Cloak of moonlight

Present Day

"For years," the old woman says softly, her voice trembling with age and memory, "I've wondered how she was… if she was okay. It's… disheartening to know she passed away so young."

Her gaze drifts beyond the garden, past the sunlit flowers and neatly trimmed hedges, into a distance I cannot see. I follow the direction of her eyes but find nothing there—just the endless sky and the faint rustling of leaves in the breeze. But she isn't looking at the present. She's looking into the past, searching for the girl she once knew, the one she helped escape all those years ago.

My mother.

Mirelle Vetara.