Chadwick Rye

The Unspoken Summons

The morning light filtered through the hexagonal windows of Lyralei’s tower chamber, casting geometric patterns across the polished heartwood floor where she sat in contemplative stillness. Her hands rested atop the gentle swell of her belly, fingers tracing slow circles through the fine silk of her morning robe—a gift from her husband before his deployment to the Borderlands three months past. The fabric whispered against her skin like secrets shared between lovers, carrying the faint scent of lavender oil she had pressed between its folds to keep his memory close.

Beneath her palms, the child stirred with increasing frequency these days, tiny limbs pressing against the walls of her womb as if already eager to explore the world beyond. Each movement sent ripples of wonder and terror through Lyralei’s heart—wonder at the miracle of life forming within her body, terror at the magnitude of responsibility that would soon rest in her inexperienced hands.

The Crystal Spires of Lumenvale gleamed in the distance, their ancient surfaces catching and refracting the dawn into countless prismatic fragments that danced across the city below. From her elevated perch in the Healer’s Quarter, she could trace the winding canals that carried both commerce and whispered conversations through the city’s arteries, connecting district to district like silver threads in an elaborate tapestry.

But this morning, the beauty of her beloved city felt distant, almost ephemeral, as if viewed through layers of gauze. Her thoughts turned inward, pulled by an urgency that had been building for weeks—a need so profound it seemed to emanate from the child itself, demanding acknowledgment.

*Who would you like to talk to soon?*

The question had arrived in a letter from her dearest friend Mira, now studying herbalism in the far-off Twilight Conservatory. Such a simple inquiry, yet it pierced through Lyralei’s carefully maintained composure like a blade finding the gap in armor. The parchment lay open on her writing desk, Mira’s familiar script flowing across the page with characteristic grace, but those eight words resonated in her mind with the persistence of temple bells.

Lyralei rose from her meditation cushion with the careful movements that had become second nature as her body transformed. The child—*their* child, hers and Kaelen’s—had grown large enough to shift her center of balance, requiring conscious adjustment to movements that had once been fluid and unconscious. She moved to the window, pressing her forehead against the cool crystal panes that overlooked the Whispering Gardens below.

The gardens held a special significance for expectant mothers in Lumenvale. Ancient magic dwelled among the carefully tended groves, where trees spoke in voices only the unborn could hear, sharing wisdom that would guide them through the labyrinth of birth into the complexity of existence. Lyralei had spent countless hours walking those paths during the early months of her pregnancy, when morning sickness made eating a negotiation and sleeping an exercise in finding positions that didn’t trigger waves of nausea.

Now, in her seventh month, the sickness had passed, replaced by a profound awareness of time’s acceleration. Each day brought her closer to the moment when everything would change irrevocably—when she would cease to be solely herself and become someone’s mother, responsible for nurturing and protecting a being whose needs would supersede her own.

*Who would you like to talk to soon?*

The answer rose from depths she hadn’t known existed within her, surfacing with the inevitability of dawn breaking over the eastern mountains.

Her mother.

Lyralei’s breath caught in her throat, the admission carrying weight that threatened to buckle her knees. Evelina Starweaver had passed into the Eternal Realm when Lyralei was barely sixteen, claimed by a fever that even the most skilled healers of Lumenvale could not cure. The loss had carved a hollow space in Lyralei’s chest that never fully healed, merely learned to accommodate itself to the rhythms of her continued existence.

Now, standing at the threshold of motherhood herself, that hollow space ached with renewed intensity. How desperately she longed to seek her mother’s counsel, to ask the thousand questions that plagued her restless nights. What had it felt like when Lyralei herself had quickened in the womb? Had Evelina been afraid during labor, or had some instinctive wisdom carried her through the pain? What lullabies had she sung, what prayers had she whispered, what hopes had she woven into the fabric of her daughter’s earliest moments?

The child stirred again, a gentle pressure against Lyralei’s ribs that felt almost like a response to her emotional turmoil. She placed both hands over the movement, imagining she could feel the tiny heartbeat that had become the steady rhythm underlying her own.

