They'd been playing near the old mill stream. Thomas leapt from stone to stone across the water, daring
Jack to follow. Jack, eager to prove he was no longer just "the little one," tried. His foot slipped. The water
surged. Thomas reached to catch him—he always did—but this time, it was Jack who caught something: his
brother's hand. For a brief second, they were connected, struggling against the pull. Then Thomas slipped
too.
The current was cruel.
They found Thomas's body a mile downstream. Jack never forgot the sound of his mother screaming, or the
way his father turned away, silent and shrunken, fists clenched at his sides.
In the weeks that followed, Jack drifted like smoke. He ate little. Slept less. Their home became a
mausoleum of unspoken things. His mother wept behind closed doors. His father stopped looking at him
altogether.
And then—on a foggy morning, when the world was quiet and raw—Jack saw the girl again.
She was sitting on the stone wall beside the sheep paddock, legs swinging, her pale feet dirty with earth.
She didn't speak at first. Just looked at him with eyes too large, too dark. Jack walked toward her, the frost
crisp under his steps.
When he was close enough, she smiled and said, "He's still watching you."
Jack froze. "Thomas?"
She nodded. Then, with a sadness he didn't understand, she reached out and touched his hand. Warmth
flooded him. He gasped. Her touch felt like memory wrapped in light.
"I'm Eluna," she said, as if it mattered. Then she stood, stepped back, and faded between the trees.
Jack whispered her name for days after that.
He never told his parents. They wouldn't believe him. But when he sat by the fire at night, staring into the
flames, he could feel her watching—just beyond the dark corners of the room. And when the wind howled
through the hills, it sometimes sounded like laughter, but only Jack heard it.
He began to draw—on stones, in the dirt, on old wood panels. Circles. Spirals. A face that was not quite
hers. He didn't know why. It felt right. Like he was remembering something that hadn't happened yet.
The valley would move on. Seasons would change. His mother would begin to scold again, his father would
shear sheep with rough hands, and Jack would continue growing. But inside him, something was no longer
quite human. A hairline crack had formed.
The first crack in the lullaby.