Published on the 2nd of Squid 162 at F:9:5.
Drifting as a jelly with the current,
How light is the gravity of a petal?
Rooted like a coral stiff as a stalk,
How heavy is the levity of a stone?
The valley lay between two long ridges, a shallow bowl of earth where mist settled each morning as if it belonged more to the clouds than to the soil. At dawn the roofs shone with dew, each thatch tuft glimmering faintly, and smoke rose in crooked lines that seemed to lean together for warmth. The place was not rich, not poor—just enduring, season after season, the same as its people.
Coral walked those lanes as though she had always belonged. Yet the villagers never spoke of her as one of them. They nodded when she passed, lowered their eyes, whispered her name as if it were a prayer or a question. She was neither guest nor kin, neither stranger nor neighbor. She existed beside them, the way the mountain existed beside the fields—near enough to lean against, too vast to claim.
Her robe was plain, patched in places but kept neat. Her hair was tied back without ornament, her staff worn smooth where her hand rested. There was a steadiness in her step that suggested she carried more weight than the bundle on her back. When she lifted a water jar for an old woman, when she guided children across the crooked bridge, when she bound a splintered rake with twine, the air around her grew hushed. She was welcome, yes—but also slightly feared, as though she carried in her sleeve an unseen reckoning.
It was not that she demanded reverence. She spoke little, smiled rarely, and kept her presence gentle. Yet her silence pressed against others like a stone set in a stream: the current shifted around her, unwilling to move her.
The villagers accepted her hands, her labor, her quietness. But their acceptance was always tinged with unease, and when she passed out of sight, voices rose again in murmurs.
“Strange, how she lives alone and wants nothing.”
“She has no household, no fields, yet never begs.”
“Perhaps she serves something we cannot see.”
Coral heard them, sometimes. She did not turn her head to listen, but the words fell on her shoulders all the same. She told herself she bore them as she bore every weight: silently, steadily, until they ceased to matter.
Still, on certain days, as she walked back to her hut at the valley’s edge, she felt the hush stretch too wide. The sound of her own footsteps seemed too loud, the stillness of her dwelling too sharp. She told herself it was discipline, solitude, clarity—but the quiet was not always kind.
It was in such a hush that the other whispers came.
“The hermit in the peach grove again… laughing into the night.”
“She sings at shadows, as if drunk on air.”
“Blessed or cursed, who can say? Not one of us, surely.”
Coral’s grip on her staff tightened. She had heard fragments before: talk of someone dwelling higher on the slope, among trees that bloomed out of season. A girl who ate fruit but planted nothing, who chased wind as though it were a companion. Most thought it rumor. Yet the frowns of the elders, the way mothers hushed their children, gave it weight.
She told herself she did not care. She had work in the valley, tasks that filled her days, duties that steadied her hands. But the murmurs clung, the way mist clung to the roofs long after the sun had risen.
And so, when evening came soft and violet, Coral found herself turning from the village path and beginning the slow climb toward the ridge.
The stone steps wound upward in broken stretches, sometimes swallowed by grass, sometimes chipped away by years of frost. Coral’s staff clicked against them, each strike measuring her pace like a drumbeat. The air grew sharper as she climbed, carrying scents that did not belong to the valley below: pine resin, damp earth, and something faintly sweet, as though the mountain itself exhaled blossoms.
Her breath came even, but her mind did not. She told herself this was foolishness, indulgence. A woman should not be chasing rumors when there were jars to mend, roofs to patch, children to scold into kindness. Yet her feet did not turn back.
The forest thickened, branches weaving together so that the light filtered down in fractured beams. Birds shifted nervously at her approach, taking wing with brief flurries of sound. Once she startled a hare from the underbrush; it bounded across her path and vanished, leaving only a ripple in the ferns.
The higher she climbed, the more the silence pressed in. It was not the silence of neglect or abandonment, but of waiting. The air itself seemed to watch her, to listen for her next step.
At last the trees opened, and she found herself standing at the edge of a grove.
The peach trees were not as she remembered from the orchards of her youth. These bore blossoms though autumn had already dulled the fields below. Pale petals crowded the branches, luminous in the fading light, as if the trees belonged to another season, another world entirely. The air was thick with fragrance, cloying and dream-heavy. Every breath felt like drinking from a cup that was already too full.
She stood at the border, uncertain. Villagers spoke of the grove as though it were a threshold best left uncrossed. But she had not climbed this far to turn back at petals. She stepped forward, her staff brushing against fallen blooms, scattering them with each tap.
The grove swallowed her. Light dimmed beneath the canopy, broken into shifting patterns by the restless branches. Petals lay in drifts across the ground, soft enough that her steps seemed to sink into them.
It was there, in that scatter of pale blooms, that she saw the figure.
A girl sprawled on her back as if the whole earth were her pillow, arms stretched wide, hair spilling like dark ink across the blossoms. She was humming—no words, only a rising and falling tune that echoed like bird calls in the hush. With each note, she plucked petals from the air, tossing them upward so they fluttered down again, caught briefly in her fingers as though she juggled with the wind itself.
