Mirella Marshlight's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Mirella stepped past the warning and into the cave mouth. The air turned cold. Just inside, she found a ragged blanket bunched against the wall, half-burned sticks scattered beside it, and pale scraps of paper weighed down by stones. A camp. Hasty. Left in a hurry. She knelt and lifted one of the notes, but the ink had blurred to gray smears. A sound clicked behind her. She turned. A bird the size of a hound stood between her and the daylight. Its feathers shone blue and purple, set with chips of ruby that caught the dim light. It did not screech. It only watched her with steady red eyes and shifted one clawed foot, blocking the way out. Mirella raised both hands slowly. The bird tilted its head toward the deeper dark of the cave, as if pointing. She understood. It would not let her leave. It wanted her to go further in. She walked backward, careful, until her shoulder bumped stone. She turned. A great rock rose from the cave floor, taller than she was. Lines glowed across its face in pale blue, like cracks full of moonlight. In the center, cut deep and clean, was a single word. A name. Her breath stopped. She knew the shape of those letters from nowhere, and yet her hand lifted to trace them as if she had always known. The carving was older than the warning outside. Cut by a different hand. Whoever had scratched the rushed warning at the entrance had been running from this name. Her parents had not made this. They had read it, and fled, and left her behind because of it. Mirella pressed her palm flat against the glowing letters and whispered the name aloud. The gemstone bird behind her ruffled its feathers once, then settled, as if a promise had been kept. She did not know yet whose name she had spoken. But she knew now that her parents had run from a person, and that person had been here first. She tucked the blurred note into her pocket and faced the dark ahead.