Echoes

The Echo Between Us

The wind picked up just as Mira reached the top of the cliff, her coat snapping around her legs like impatient wings. Below, the sea snarled and surged, casting salt-laced spray into the moonlight. But it wasn’t the sea she’d come for.

She tilted her head back, eyes closed.

Then, from her chest—deep and raw and ancient—came the howl.

It wasn’t graceful. It cracked on the way out, wobbled in tone, and trembled with too much feeling. But she howled anyway. For the unanswered letters. For the silence after she said “I love you” to someone who didn’t say it back. For the grandmother who taught her to love storms, and the friend who stopped calling when things got hard. For every echo that never returned.

She howled again, this time steadier. Louder.

The canyon caught her sorrow and threw it back, twisted and softened, like it was trying to hold her pain and soothe it all at once. *Howww... ohhh...*

She didn’t hear the footsteps behind her. Not until a second howl joined hers.

Low. Familiar. Wounded.

She spun.

“Caelum?” she breathed.

He stood there, hair tousled from running, chest heaving. “I heard you,” he said, voice rough. “I felt it in my ribs. Like you were calling all the way through the bones of the earth.”

Mira stared. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I didn’t think I knew how,” he admitted. “But when you howled—Mira, I..." He stepped closer. “I’m here to echo back.”

She could barely speak. “What if it’s too late?”

He smiled, tired and true. “It’s never too late to call home.”

They howled together again, laughing through tears. The canyon didn’t just echo this time—it sang.

And in that harmony of wildness and healing, the silence between them finally broke.