Coral’s first thought was that she had stumbled upon someone lost to madness. Her second was that madness had never looked so utterly at ease.
Coral slowed her steps, her staff sinking into the softness underfoot. She had steeled herself to meet a wild-eyed outcast, someone broken by solitude, but this girl—no, this creature—looked younger than she had expected, her features smooth with an almost careless grace. There was no gauntness of hunger, no tremor of desperation. Instead, she smiled as if she had found some private joy in the curve of a falling petal, joy so complete that nothing else could be lacking.
The humming broke off when the girl tilted her head toward the sound of Coral’s approach. Her eyes, wide and dark, glittered with the last of the daylight seeping between the branches. She did not rise, only propped her chin in her palm and regarded the newcomer with a smile that was not welcome and not warning, but something in between.
“Oh? A visitor.” Her voice was soft, lilting, as though she were still half-singing. “You walk like stone, but your eyes ripple like water. Which one are you really?”
Coral’s fingers tightened on her staff. “Are you the one who dwells here, apart from the people below?”
The girl rolled onto her side and laughed—a sound like windchimes stirred by a passing breeze. “Dwell? If lying among blossoms counts as dwelling, then yes. If it means building walls and counting seasons, then no. I only borrowed the shade.”
Coral drew herself straighter. “Borrowed or not, you unsettle them. They call you idle. A dreamer who squanders her breath.”
The girl plucked a blossom from the ground and held it between two fingers, lifting it as though it were a talisman. “Unease is heavy. This”—she let the petal fall, watching it spin down onto her chest—“is light. Tell me, traveler: which one do you prefer to carry?”
The question struck Coral like a pebble cast into still water, sending ripples she had not expected. She opened her mouth, closed it, and tried again. “One cannot cast aside weight. Responsibility steadies us.”
“Mm.” The girl rolled onto her back again, eyes wandering the lattice of branches above. “But a branch too heavy with fruit will break. A bird too heavy with duty will never fly. Do you like flying?”
Coral’s lips pressed thin. “Words are not wings. You waste them, as you waste your days.”
The girl’s laughter returned, softer now, amused without malice. “Then let me waste them all, until they bloom again as laughter. You, stone-walker—what name do you carry?”
There was a pause, heavy as the air in the grove. At last Coral said, “They call me Coral.”
“Coral.” The girl let the name linger on her tongue as though tasting its weight. “I’m Jelly. Because I’m soft and wobbly and stick where I please. If that sounds foolish, then it suits me.”
Coral bowed her head stiffly, refusing to let the tug of a smile reach her lips. “Live as you will, Jelly. But know that idleness draws no respect, only doubt.”
“Respect?” Jelly tilted her head back until her hair pooled among the petals, her eyes fixed on the sky breaking into twilight. “That’s just weight in another shape. I prefer petals.”
Coral turned from her then, her robe brushing the ground as she left the grove. Her steps were firm, but her thoughts were not.
She told herself the villagers had been right: the hermit was frivolous, untethered, dangerous in her levity. And yet—
As the last light faded, Coral’s grip on her staff tightened. The question lingered, feather-light yet impossible to shake:
Which one is truly heavier—duty, or a falling petal?
Behind her, in the grove, Jelly balanced another blossom on the bridge of her nose and giggled each time it slid away, as if the night itself were a game meant for her alone.
Coral did not sleep well that night. The wind rattled the shutters of her hut, and though the fire had burned low she left it untended, lying stiff beneath her quilt, her mind restless. Each time her eyes closed she saw the same image: a blossom caught between two fingers, the question that had fallen with it.
She rose before dawn, as she always did, but her body felt heavier, as though sleep had abandoned her. The tasks of the morning moved through her hands with practiced ease—hauling water from the well, splitting kindling, sweeping frost from the steps—yet none of it steadied her. The hush that usually comforted her now seemed to press in from every side.
When she walked into the village, she felt the eyes more keenly than before. A pair of old men paused in their repairs on the granary roof to watch her pass. A woman drawing water bent low over her bucket, her face hidden. Even the children, who once had darted forward to tug at her sleeve or beg a story, now lingered behind corners, whispering too softly to be caught.
Coral forced herself not to falter. She bent her strength to lifting a load of firewood, to mending the binding of a gate. But the silence stretched with each step, each labor. It was not accusation—not yet. Only unease, but unease multiplied became something heavier than any burden she had carried.
When the sun tilted toward its descent, she walked to the ridge once more. She told herself it was only to clear her mind, to climb until the valley was small beneath her. Yet she knew where her feet were leading.
The grove awaited her, unseasonal as ever, its blossoms luminous against the paling sky. The air there felt thick, dreamlike, as though the world beyond had already forgotten her.
