It began with a ripple that moved the wrong way.
Not against her body, but into it—like the river had reversed the grammar of flow just for her.
The girl—still unnamed, still unwritten—stood barefoot at the edge of the riverbed that no one in the village dared speak of. They called it cursed, though no curse was ever named. They said the water ran cold even under the summer sun. They said those who stepped into it forgot their mothers' faces.
She didn't believe them.
She didn't not believe them either.
Because belief, for her, was not a thing to be chosen. It was something that lived in her skin like heat or ache. It followed her into sleep and touched her dreams with fingers made of half-truths. And tonight, it had led her here—beneath the violet hush of a moon that hung sideways like an unfinished sigh.
She stepped into the water.
And the water… knew her.
