Beneath vaulted ceilings where light filtered through dust and the scent of oiled vellum stained the air, she was born.
Her father a chartophylax. Meticulous-tender, archiver of history.
He believed that memory, if preserved,
could outlive sorrow.
Her name was Theaphanïa.
It was written once—carefully—on a birth scroll,
folded among a hundred others.
No prophecy. No expectation.
She lived quietly.
She was promised.
Fate.
There was no curse.
No divine interruption.
No bargain, no blood—
just one night,
and the next morning,
Nothing hadn't changed.
Not her breath.
Not her reflection.
Not the day.
Not the week.
Not the year.
Not the- century.
She was herself as the world was itself
As she lived time stretched out and folded back in.
Centuries blurred together like ink bleeding on old parchment.
The voices she remembered disappeared,
their shapes lingering in the spaces they once occupied.
Stone cracked and cities crumbled inward overgrown and became still.
And through it all, she remained.
Not in defiance.
Not of strength.
Not even of will, but of existence.
She didn't evolve.
She didn't decay.
She simply continued.
What she became—
there was no word for it.
She never tried to name it.
It didn't feel like a secret.
More like silence that had settled in.
Now, she walks through an age that doesn't recognize her.
Streets changing like a woman's hair
Languages buzzed like shifting tides;
like old songs hummed from memory,
missing half their notes.
She doesn't speak of where she came from.
Not because it wounds her,
but because it deserves better than casual mention.
She believes it's still there.
Changed. Quiet.
Breathing beneath the noise.
To strangers, she's just a passing figure—
a woman in quiet clothing,
standing too long in the refractions of stained glass,
or seated beneath worn stone columns,
gone before the next bell.
No grave bore her name.
No monument.
No memory.
Only remnants.
A sketch of a courtyard that no longer exists.
A phrase in a tongue, older than the wall it was carved into.
She writes to keep from coming undone.
She draws to remember what it means to have form.
She watches.
Not to collect—
only to witness.
She's learned to admire endings.
The soft, patient way ivy overtakes stone.
How rain rounds off what was once sharp.
How strangers sometimes reach destinations, without knowing why.
She doesn't wish for death.
But sometimes—
in the quieter hours—
she dreams of rest.
The kind that asks for nothing,
and stays long enough to matter.
Until then…
she walks.
Not to be seen.
Not to be remembered.
Only to remain.
And if these words survive—
if they end up in someone's hands,
and something in them touches that deep, unnamed ache—
the one that feels like memory
without a source—
Let that be enough.
She didn't mean to say all this.
She never does.
But tonight…
it spoke to be written.
And maybe she let it.