🌿Chapter III : The high vigils 🌿

"It wasn't the cold that separated them. It was the silence of the swamp."

Time had stood still.

Since the Obsidian crashed, Elias and Maëra had lived secluded on the heights of the swamp, in a makeshift camp built around the wreckage. Their bodies were slowly healing, but their minds were transforming. The swamp hadn't simply welcomed them. It was observing them. It was studying them. And slowly, it was changing them.

Their daily life was punctuated by the mists. Every morning, Maëra got up before dawn to observe the patches of fog rising from the waters. She drew tirelessly, capturing the invisible movements of the swamp, the changing reflections, the shadows that seemed to dance beneath the surface. Her notebooks filled with strange shapes, shifting maps, symbols she didn't yet understand.

Elias, on the other hand, often remained silent. He spent hours staring at the lantern, listening to the pulses it sometimes emitted, like a distant beat. He said the light spoke to him. That it showed him things. Memories. Faces. Paths he'd never taken, but that he recognized.

In the evening, they gathered around an improvised fire made of dry branches and metal scraps. They ate little: roots, berries, sometimes a strange fish caught in a stagnant puddle. Their conversations were rare, but precious. Each word seemed weighty, laden with meaning, as if they were speaking through the marsh itself.

And yet, despite the silence, despite the fear, they loved each other. One night, when the mist had receded like a weary sea, they found themselves side by side, sitting on a flat rock, overlooking the still waters. The sky was black, moonless, but Elias's lantern cast a soft, almost warm light for once.

Maëra rested her head against his shoulder.

"Do you think we're alone?"

"No," Elias replied. "But I think this moment belongs to us."

They stood there, without speaking, their breaths mingling in the cold air. Elias took her hand, and for the first time since their fall, he smiled. A discreet, tired, but genuine smile.

Maëra turned to him.

"If we never leave again..."

"Then it will all begin here again."

They kissed. Slowly. As if time belonged to them. As if the marsh, for one night, would leave them alone. It was that night that Maëra dreamed of a child. A boy with clear eyes, who walked fearlessly among the reeds. She said nothing to Elias. But she drew this face on a page that she slipped into her notebook, between two maps of the marsh.