Jelly was perched on a low branch, swinging her legs, humming a tune that had no beginning or end. She looked up when Coral entered the clearing, and her smile was immediate, unhesitating, as if she had been waiting for this moment all day.
“You came back,” she said. Not a question, not even surprise—just delight, as though it were inevitable.
Coral stopped beneath the tree. “The villagers whisper of you constantly. They speak as though your laughter draws ill fortune.”
“Mm.” Jelly plucked a blossom and dropped it into her lap. “Let them whisper. Whispers are only air—they vanish as soon as breath runs out.”
“They do not vanish,” Coral said, her voice sharper than she intended. “They weigh on me. Each word becomes another stone in my sleeve.”
Jelly leaned forward, her hair spilling over her shoulder, eyes gleaming. “Then take them out of your sleeve and throw them in the river. See if they sink, or fly.”
Coral shook her head, exasperated. “You treat everything as play.”
“And you treat everything as burden,” Jelly replied lightly. “But maybe play is lighter than burden. Perhaps that is why I can breathe, while you look so tired.”
Coral opened her mouth, ready to argue, but the words died on her tongue. Tired. Yes—she was tired, though she had never admitted it. Tired of bearing what no one else wished to carry, tired of being welcomed yet never belonging.
She turned away, gazing through the blossoms to the darkening sky. “The world does not bend for laughter.”
Jelly’s voice followed, soft but certain. “Then perhaps laughter bends the world.”
The thought lodged in Coral’s chest, as inescapable as a pebble caught in the shoe. She did not answer, and Jelly did not press her. They sat in silence until the light drained from the grove, one still as stone, the other humming to the stars as though they could hear.
Mist still hung low along the ridges when Coral set out, her staff striking a steady rhythm against the stones. She told herself the path upward was only for exercise, for gathering herbs, for air that the valley lacked. Yet she did not carry her satchel for collecting roots, nor did her pace suggest leisure. Her steps had a purpose she could not name, and the weight of it quickened her breath more than the climb.
The peach grove greeted her as it had before, blossoms untimely and abundant, their fragrance too rich for the cool of the season. Beneath them the air felt thicker, as though the grove belonged to a slower world.
Jelly crouched by the riverbank, skirts muddied, hair tumbling loose, her bare feet planted in the silt. She was hurling flat stones one by one, laughing each time one danced across the water’s skin. When one skipped far, she cheered as though the stone itself had triumphed; when another sank at once, she sighed, “Ah, this one preferred the depths.”
Coral stopped at the edge of the clearing, frowning. She had expected more foolishness, yet the scene before her felt oddly solemn—rings spreading on the river, each touching the next, a geometry of circles fading into silence.
Without turning, Jelly lifted a hand. “Stone-walker. Your steps are loud. Come make ripples of your own.”
“I do not play with water,” Coral said, though her voice lacked conviction.
“Then play with stones. They don’t mind being borrowed.” Jelly plucked one from the ground and held it out without looking back.
Coral hesitated, then crossed the grass. She took the pebble, cool and flat against her palm. With a practiced flick she skimmed it across the surface. It leapt once, twice, three, four times before vanishing.
Jelly clapped her hands, splashing mud onto her knees. “Ah! Yours wished for both—a bird for a moment, then a fish again.”
Coral exhaled slowly. “It is only skill of the wrist.”
“Or the stone’s own choosing,” Jelly said, tossing another that plopped without a single skip. “See? This one was lazy.” She laughed, yet her gaze lingered on Coral, dark eyes bright with some unreadable mirth.
Coral turned away, unwilling to be drawn further into nonsense. “You waste your hours.”
“And yet you came to share them,” Jelly answered easily. “Perhaps your hours are tired of being heavy.”
The words stung, not for their sharpness but for their ease. Coral kept her face stern, though she felt the corners of her mouth wanting to bend.
Jelly flung one last stone high, so it splashed without skipping, and spread her arms as if embracing the circles it made. “There! A grand ripple. It will touch the bank soon. All things do, in time.”
Coral lifted her staff and turned to leave. But when she reached the edge of the grove she paused, glancing back once at the girl crouched by the water, her laughter mingling with the rush of the river.
The sound followed her down the path long after it should have faded.
The cry came at dusk, sharp enough to pierce the hush of the valley. Coral was on the outer lane, binding a broken fence post, when she heard it. A woman’s voice, hoarse with panic: “Help! Someone—please, he burns—”
She dropped her tools at once. Her hands moved by instinct, reaching for the satchel that always hung by her door, its pouches filled with roots and powders gathered on her climbs. Within moments she was running toward the cluster of huts at the village’s heart.
Inside the dim chamber, the air was stifling with smoke from hastily lit incense. A boy lay on a straw mat, sweat soaking his hair, his lips cracked from fever. His mother knelt beside him, wringing her hands, muttering half-formed prayers.
Coral knelt without a word. She touched the child’s brow—hot as embers—and began laying out herbs on a cloth. But then she noticed something else: a shadow shifting at the bedside.