“I wish you could meet your grandmother,” she whispered to the child, her voice barely audible above the soft susurrus of wind through the window seals. “She would have loved you with the fierce tenderness she showed me. She would have known exactly what to do when you cry, how to soothe your fears, what stories to tell you about the magic that flows through our bloodline.”

Tears gathered in her eyes, each one carrying the weight of accumulated grief and anticipation. In the growing light, they caught and held fragments of rainbow from the crystal spires, creating tiny prisms that transformed sorrow into something approaching beauty.

A soft knock at her chamber door interrupted her reverie. “My lady?” The voice belonged to Nessa, the young servant who had been assigned to assist her during the final months of pregnancy. “The morning meal is prepared, and Master Thorne has arrived for your consultation.”

Master Thorne—the elderly healer who had been monitoring her pregnancy with the meticulous care of a master craftsman approaching his finest work. His presence meant another examination, another opportunity to hear the reassuring rhythm of her child’s heartbeat through his crystal listening device, another chance to ask the practical questions that complemented her deeper emotional needs.

“I’ll be down presently,” Lyralei called back, her voice steadier than she felt. But she remained at the window, reluctant to abandon this moment of raw honesty with herself and the child she carried.

Her gaze drifted to the writing desk where Mira’s letter waited, along with parchment and quill she had set out to compose her reply. What could she write? How could she explain that the person she most needed to speak with existed only in memory and dreams, that her greatest wish was for a conversation that could never occur in the waking world?

Yet even as the impossibility of that desire settled over her like a heavy cloak, Lyralei felt something shift within her understanding. Perhaps the conversation she craved was not entirely beyond reach. Her mother’s wisdom lived on in the thousand small lessons embedded in Lyralei’s memory—the way Evelina had sung while braiding her daughter’s hair, the gentle firmness with which she had corrected childhood mistakes, the unconditional love that had formed the foundation of Lyralei’s sense of self-worth.

Moving to her writing desk, Lyralei seated herself carefully and took up the quill. The ink flowed across parchment with surprising ease, carrying words that seemed to emerge from some reservoir of certainty she hadn’t known she possessed.

*Dearest Mira,*

*Your question finds me in a contemplative mood, made more profound by the increasing reality of the life growing within me. If I could speak with anyone soon, it would be my mother—to ask her counsel, to seek her blessing, to share with her the wonder and terror of impending motherhood.*

*But in writing this, I realize that the conversation I crave may not be as impossible as it first appeared. Every day, I find myself channeling her wisdom without conscious effort—the way she taught me to find calm in chaos, her belief that love is both the greatest gift and the most sacred responsibility we can offer another soul.*

*Perhaps the dead speak to us not through grand visitations but through the quiet moments when we discover their teachings embedded in our own responses to life’s challenges. Perhaps my mother is already guiding me toward the woman I need to become for this child, just as she guided me toward the woman I am today.*

*The child stirs as I write this, and I choose to believe it is her way of agreeing.*

Lyralei set down the quill, surprised by the peace that had settled over her spirit. The ache of loss remained, would always remain, but it no longer felt like a wound that prevented healing. Instead, it had transformed into something more complex—a bridge connecting past and future, experience and anticipation, the mother she had been blessed to have and the mother she was preparing to become.

Downstairs, Master Thorne waited with his instruments and gentle expertise. Soon, she would hear her child’s heartbeat again, would submit to the careful hands that monitored the miracle of birth preparing itself within her body. But first, she would finish her letter to Mira, sharing the revelation that had emerged from contemplating the impossible conversation she most desired.

Outside her window, Lumenvale continued its eternal dance of light and shadow, magic and mortality. The Crystal Spires sang their ancient harmonies, the Whispering Gardens murmured their timeless wisdom, and life flowed through the city’s arteries with the persistence of hope itself.

And within Lyralei’s womb, her child grew stronger each day, preparing to join the endless conversation between past and future, carrying forward the love of a grandmother she would never meet but whose influence would shape her from her very first breath.

The unspoken summons had been answered, not through supernatural visitation but through the deeper magic of memory transformed into guidance, loss alchemized into love that would span generations.