It began with a dream.
Charlisa stood alone in a wide, starlit field. The wind was soft, but her feet were bare, pressed deep into the warm soil. Around her, flowers bloomed in slow motion—unfurling as if time had softened for her sake. She looked down.
Her stomach was round.
Not heavy, not burdened. Full. Glowing.
From it came a sound—not a heartbeat, but a rhythm, like water trickling through roots beneath the earth. When she touched her skin, the sensation wasn't just hers. It was shared. As if her body now held two languages: one old and patient, the other new and searching.
She woke with a start, her hands on her abdomen, breath caught between awe and longing.
---
Over the following days, the world felt different.
Sounds reached her ears before they fully arrived—bird calls, Kael's footsteps, the rustling of herbs in the wind. Her skin prickled when others approached, as if her body was listening before her mind could understand. Elder Shyara smiled when she noticed.
> "You are becoming the vessel," she said. "When a woman prepares to carry life, she must first learn to carry silence."
Charlisa spent hours in the grove of Nalura, the fertility goddess. She sat beneath the stone-carved tree where offerings were laid—shells, bundles of sweetgrass, carved figures of children with tiny hands and curled feet. There, she meditated not with words, but with breath. Listening.
At first, it was difficult.
The mind darted—memories of her mother Shalu's garden, her grandmother Vina's gentle voice, the analytical side of her thinking of hormones and womb lining and uterine health. But with time, her mind softened, like clay warmed by sun.
One morning, during meditation, she saw her grandmother Vina in her mind.
Not as an old woman, but young, kneeling beside a pond with wildflowers tucked behind her ears. She looked up and smiled.
> "Your blood is the soil now," Vina said in the dream, "but what you plant is your choice."
Charlisa awoke weeping.
---
That day, she no longer needed guidance to begin the rituals. She bathed herself in moon-steeped herbs without being told. She braided her hair with white petals without instruction. She began talking aloud in the mornings—not to herself, but to the spirit she hoped would find her.
> "I don't know your face yet. But I know your place, little one. I am making space for you. You are already loved."
Even Kael noticed the shift.
He said less, watched more. His touch grew more reverent, not fragile but worshipful—as though he could sense she was no longer just Charlisa, but becoming something greater.
She no longer feared the responsibility. No longer thought in clinical terms of ovulation and biology. What she was preparing for wasn't simply birth. It was transformation.
She was dissolving the old version of herself—one bound by time and logic—and in her place, something wild, rooted, and eternal was beginning to grow.
---
That night, she dreamed again.
This time, she was beneath the skin of the earth, surrounded by roots that pulsed with light. She heard singing—not in words, but in emotion. And within her chest, something whispered back.
Yes.
I'm coming.