I wrote our names in charcoal across my forearms, pressing hard enough to ensure the marks would last. Aria. Dorian. Ashara. Simple anchors against the forgetting that still pulled at the edges of my mind. Behind us, the Forest That Forgot Its Name whispered fragments of stolen identities, trying to lure us back.
"Here," Ashara said, reaching for Dorian's face with small, determined fingers. She traced spirals on his cheeks, his forehead, the bridge of his nose. "So I don't forget your shape."
He held still for her ministrations, understanding the child's wisdom. In a place where identity itself became fluid, physical markers might be all that saved us.
Ahead, the river sprawled like a wound in the earth—water flowing in two directions at once, current splitting and rejoining in patterns that hurt to follow. We had to cross before nightfall. The mirror-woman's warning echoed: the forgetting hours were worse, and memory loss could become permanent if we lingered.
"Together," I said, taking Ashara's hand. "No one crosses alone."
The forest made one last attempt as we approached the water. Voices bloomed from nothing—my mother calling my childhood name, Dorian's brother begging him to return home, versions of ourselves from timelines we'd rejected pleading to be chosen instead.
"Don't listen," I commanded, though my own voice shook. One of the alternates looked exactly like me but smiled with teeth too sharp, promising easier paths if only we'd trade places.
"Mama, she looks sad," Ashara observed about my doppelganger.
"She's not real, baby. Just echo and want."
We reached the riverbank as the sun began its descent. The water smelled of nothing—aggressive absence of scent that made my nose itch. Dorian tested the depth with a branch, frowning when it came back both wet and dry simultaneously.
Then he turned to me with empty eyes.
"Who...?" The word fell incomplete from his lips. He stared at me like a stranger, hand drifting to his weapon.
"Dorian." I grabbed his shoulders, felt him tense. "Dorian, it's me. Aria. Your partner. Mother of your—our daughter."
Nothing. The river's proximity had already begun its theft.
Desperate, I pulled the necklace from beneath my shirt—leather cord stained dark with my blood from wounds that felt like lifetimes ago. I pressed it to his face, let him breathe in the copper scent of survival.
"You know this," I whispered. "You were there when I bled. When she was born. When we chose each other over everything else."
Recognition flickered. His hand found mine, trembling. "Aria?"
"Yes. Yes, love. Hold onto that. Hold onto—"
"Where's Ashara?"
The words hit like ice water. I spun, finding only empty space where our daughter had stood. No footprints. No sign of struggle. Just absence.
Then we heard it—crying, high and frightened. Coming from within the river itself.
"No." But even as I denied it, I was moving, diving into water that existed in too many states at once.
The river attacked immediately. Not with current or cold but with subtraction. Each second stripped something away. The name of my first teacher—gone. The taste of honeyed bread—erased. The color of the dress I'd worn to my mother's funeral—dissolved.
I swam through forgetting, searching for a cry that came from everywhere and nowhere. Places fell away first—towns I'd visited, roads I'd walked. Then emotions began to blur. What was the word for the feeling when someone you loved smiled? What did safety taste like?
Ashara.
I held onto the name like a lifeline, even as the river tried to convince me it meant nothing. Just sounds. Just air shaped by meaningless flesh.
Something glinted in the impossible current. Small, familiar—a wolf-tooth necklace like mine but sized for a child. I grabbed it, and the world snapped back into focus.
A reed boat floated in a pocket of still water, and inside, Ashara sat curled into herself, form translucent as morning mist.
"I didn't mean to forget," she sobbed as I pulled her against me. "But the river kept asking who I'd rather be. Showed me all the other versions. The ones who were stronger. Smarter. Less afraid."
"None of them were you," I said fiercely, kicking toward what I hoped was shore. "None of them were mine."
The river fought our escape, offering bargains with each stroke. Forget the pain and keep the joy. Trade difficult memories for easier ones. Become someone who'd never been broken, never been scarred, never been forced to choose between impossible options.
But scars were proof of survival. Pain was evidence of living. I'd earned every difficult memory through blood and choice, and I'd be damned if some confused water would steal them now.
We broke the surface to find Dorian wading in after us, my name on his lips like a prayer. He pulled us to the far bank, all three of us gasping, shaking, more solid than we'd been moments before but fundamentally changed.
I felt it as I wrung river water from my hair—a streak near my temple had gone silver-white. The river had taken its toll after all. When I reached for memories of my mother, I found her voice, her warmth, the feeling of her arms. But her face...
Gone. Eaten by water that flowed in too many directions.
"I'm sorry," Ashara whispered, seeing my distress.
"No, little star. Some prices are worth paying." I pulled her close, breathing in her scent, memorizing it again. "We're here. We're together. That's what matters."
She looked up at me with those too-knowing eyes. "We're close now. I can feel Her watching again."
The capital H was audible. The Moon Goddess, attention drawn by our defiance of yet another natural law. I wondered what she thought of mortals who refused to be properly forgotten, who clung to their broken selves rather than accept easier shapes.
"Let her watch," I said, helping Dorian to his feet. "We've nothing left to hide."
We walked away from the river on legs that remembered walking, hearts that remembered loving, carrying names we'd fought to keep. Behind us, the water laughed softly—not mockery but something sadder.
The sound of all the selves we might've been, flowing in directions we'd never travel, carrying stories we'd never tell.
But we had our own story. Scarred, incomplete, missing pieces the river had claimed.
And it was enough.
It was ours.
🌙💎 If you're enjoying Aria's rise, drop a Power Stone and add the book to your Library! Your support helps the Moon Queen burn brighter 🔥🌕
📚 New chapters DAILY!