Page 15 of Aïdes the Unseen
Even when I tilted my face to the rain and closed my eyes.
It was then I felt it.
A tremor, not rippling through the earth, but through something deeper. The kind of shift you couldn’t see, onlysense. A weight. A knowing. A certainty.
I opened my eyes.
Hewas there far across the field, near the edge where the flowers ended and the forest began. Standing still as a cairn, clothed in shadow and rain, he gazed at me as if he’d been watching since before I knew to look.
He did not move.
Neither did I.
The rain curved around him, just slightly. Not enough to flee, but enough torecognize. Like the drops knew they were falling through something older than sky. Something older than spring.
Aïdes.
Not summoned. Not expected. Not even entirely real yet. Just… appearing, like memory, like myth.
We had not seen each other since the garden below.
Twenty-three sunrises had passed, and I had almost convinced myself he had returned to forgetfulness. That I had imagined the hush in his voice when he called me mirror.
Yet, now, here, in the rain-soaked harmony of planting season, he stood again.
He did not call out. There was no need.
My feet moved before my mind did, slow steps across the damp field. The clover leaned toward me as I passed, but even they were quieter now.
Still, he didn’t move while I continued to walk.
When I reached the edge of the field, close enough to see the water beading in the hollow of his throat, he finally spoke, quiet, almost hesitant.
“You’re alone.”
A statement. A question.
“My mother was called away,” I said, voice calm, though my pulse leapt like a colt.
A pause. Rain slid off his shoulders as if this world was truly reluctant to touch him. “They usually wait for her.”
“They?”
“The ones who come looking for you.”
Who came looking for me? It took a moment for me to grasp his meaning. The other divine who would come to call. Many of them waited for Mother. Not all, but most.
I tilted my head. “Are you one of them?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then, very softly: “No.”
Silence.
Not awkward. Not cold. But charged.
He looked like he belonged to a different season entirely. He might not be made of sun or fresh dew, more the whisper that followed the last fallen leaf, but here he was. In my season. Inmyworld.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, not unkindly. More because I liked that he was here whether heshouldbe or not. “This is the time of beginning.”
