, adjusted the blanket one final time, and brushed a loose strand of silver hair away from her forehead.
She smiled.
"Sleep," he whispered.
The word emerged with extraordinary gentleness.
Then, after a moment, he added, "You have nothing to worry about tonight. I am here, and I will make certain that you are safe."
He meant every word.
Though he did not understand why.
The old woman made a faint sound.
Something between a sigh and a laugh.
And then she slept more deeply.
Ikaris stood beside her for a while.
Watching.
Listening.
The song softened as he reached its final passage, the words falling almost beneath his breath.
You took my hand
Added a plan
You gave me your heart
I asked you to dance with me
You loved honestly
Gave what you could release
Oh
He turned off the bedside lamp.
The room darkened.
He walked toward the door, paused to look back, and felt one last inexplicable movement of affection through his chest.
Then he closed the door.
Quietly.
He was in bed.
Ikaris stared at the ceiling.
For several seconds, he did not move.
The room was dark, the blankets pulled neatly over his legs, and the familiar shadows of his furniture lay across the floor.
He could remember returning home.
He could remember turning on the light.
He could remember the old woman sitting in the armchair.
Then—
Nothing.
Or rather, not nothing.
There was something.
A sensation of warmth.
A melody lingering somewhere beyond the reach of conscious thought.
And the extraordinary certainty that he had just experienced something important.
He frowned.
Had he spoken to her?
He thought so.
What had they discussed?
He could not remember.
He examined the memory carefully, searching for the precise moment at which his recollection became unreliable.
The front door. The shoes. The light switch. The old woman.
Her face.
Then the sensation of something missing.
And after that, only a vague impression of having performed some necessary task.
He turned onto his side.
Ordinarily, such a lapse would have concerned him.
He possessed an unusually precise memory, and although he understood that memory was not infallible, he disliked discovering gaps in his own recollection.
But tonight the concern did not come.
He felt peaceful.
More peaceful than he could remember feeling in years.
There was no familiar pressure behind his eyes, no lingering anxiety about the possibility of another dream, and none of the strange restlessness that sometimes made sleep feel less like rest and more like surrendering himself to something waiting in the dark.
He felt safe.
The realization surprised him.
Safety had always been a difficult thing to define.
He had lived in houses with locked doors, attended schools surrounded by adults, and slept beneath roofs that were supposed to protect him.
Yet none of those things had ever entirely convinced him that he was safe.
Tonight, however, the feeling existed without explanation.
He closed his eyes.
And somewhere in the quiet, a thought drifted through him.
I wonder if Bella would like that song. He frowned slightly. What song?
The question lingered for a moment.
Then disappeared.
His breathing slowed.
His thoughts softened.
And for the first time in a very long while, Ikaris fell asleep without feeling that he was leaving anything behind.
He dreamed of nothing.
No golden light.
No battlefield.
No unfamiliar voices calling from places he could not reach.
Only darkness.
Warm.
Gentle.
Complete.
And somewhere down the hallway, behind a closed bedroom door, an old woman slept with a faint smile upon her face.
On the bedside table, beside the carefully arranged books and the glass that had been moved away from the edge, stood a photograph of a younger woman in a garden, clutching fingers with a young man, squared jaw—almost like Ikaris, but more aged, more mature.
It had been crooked for years.
Tonight, it stood perfectly straight.