Jelly was already there.
She sat cross-legged near the boy’s head, fanning him with a broad leaf. Her expression was almost grave, though her lips moved in a low stream of sounds—nonsense syllables, lilting like lullabies. When the boy stirred restlessly, her hand darted to catch his, squeezing it as though they were sharing a secret game.
Coral’s voice was sharper than intended. “What are you doing here?”
Jelly glanced up, smiling as though the question were silly. “Counting his breaths. Each one is a little bird caught in the storm. I cheer them on.”
“Cheering is not medicine,” Coral muttered, grinding dried roots in a mortar.
“Medicine is not cheering,” Jelly replied, gently tapping the boy’s forehead with the edge of the leaf. “But perhaps both are needed.”
Coral forced herself to ignore her, working swiftly. She mixed a poultice with careful proportions, pressing it to the child’s chest, then held a cup to his lips, coaxing him to swallow the bitter draught. Jelly never stopped humming, nonsense words twined with rhythm, nonsense that somehow steadied the boy’s restless limbs.
Hours dragged like seasons. The fever raged, broke, rose again. The mother dozed against the wall, too exhausted to speak. Coral’s arms ached from holding the boy steady, from grinding herbs, from the long vigil. Through it all Jelly sat like a shadow that refused to leave, her leaf-fan brushing gently, her voice weaving patterns that Coral could not dismiss.
Near dawn, the boy’s breaths smoothed, his skin cooled, and his small body went slack in sleep. The fever had broken.
The mother stirred awake, tears streaming as she clutched Coral’s hands. “Bless you, bless you—”
Coral nodded once, but her gaze had already shifted to the doorway. Jelly was slipping out, waving as though she had only played a game too long. Over her shoulder she called softly:
“The little birds decided to stay.”
Her laughter trailed off into the morning mist, leaving Coral kneeling in silence, uncertain whether to feel anger, gratitude, or something heavier than both.
The days that followed moved with the slow weight of late autumn. Frost gathered each morning on the rafters, melting into silver droplets by mid-sun. The villagers wrapped themselves in thicker cloaks, hurrying through their chores with their heads bowed.
Coral kept her rhythm—splitting wood, mending tools, carrying jars from the well—but she felt a new quiet pressed against her. Not only the ordinary hush that always followed in her steps, but something sharper, more deliberate. Whispers did not stop when she passed; they only shifted tone. Eyes slid away too quickly. Mothers drew children indoors when laughter rang from the grove above.
She told herself she did not care. Yet when she entered a lane and saw shutters close, her chest tightened, as if she had brought a winter draft with her.
That evening she went to the ridge. She had not meant to—she told herself she would walk only to the edge, only far enough to breathe air untainted by suspicion—but her feet turned as they always did, toward blossoms where none should bloom.
Jelly was sprawled in the grass, weaving crowns from fallen petals. She looked up with a grin, her fingers never pausing. “Stone-walker! Did the whispers grow too loud for you today?”
Coral sank onto a flat rock, weary despite herself. “Whispers are only air, you said.”
“Mm. Air can still sting, if it’s cold enough.” Jelly held up a lopsided crown, squinting at it as though it were precious. “Do you want it?”
Coral frowned. “I have no need of ornaments.”
“Then all the better,” Jelly said, tossing it onto her lap. “Things are lighter when they’re not needed.”
Coral picked it up reluctantly. Petals already browned at the edges, fragile against her calloused fingers. She set it beside her, unwilling to wear it yet equally unwilling to cast it aside.
The sky dimmed, and the grove settled into its peculiar hush. Their voices rose to fill it.
“Is silence heavier than noise?” Jelly asked, lying back with her hands behind her head.
“Noise disturbs the heart,” Coral answered.
“Then silence crushes it,” Jelly replied, her smile audible even in the dark.
Another night, Jelly pointed toward the horizon, where the last light bled away. “Why do shadows cling tighter at dusk than dawn?”
“They are only the absence of light.”
“Absence is still a kind of devotion,” Jelly murmured.
Coral turned sharply, ready to dismiss it as nonsense, but the words lodged in her like thorns.
In the days that followed she noticed things she had not before. A loaf of bread left at a widow’s door with no name attached. A bundle of reeds propped against a leaking roof, the work done before the owner could rise to complain. A child’s broken toy, mended clumsily with twine, found on a doorstep in the morning.
Always, no witness. Always dismissed as accident or as the kindness of spirits. But Coral saw the mud on Jelly’s hem, the scratches on her hands, the sly smile that appeared when such rumors reached her ears.
She wanted to confront her, to demand an explanation, but when she opened her mouth, Jelly would only tilt her head, eyes shining with mischief, and ask another question that unraveled her thoughts.
By the river, one evening, Coral asked at last, “Why hide your kindness?”
Jelly skipped a stone, watching the rings spread. “Kindness with a name becomes debt. Kindness without one becomes a gift. Which is lighter to carry?”
