Mrs. Evans had a cold.
On Tuesday morning, she moved through the apartment with the slow, deliberate movements of the mildly unwell. Her voice was scratchy. "I'm making us special tea, sweetie. My grandmother's recipe—good for what ails you."
Astraea watched from the kitchen table as Mrs. Evans gathered ingredients. Lemon from the fridge. Honey from the cabinet. And from a small tin kept at the back of the spice shelf, a collection of dried herbs.
"Thyme for strength," Mrs. Evans murmured, more to herself than to Astraea. "Mint for clarity. And a pinch of silverleaf for... well, Grandma said it was for 'remembering who you are.' Probably just folklore."
Silverleaf.
Astraea knew that plant. Not from books or CYAP lessons. From the airy mountain meadows where it grew only in moonlight. From her mother's garden, where the silver leaves shimmered like captured starlight on dew.
Mrs. Evans crushed a few dried leaves between her fingers. The scent that rose was faint—dusty, herbal, ordinary to human senses.
But to Astraea's dragon perception, still heightened from yesterday's memory unlock, the scent was a trumpet blast.
The tea kettle whistled. Mrs. Evans poured boiling water over the herbs in two mugs. The steam that rose carried the scent more strongly now—unfolding, awakening.
"Let it steep five minutes," Mrs. Evans said, covering the mugs with saucers. "Then we'll add honey."
They sat at the table waiting. Mrs. Evans sniffled. Astraea watched the steam curl from under her saucer. The scent filled the kitchen. Not just silverleaf now—the combination. Thyme's earthy strength. Mint's bright clarity. And silverleaf's... memory.
Five minutes passed. Mrs. Evans removed the saucers, added honey, stirred. "Here you go, sweetie. Sip it slowly."
Astraea lifted the mug. The warmth seeped into her hands. She breathed in the steam.
And tasted home.
The memory didn't clang into existence like the forge memory. It seeped. Like the tea steeping in hot water, the past steeped into the present:
She was small—dragon-small, the size of a large dog—curled in a nest of sun-warmed stone high on a mountain ledge. A cough rattled through her, painful and dry. Her first childhood illness. A dragon-cold caught from playing in the newly thawed glaciers.
Her mother appeared, her form shifting from vast-winged majesty to a more manageable size for the ledge. In her claws she carried a stone bowl, steam rising from its contents.
"Drink, little star," her mother murmured, her voice like wind through crystal forests. "This will help."
Astraea sniffed the steam. Thyme from the lower slopes. Mint from the stream banks. And silverleaf, glowing faintly with absorbed moonlight.
"It smells funny," young Astraea complained, her voice hoarse.
"It tastes of care," her mother said simply. "Now drink."
She drank. The warmth spread through her, easing the ache in her throat, the rattle in her chest. But more than that—the taste carried something else. A sense of safety. Of being known. Of her mother's love distilled into leaves and hot water.
"Why does it help?" Astraea asked between sips.
Her mother nuzzled her gently. "Because every ingredient remembers where it grew. The thyme remembers mountain strength. The mint remembers stream clarity. The silverleaf remembers moonlight and starlight—the sky's own medicine." She paused, her great silver eyes thoughtful. "And when you drink them together, you remember too. You remember you are mountain and stream and sky. You remember you are my daughter. And that memory is the strongest medicine of all."
Young Astraea finished the tea. The cough eased. The warmth settled in her core. She curled against her mother's side, the taste of silverleaf and love on her tongue.
"Will you always make me tea when I'm sick?" she asked sleepily.
Her mother's wing settled over her like a silver blanket. "As long as there are mountains and moonlight, little star. As long as memory lasts."
"Astraea? Sweetie, are you crying?"
Mrs. Evans' voice was concerned. Her hand touched Astraea's cheek, wiping away tears Astraea hadn't realized were falling.
The kitchen snapped back into focus. The mug was warm in her hands. The tea's steam still carried the scent of silverleaf.
"I'm okay," Astraea whispered, her voice thick. "The steam... stung my eyes."
But it wasn't the steam. It was the memory. So vivid. So immediate. Her mother's voice still seemed to echo in the air. The feeling of that silver wing over her. The taste of the tea—exactly the same. Not similar. The same.
Four hundred years later, on another continent, in another world, a kind human woman had made her the same tea. With the same love. For the same reason.
The coincidence was impossible. Which meant it wasn't a coincidence.
Mrs. Evans sipped her own tea. "My grandmother used to say this tea had 'old magic' in it. Not the new Awakened kind. The kind that's been in herbs and stones since before people gave it names." She smiled, her eyes kind over the rim of her mug. "Silly, I know."
"No," Astraea said softly. "Not silly."
She drank the tea. Each sip carried the memory with it. Not just the sensory details now, but the emotions. The safety. The love. The absolute certainty that she was known and cherished.
