Chapter II: The Girl Who Wouldn't Stop Talking
The morning light carried a strange quiet — the kind that happens not because the world is calm, but because it's listening.
Vael hadn't moved since she appeared.
For a second, he wasn't sure if she was real or another trick of the mind — one of those delicate hallucinations that come when sleep and consciousness forget their borders.
But she was smiling, and that smile had weight.
It belonged to reality.
> "You look like you've seen a ghost," she said.
"Maybe I have."
"Then it's a pretty talkative one."
Same voice. Same teasing rhythm.
Even after months, she fell into conversation like no time had passed at all — like absence was a thing she'd never believed in.
Vael blinked once, then turned toward the river. The ripples were gone.
The water was ordinary again — except for how it wasn't.
> "How are you here?"
"I walk places. That's still allowed, right?"
"No, I mean—"
"Oh, you mean here-here. Like, existentially?"
She grinned, the kind of grin that turned the simplest words into something disarming.
> "You're doing that thing again," she added.
"What thing?"
"Thinking instead of answering."
He exhaled, half a sigh, half a smile.
The same rhythm, always — she spoke in movement, he listened in stillness.
Somehow, they met in the middle.
---
They walked the forest path together, the air thick with dew and unsaid things. Birds trilled somewhere out of sight. The kind of morning that felt both new and ancient.
She talked about everything — the smell of rain, the way sunlight broke on wet leaves, a cat that followed her halfway down the road. She was filling space again, weaving reality back together with words.
He listened — not out of patience, but reverence.
There was a strange safety in her noise.
> "You didn't answer my messages," she said eventually.
"I didn't have words."
"Since when do you need words?"
"Since I stopped pretending silence was enough."
That made her pause.
A rare moment of stillness.
Then she laughed, soft but real.
> "You're weird," she said.
"You're repetitive."
"That's how you know it's really me."
He didn't argue. He didn't need to.
The air between them said enough.
---
When they reached the edge of the woods, the river's sound followed — distant, echoing, like it remembered them both.
Vael turned slightly, watching her step onto the old bridge that crossed the stream. For a second, he saw something flicker in her reflection — a faint shimmer that pulsed with light before dissolving back into water.
> "Did you see that?" he asked.
"See what?"
"The reflection. It… moved."
"It's water, Vael. That's what it does."
He frowned, but said nothing.
Some truths needed to wait until they were ready to be believed.
She leaned on the rail, looking out across the slow current.
> "You still dream about it?" she asked suddenly.
"About what?"
"The river that isn't this one."
His chest tightened.
> "You remember it?"
"I never forgot."
Her tone changed then — quieter, deeper, as if the forest itself had hushed to listen.
> "Every time I close my eyes," she continued, "I hear it. The water doesn't sound like water. It sounds like… breathing."
"Whose?"
"Yours."
He froze.
There was no teasing in her voice now. No grin.
Just that strange certainty, the kind that didn't ask to be proven.
The river below shimmered, faintly green-black again — the same impossible hue from his dreams.
It pulsed once, as though a heartbeat lived beneath the surface.
> "Maybe we're both dreaming," he whispered.
"Then don't wake up yet," she said.
---
The wind rose, brushing through the trees, carrying with it the scent of rain and something older — memory, perhaps.
And as Vael stood there beside her, he realized that what scared him wasn't the river or the dreams,
but the possibility that the line between them had already been crossed.
---
End of Chapter II – The Girl Who Wouldn't Stop Talking
Next Chapter Preview:
Chapter III – When Mirrors Breathe
Where Vael begins to uncover the connection between his dreams and the reflections that move on their own — and the first clue appears that Echo might not just be from this world.
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Vael