Coral had no answer. The river moved on, whispering around the stones, as though it mocked her silence.
Twilight laid a violet hush across the valley, the kind that turned every branch into a silhouette and every ripple of water into silver. Coral found herself walking beside the river with Jelly, though she could not remember agreeing to the path. Jelly had a way of turning footsteps into wandering, as if she tugged the world itself askew until one ended up where she wished.
The water moved slow between its banks, carrying leaves that spun and bobbed before slipping beneath. Jelly crouched suddenly, plunging her hands into the current. She lifted them, cupping a pool of water that shimmered in the dying light. For a breath she held it close, then let it fall back through her fingers, scattering into droplets.
“See?” she said. “Nothing can be held.”
Coral knelt beside her, staff resting across her knees. She watched the ripples widen, fade, return to stillness. “Yet it nourishes, even when it slips away.”
Their reflections wavered side by side on the surface—two faces blurred, unjoined, yet inseparable in the shifting water. For a moment neither spoke. Then Jelly laughed, soft but sudden, and Coral—startled—found her lips curving in answer. It was not the stern smile she gave to children in the village, nor the faint politeness she offered strangers. It was unguarded, rising from somewhere deeper.
She turned her gaze away, but the sound of her own laughter lingered, threading with Jelly’s like two notes from different flutes carried by the same breeze.
They rose together, walking further along the bank. Coral’s stride was steady, the staff marking time; Jelly’s was erratic, spinning in circles, skipping ahead to catch falling leaves, lagging behind to poke at the water with sticks. Yet no matter how far Jelly strayed, she always returned to Coral’s side, as though the space between them were elastic, stretching but never breaking.
From the ridge above, had anyone been watching, the two figures might have seemed a puzzle: one upright, solemn, the other drifting, playful. Their shadows crossed and uncrossed, separate yet drawn together, until the last of the light drained from the sky.
And as darkness gathered, Coral felt something inside her shift. Not an answer, not clarity, but a loosening—like a knot she had pulled too tightly on herself. She could not name it, yet she knew it had come from the girl beside her, the one who made burdens seem lighter and nonsense feel true.
When they turned back toward the grove, Jelly hummed a tune with no words. Coral listened, silent, but her steps matched the rhythm.
That night, walking back to her hut, Coral realized her staff felt heavier than usual—not from weariness, but from the thoughts crowding her mind.
And beneath them all lay a truth she could not yet say aloud: that Jelly’s nonsense was shaping her, as surely as water carved stone.
The sky was low with cloud the morning they came. Three figures in gray robes descended from the northern pass, their banners trailing damply behind them. The cloth was marked with pale sigils no villager could read, yet all drew back at the sight, bowing their heads as though the symbols themselves carried weight.
The envoys did not linger at the edge of the square. They walked straight to the granary steps, their boots cutting through frost, their faces as still as carved stone. One unrolled a scroll; another struck the staff he carried against the ground. The sound cracked through the hush like a splitting branch.
“The one who lingers in the grove,” their leader declared, his voice deep and level, “mocks discipline. Her laughter corrodes order. She wastes what was given. She spreads levity like rot.” His eyes swept the villagers, but it was Coral he fixed upon. “You—woman they call Coral—are seen too often in her company. If you would prove your path is steady, abandon her now. Step away, and you remain among the righteous. Refuse, and you fall with her.”
The square held its breath. The villagers looked from the envoys to Coral, their faces a mixture of pity and relief. Here was a chance, they thought, for her to free herself of the hermit’s shadow.
Coral’s hand tightened on her staff until her knuckles whitened. Her heart moved heavy in her chest, like something caged. She felt the weight of all their eyes, the whispers pressing in. Stone-walker, steady yourself. Choose.
Her voice, when it came, was steady. “I cannot abandon what was never bound. And I will not turn away one who brings no harm.”
A ripple of murmurs swept the crowd—shock, dismay, even a touch of fear. The envoys’ faces darkened, though they gave no sign of anger beyond the stiffening of their robes.
“Then you have chosen,” their leader said. He struck his staff again, once. “So be it.”
They rolled their banners and turned away, their gray figures vanishing back into the mist as silently as they had come.
The villagers did not speak to Coral as she left the square. Some turned their faces aside. Others watched with an unease that was sharper than before, as if her refusal had confirmed their darkest suspicions.
That evening she climbed the ridge alone. The path felt steeper than ever, though it had not changed. Her staff dragged with each step, no longer marking rhythm but burden.
Jelly was perched on a low branch at the grove’s edge, swinging her legs like a child. She tilted her head when Coral appeared, grinning. “You look as though you swallowed a boulder.”
Coral’s voice was flat. “They would have me cast you aside.”
“Mm.” Jelly hopped down, landing lightly among the blossoms. Her eyes were mischievous, but her tone was even. “And will you?”
“No.”
“Then it was only a feather after all.” Jelly brushed a petal from Coral’s sleeve, letting it drift away. “See? Easy to shake off.”
