Chapter 12 - I Let Him Go

Tidecall Memory Fragment 𐤎𐤔𐤓𐤔𐤓𐤕: "The One Who Forgot"

Location: Mikonos Coastline, Shallow Drift Shelf

Phase: Waxing Half-Moon – Tui's Eye Returning

Namecall: Saeh-Li of the Silent Vein

Status: Still Watching. Still Waiting.

He returned.

I tasted him on the tide before I saw him.

Older now. Different. Softer around the edges. His laughter no longer wandered alone—it was tangled with other voices now. A woman's. Children's.

His scent is not just salt and skin anymore.

It carries bread and oil, ink and detergent, things of roots and walls.

He has anchored.

And I…

I remain drift.

It has been many turnings of the moon since the last time I rose to the seawall. Since I whispered beneath the stone where his voice once trembled. Since I sang to the waves that held no answer.

I told myself I would forget.

That I must.

That surface things were fleeting. Warm, bright… and gone.

But I never sank far.

I couldn't.

Something in me—a glowing ember behind the gills—waited.

And now, he is here again.

He walked to the wall tonight.

Not the boy he was. A man now. Worn by time, carved by memory, with a life trailing behind him like a second skin. He held a bottle. Looked up at the sky as if searching for something he no longer believed in.

And still—when he saw the lights—

He stopped breathing.

My lights.

The soft cascade along my spine, flickering in slow, silent rhythm. I didn't flare them to dazzle, not this time. Just enough for him to know:

I remember.

He didn't speak at first. Just stared.

Then…

"I have a family now."

And though I knew the shape of those words, I didn't understand the weight of them until I felt it hit my chest like a breaking current.

Not shame.

Not betrayal.

Just a cold, slow ache.

I watched him a while longer.

He looked older, yes—but not unreachable.

He was the same soul I touched once.

The same one who raised his hand when I dared raise mine.

The same who once stood at the edge of fear and didn't run.

But now there are anchors in him.

Lines tied to things I cannot enter.

A woman who holds his breath at night.

Children who carry his song in their bodies.

I am not angry.

Saltborn do not love the way surface folk do.

But I mourn.

Because I felt hope rise in me again, like a tide I did not summon.

He left before the lights faded.

And I let him go.

Not out of bitterness.

Not out of sorrow.

But because I understand now what the waiting was for.

Not for reunion.

Not for mating.

Not for a life stolen from land or sea.

But for this:

To know that something once impossible—

Was real.

Even if he forgot.

Even if he buried it.

Even if the stars moved on and the world turned.

He came back.

And for a moment,

the space between us burned bright again.

I will not follow him inland.

I will not take form.

I will not reach.

Not because I am afraid…

But because now,

finally,

I have closure.

And beneath the waves,

I weep in silence—

not from loss…

but from love that does not demand.