Melodius Longwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Melodius Longwood stood knee-deep in tall grass and tried to remember his own face. He could not. He knew only three things: his hands were a man's hands, his neck rose above the grass like a giraffe's, and the wooden flute in his fingers felt like the one true thing he owned. Somewhere behind the missing years was the answer to how he had become this. He meant to find it. He lifted the flute and played the first notes that came. A slow, rising line. Something flickered behind his eyes — a woman's laugh, a warm room, gone before he could hold it. He played the line again. Nothing. He tried a brighter tune. A flash of rain on stone, then dark. Every song pulled at a curtain and dropped it before he could see through. He followed the sound of water because he did not know where else to go. Past the trees, a waterfall poured down a stone face crusted with gems. Crystals grew at its base like teeth. The falling water rang, and beneath the ringing he heard notes — real notes, hanging in the air near the stones. A woman knelt at the pool's edge. Red hair, round glasses, a purple dress stained at the knees. She was pressing a clay disk into the shallows and watching it. A small white puppy with butterfly wings sat on her shoulder and shed faint dust onto her collar. "Don't step in the water," she said, without looking up. "You'll scatter the notes." "You hear them too," Melodius said. "Everyone hears them. Nobody plays them back." She glanced up. Took in his neck. Did not react. "You play?" "I only play. I don't remember anything else." She studied him a moment. "Try matching the falls. Note for note. Memory lives in the right key, sometimes. I read that once." She turned back to her disk. He raised the flute and listened first. The gems rang in a pattern — three notes, a pause, two notes, a long low one. He copied it. He copied it again. On the third pass, the pattern shifted, as if the waterfall were answering him. He played what it gave him back. The curtain in his head tore open. He saw a stone room. A woman braiding his hair around small horns that were not yet a giraffe's. He saw hands not his own pouring something dark into a cup. He saw himself drinking it. He saw the field. He lowered the flute. His hands shook. "You found one," Roswyn said. She had stopped working. "Your face went somewhere." "Someone gave me a cup," he said. "I drank it. That's why I'm like this." "Do you know who?" "No." He looked at the waterfall. The notes kept falling. "But she was in the room with me. And she was smiling."