But Coral did not feel lighter. Her steps were still heavy, and the knot inside her chest did not loosen.
That night the grove was hushed more deeply than usual, as if even the crickets had withdrawn their song. Coral had not returned; she remained in her hut at the valley’s edge, sleepless, listening to the wind strike the shutters. But Jelly lingered in the peach grove, lying on her back with her arms flung wide, petals caught in her hair like a crown.
The river’s mist rose thick, silver under the moon. From it a shape began to gather—a figure half-formed, pale and wavering, its edges more suggestion than body. It moved without sound, gliding over the grass until it loomed above Jelly.
“You squander yourself,” it whispered, its voice like water sliding over stone. “This grove cannot hold you forever. Cast off these idle attachments, and I will show you the path beyond decay. Immortality waits, if you leave behind what tethers you.”
Jelly blinked up at it, yawning as if roused from a pleasant dream. “Immortality?” She rolled onto her side, propping her chin on her palm. “How dull. An endless joke with no one to laugh at it. No, thank you.”
The spirit’s form shivered, its mist curling closer. “What you call laughter is emptiness. Step beyond it, and you will never fade.”
Jelly plucked a blossom and held it up. “But fading is the best part. The petal that falls is lighter than the one that clings.” She blew on it, sending it spinning toward the spirit’s chest, where it vanished into mist.
The figure darkened, its voice sharpened. “You would choose death over eternity?”
“I would choose both,” Jelly said, grinning now, eyes glinting with mischief. “Eternity without death is just death without eternity—and what is life without petals, falling, flying, feeding the crows and ants their supper?”
The spirit recoiled, its shape unraveling. For a moment the air grew colder, the trees shivering as though a wind had passed through them. Then the mist collapsed back into the river, leaving only ripples where the figure had stood.
Jelly stretched, flopping onto her back again. “Mm. Even ghosts are too serious these days,” she murmured, closing her eyes. Soon her breathing deepened, slow and even, as though she had already forgotten the encounter.
Above her, the blossoms stirred in a breeze that had not touched the valley below.
The frost thickened with each passing dawn. Roofs wore a glittering crust that cracked beneath the first smoke from the chimneys, and the fields, stripped bare of harvest, seemed older than they had weeks before. The valley drew inward on itself, wary, tight.
So too did the people. When Jelly wandered through the lanes, humming at nothing, children who once laughed at her games were tugged back by anxious hands. Doors closed a little too firmly, shutters latched with unnecessary haste. Even her laughter—light, trailing behind her like the tail of a kite—was enough to make faces tighten.
Coral bore it more keenly. She had always walked in half-silence, but now the silence around her was different. No longer awe, no longer a hush of reverence—now it was suspicion, unspoken but sharp.
One morning she carried a loaf of bread through the frost, meant for a widow whose back had bent too far to tend her hearth. When she knocked, the door cracked open only a hand’s width. A lined face peered out, eyes wary.
“I brought you food,” Coral said simply, holding the loaf in both hands.
The widow did not reach for it. Her gaze slipped past Coral to the mist that clung to her cloak. “You keep strange company,” she whispered. “Her shadow clings to you. I cannot take it.”
The door shut gently, but with finality. Coral stood a moment longer, the bread cooling in her hands, then turned away. Her staff rang hollow on the frozen ground.
The rejections came in small ways after that. A water jar set back on her stoop, untouched. A boy who once chased at her heels ducking behind his father’s robe. She told herself it was nothing, only caution, but the weight of it pressed more heavily than the labor of any field.
That night she sat outside her hut, the loaf still whole beside her. The valley lay dim, smoke rising in faint threads. Above, the ridge gleamed faintly with blossoms that never faded. She thought of turning away, of closing her eyes until the hush swallowed her.
Instead, she rose, bread under her arm, and began the climb.
Jelly was waiting, as if she had known. She sat cross-legged beneath a tree, petal-crown lopsided on her head, her smile wide the instant she saw Coral. “Ah! You look as though the world tried to tie stones to your sleeves. Did it work?”
Coral lowered herself to the ground, placing the loaf between them. Her voice was quieter than usual. “They will not have me.”
“Then they free you,” Jelly said, tugging petals from her crown and sprinkling them into the loaf’s crust as though to bless it. “The only cage is wanting what does not want you.”
Coral did not answer. Her chest was too heavy, her throat too tight. But when Jelly tore the loaf in half and thrust the warm piece into her hands, she accepted it, and for the first time all day, the bread tasted soft.
The warmth lingered against her palms even after the crust was gone, yet the ache inside her did not ease. Around them the grove had grown too quiet, the blossoms too dreamlike. She rose without knowing why, her staff tapping lightly among the petals as her feet carried her onward.
Jelly followed at a skip, silent for once, as though she too felt the night listening. They left the trees behind, crossed through frost-silvered grass, and climbed until the hush of the valley fell away.
