No Songs for the Living

The Arch stood alone in the canyon, older than any Sun Fae memory, half-swallowed by vines and silence. At its base, Belenat waited. Sunlight brushed her bronze cheeks, a name heavy on her tongue.

She whispered it like a prayer. “Ranka”

It wasn’t a proper Sun Fae name. Females were named with “B.” Always. But this name, carved into war songs and stone, had belonged to her mother. A diminutive, a broken-off piece of some older, forgotten name. She would honor the intent, not the tradition.

A low buzz filled the air, faint as breath. Stone shimmered. The Arch stirred.

A voice responded. “Who calls me?”

The voice stopped her breath. It was rough, alive, impossibly close.

Belenat stepped forward. “Ranka, it is me. Belenat. Your daughter.”

Silence crackled. The spell between them didn’t allow much. It stitched words across time like butterfly wings pinned by light.

Ranka’s voice filtered in the space of the Arch. “My daughter? She’s a baby.”

“Yes, that's right. I was a baby when you died. The stories say you fell buying time for your sisters to escape. But they don’t know what you left behind.”

A breath caught on the other side of the Arch. A blink in the magic. She wished she could see her mother, touch her.

“My child...?” Her mother's voice.

Belenat swallowed, not sure if she was doing the right thing. But she wanted her mother. “I came to warn you. To stop you from going to the war where you die.”

The Arch shimmered, its spell struggling to hold time still. The wind stilled. Across decades, mother and daughter faced each other in voices alone.

“They say you were the greatest warrior the Sun Fae ever had,” Belenat said. “A Sun Fae woman who chose the sword when you were meant to kneel. And you died for it.”

“I died for them,” Ranka said. “Not for legends. Not for history.”

“But you didn’t have to.” Frustration ballooned in her chest. “You could have run. Hid. Lived. With me.”

“That is not what I was meant to do.”

“But who says you couldn’t have been meant for something else?”

A pause.

“I’ve read every scroll,” Belenat said. “I snooped through sealed archives. I found this Arch. I traced the spell of the forgotten god who laid it here. I stood in the one place, at the one moment, where I might reach you.”

“To stop me?” Ranka asked.

“Yes.”

A long silence.

“I’m standing at the hilltop now,” Ranka said. “I see the enemy. I see my sisters running. I’m seconds from drawing my blade.”

“There’s still time. You can make a different choice and not be caught in this snare.” Belenat wanted to reach through the Arch, pull her mother through.

“I’m the only one who can hold them off.”

“There has to be another way.”

“You think I don’t wish that? You think I don’t care that I will never see you as a woman?”

The air trembled. A bird sang its song nearby, a stopped moment of time, but it was like a promise already broken.

“If you cross that point,” Belenat whispered, “you never come back.”

Ranka exhaled.

“And if I don’t, none of them make it out alive. Is that what you wish for me?”

“I’d rather have you,” Belenat said. “Even if it means no songs.”

Another pause.

“I’m sorry,” Ranka said. “But I have already stepped forward.”

The spell broke.

The Arch went silent.

Belenat stood alone beneath the sky, wind pressing at her shoulders like a mother’s hand she would never know.