When she finished, the empty mug felt like a relic. A connection across centuries.
At CYAP that day, Astraera moved through activities in a haze. The memory of her mother's care was a warm blanket around her, softening the edges of the world. Chloe's sideways glances felt distant. Marcus's occasional confused looks from the Glimmer Hall doorway barely registered.
During "Sensory Sparkle Exploration," where children tried to match sparkle colors to different sensations, Astraea found herself automatically making her silver sparkles pulse in the rhythm of a heartbeat. Not hers. Her mother's, from memory. The slow, deep rhythm of a dragon at rest.
Mia noticed. Her water orbs pulsed in sync. "That feels... peaceful," she whispered.
"It's a memory," Astraea said, not elaborating.
But Leo, with his scientific mind, recognized the pattern. "Cardiac rhythm. Approximately 12 beats per minute. That's not human. Or mammalian."
"It's draconic," Astraea said, the word slipping out before she could stop it.
Leo didn't look surprised. Just made a note. "Resting heart rate correlates with metabolic rate and lifespan. A 12 BPM rate suggests..." He calculated silently. "Extended biological timeframe."
She had told him she was a dragon. But telling and demonstrating were different things. The heartbeat rhythm was a piece of evidence. A data point in her non-human nature.
The memory stayed with her all day. Not as an intrusive vision, but as a background warmth. A certainty. She had been loved. Deeply. Completely. By beings of cosmic scale and endless patience.
That love hadn't died with the famine. It was preserved in memory. And somehow, in the strange alignment of whatever passed for fate, Mrs. Evans had tapped into it with a tin of dried herbs and a grandmother's recipe.
After CYAP, walking home with Mrs. Evans (who was feeling better, she claimed, from the tea), Astraea asked, "Where did your grandmother learn the tea recipe?"
"Oh, family lore," Mrs. Evans said, waving a hand. "Her grandmother taught her, and so on. We've always been... sensitive to plants. Not Awakened, not like you sparkle-children. Just... good with growing things." She smiled. "My sister has a green thumb too. Must run in the family."
A family of plant-sensitive humans. Keeping alive a tea recipe that matched a dragon mother's healing brew exactly.
The connections were piling up. Leo with his scientific mind seeing through her disguise. Mia with her empathic plant connection understanding her nature. Mrs. Evans with her family tea recipe that matched a dragon remedy.
It was as if the universe, in its vast indifference, had accidentally arranged a support system for her. Or perhaps not accidentally. Perhaps there were patterns too large to see from within.
That evening, Mrs. Evans made the tea again. "Preventative measure," she said cheerfully.
This time, when Astraea drank it, the memory was gentler. Not a tidal wave, but a warm tide. She could examine details: the specific pattern of light on her mother's scales. The way the mountain wind had sounded different that day—softer, as if respecting a sick child's rest. The other dragons who had visited, bringing small gifts: a perfectly round river stone, a feather from a cloud-phoenix, a shard of crystal that sang when the wind hit it right.
The memory was a living thing, growing each time she accessed it.
[System Notification]
[Memory Unlocked: 'Mother's Care']
[Emotional Content: Very High. Associated Sense: Gustatory/Olfactory.]
[System Analysis: Memory contains detailed botanical knowledge inconsistent with user's age.]
[Recording as: 'Family Tradition - Vivid Recall']
[Reward: +5 to 'Herbal Knowledge' stat]
[Quest Updated: 'The Long Wait - Muscles Remember']
[Progress: Emotional foundation strengthening. Memory integration supporting biological development.]
The System was trying. It saw the detailed knowledge, recognized it didn't fit a ten-year-old, and created a category that almost made sense: "Family Tradition - Vivid Recall." Close, but missing the scale by centuries.
Before bed, Astraea checked her moonthread plant. It had grown visibly since yesterday—another inch, its crystalline structure more defined. It glowed brighter, too. Not from moonlight through the window. From within.
Mia's text arrived as she was measuring her height (152.3 cm—minimal growth): Plants remember too. The tea plant remembers being part of a dragon's garden. That memory is in every leaf.
Astraea stared at the message. Mia understood in her intuitive way what Leo understood through science and what the System couldn't comprehend at all: memory wasn't just in minds. It was in the world. In the way silverleaf grew toward moonlight now because it had grown toward dragon scales then. In the way a tea recipe survived in a human family because once, long ago, a dragon mother had taught it to a human she loved.
The taste still lingered on her tongue. Not just thyme, mint, silverleaf.
Love. Across centuries. In a mug in a human kitchen.
Some memories weren't stored in minds at all. They were stored in the world—in plants that remembered their first gardeners, in recipes that remembered their first makers, in tastes that carried love across impossible distances.