At last the river lay before them, pale beneath the moon. Its surface shifted with the slow drift of leaves, and frost glazed the stones at its edge, crunching faintly beneath Coral’s staff as she lowered herself to sit. The water breathed in silence, steady and unhurried, as though it could bear every weight she could not.
Jelly settled beside her without a word, knees drawn to her chest, chin resting on them, gazing at the faint shimmer of stars caught in the current. She shifted slightly, making room beside her as though the place had been waiting for two all along.
For a long while neither spoke. Only the river moved, the water lapping gently at the stones, steady as breath.
At last Coral said, almost to herself, “They do not want us.”
Jelly tilted her head, her cheek glowing faintly in the moonlight. “Then we are free of wanting them.”
Coral’s hand tightened on her staff. “It is not so simple. Roots run deep, even when the soil turns hard. One cannot always choose to let go.”
“Mm.” Jelly bent forward, scooping water into her cupped hands. She let it spill back, watching it break into a thousand pieces before smoothing again. “And yet the river never keeps what it carries. Maybe that is why it sings.”
Coral exhaled slowly, her breath fogging in the night air. She wanted to argue, to insist that duty could not be shaken off like droplets. Yet as she watched the ripples fade, her words dissolved.
They remained there, side by side, while the hours passed. Sometimes Jelly hummed nonsense, sometimes Coral closed her eyes against the stillness, but neither moved away. The cold deepened, yet Coral felt it less with Jelly’s warmth brushing against her sleeve.
When the moon shifted westward, they rose together. Coral’s stride was steady, staff striking in rhythm; Jelly’s steps darted and meandered, chasing her own shadow. Yet always, without fail, she drifted back to Coral’s side.
From across the river, their figures blurred by mist, they might have seemed like opposites: one rigid, one unmoored. But walking together, their shapes merged and parted like twin reflections on the water, bound not by sameness but by the current that carried them both.
The envoys returned when the valley was already brittle with frost. Their gray banners trailed stiffly in the wind, the cloth frozen into folds that did not move. This time there were more of them—eight in all, their faces pale with the cold and with judgment. They gathered in the square at dawn, the villagers roused from their homes by the sound of the staffs striking stone.
Coral stood among them, staff in hand. She did not bow. The air was sharp with smoke from morning fires, and every breath clouded between the figures like mist.
The leader unrolled his scroll, his voice carrying flat and unshaken. “Hear the decree. The hermit who dwells in the grove above is a corrupter of discipline, a squanderer of the gift of breath. And you, Coral, by your companionship with her, have proven yourself unfit for the path you once walked. If you will not cut her from your shadow, then you shall walk with her into exile. You are both cast from the valley. This is final.”
The words fell like stones into the silence. No one in the crowd protested. Some lowered their eyes in relief, others in shame. A few looked at Coral with sadness, but none stepped forward. It was easier to let the decree stand, easier to lose two figures who unsettled them than to question the judgment of the sect.
Coral felt the weight settle on her shoulders—rejection, loss, the severing of ties she had tried so long to uphold. Yet beneath the heaviness there was something else, something she could not name. A stillness, a quiet as if the burden she had carried for years had at last slid from her back.
At the edge of the square, leaning against a post, Jelly watched with a crooked grin. She clapped her hands softly, as though the envoys’ speech had been a performance. “Cast out? Mm. That just means lighter packs, doesn’t it?”
A few villagers hissed, scandalized by her levity, but Jelly only tipped her head back and laughed into the pale sky.
Coral looked at her then, truly looked, and the corner of her own mouth lifted despite the ache in her chest. The decree was heavy, but Jelly’s laughter turned its edge.
The envoys rolled their banners, their boots crunching across frost as they departed. The villagers melted back into their homes. The square emptied, leaving only the two of them standing in the cold, a loaf of silence between them.
Coral adjusted her grip on her staff. “So it is done.”
Jelly stretched, arms flung wide as though greeting the wind. “So it begins.”
They left before the village had fully woken. Frost still clung to the thatched roofs, and the smoke of cooking fires had not yet risen. The air was sharp, unbroken by birdsong, as though the world itself held its breath while they departed.
Coral walked with her staff planted firmly, each strike echoing on the frozen path. She carried no bundle, no token of the valley; she had not wished to burden herself with the weight of things that no longer welcomed her. Jelly trailed a step behind at first, dragging her toes through the frost, humming low and tuneless, her breath rising in little clouds.
No one watched them go. No child peeked from a doorway, no hand waved farewell. The silence of absence pressed harder than any accusation could have.
When they reached the slope’s first turn, Coral paused, glancing back. The village lay small beneath the mist, roofs like dark shells half-buried in the frost. Smoke had begun to rise after all, thin gray lines curling upward, ignoring her as completely as the people did.
“Do you grieve it?” Jelly asked, suddenly at her side. She was balancing on the stone wall that edged the path, arms outstretched like a tightrope walker.
Coral’s grip tightened on her staff. “It was not mine to keep. Yet leaving what one has tended is never easy.”
Jelly hopped down, crunching frost under her heels. “Then think of it this way—what you tended may grow differently once you step aside. Perhaps lighter, perhaps heavier. You’ll never know. Isn’t that freedom?”
Coral shook her head, though not with anger. “You twist everything into lightness.”
“That is why I don’t break,” Jelly said brightly, skipping ahead to pluck a withered reed and spin it in her hand.
They climbed higher. The path narrowed, the air thinning. Behind them the valley sank into haze; before them the ridges rose, jagged and pale, their peaks cut off by cloud.
Coral’s breath grew colder, heavier. Yet each time the weight pressed too close, Jelly darted back to her side—walking backwards to make faces, humming snatches of half-songs, brushing frost from branches onto Coral’s shoulder until she allowed the ghost of a smile.
By the time they reached the last turn of the path, the village was gone from sight. Mist closed behind them like a gate. The world they had known had already forgotten them, yet the mountain ahead lay wide, untouched.
They reached a ridge where the path simply ended, crumbling into rock that fell sheer into mist. The sun had not yet cleared the peaks, and the world below was a dim, shifting blur—valley, river, grove, all dissolved into a single pale wash.
Coral stood still, her staff planted firmly before her. The cold bit through her robe, but she scarcely noticed. She gazed into the mist where the village should have been, her lips pressed tight, her chest heavy with a grief she had not spoken aloud.
“They are gone to me,” she murmured. “Even if I returned, their eyes would never meet mine the same way again.”
Jelly crouched near the edge, arms wrapped around her knees. A petal had drifted here, impossibly, its color soft against the frost. She picked it up, holding it between finger and thumb. “Perhaps their eyes were never yours to begin with.”
Coral turned to her, sharp. “You speak as if roots mean nothing.”
Jelly smiled faintly, lifting the petal to the light. “Roots feed. But sometimes they strangle too. Better to be a petal—falling, flying, feeding the soil without needing to hold on.”
Coral’s hand tightened on her staff. “And yet, without roots, how does one endure?”
“By drifting,” Jelly said simply. She opened her palm, and the petal lifted on the thin wind, spinning once before vanishing into the mist below. “Endurance is not always staying. Sometimes it’s letting go until you land where you’re meant.”
Coral watched the space where the petal had vanished, a hollow opening in her chest. “You make it sound easy.”
“Not easy. Light,” Jelly corrected. She leaned back on her hands, gazing up into the pale sky. “Heavy things break. Light things bend, dance, play. Which do you think we are, Coral?”
For the first time since leaving the village, Coral’s lips softened into something like a smile. She exhaled, a long cloud of breath. “Perhaps both. Stone and petal.”
“Mm.” Jelly rocked back onto her heels, laughing softly. “A strange pair, then. But strange pairs are harder to scatter.”
They rose together. The ridge stretched out before them into unmarked rock, the world behind already lost. Coral felt the ache of leaving still within her, but beside it, lighter now, was Jelly’s laughter, bright as the petal that had drifted away.
The mountain opened before them, ridge folding into ridge, each higher than the last. No road guided their steps now—only stone, frost, and the pale breath of cloud drifting low across the slopes. The wind carried no voices from the valley. It was as though the world below had already sealed itself, erasing their names.
Coral walked with her staff set firm, each strike ringing against the stone, her pace unhurried but sure. Beside her, Jelly darted and lingered, skipping ahead to chase her shadow, circling back to match Coral’s stride, then leaping onto rocks to stretch her arms wide as if she could balance the sky itself.
They spoke little. Words seemed unnecessary when the silence was no longer heavy, but spacious—wide enough to walk within. When they did speak, it was in fragments.
“The valley will go on without us,” Coral said once, not looking back.
“Mm,” Jelly answered, tossing a pebble into the void below. “But the mountain will go on with us.”
Later, Coral asked, “Do you never tire of laughter?”
Jelly tilted her head, grinning. “Only when it’s forced. The true kind never ends—it just changes shape.”
Coral said nothing more, but she let the corners of her mouth curve.
As dusk settled, they reached another crest. The sky had gone violet, streaked with gold, and the peaks beyond gleamed like distant lanterns. Below them, the mist shifted, revealing for a moment the faint outline of the river, glinting like a silver thread. Then it closed again, leaving only cloud.
They did not pause long. The night was rising, and the mountain’s breath grew colder. Together they walked on, their shadows stretching across the stones: one straight and steady, one darting and playful, crossing and uncrossing, always finding their way back beside each other.
Coral’s staff struck a rhythm, deliberate and even. Jelly hummed a tune with no words, weaving her voice through the cadence until both sounds joined, distinct but inseparable.
And so they went, dissolving into the twilight—two figures small against the vastness, carrying nothing but the resonance between them.
The world below roared unseen, but up here only silence followed, and their laughter carried farther than the wind.