Kaelen and the Mirror of Salt Part 2

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Beside her, Varaan raised his head, as if something were calling him from a great distance. The salt expanse that had woven images for Kaelen became a deep, blue-green shimmer, glowing like water under ice. Kaelen saw Varaan's pupils narrow into slits. In the depths of the mirror, something large and scaly moved, but the image was not a body; it was an event: She recognized a shoreline of rocky niches, above which clusters of glass eggs hung in nets, held by thongs of plant fiber. Dragon bodies, old and young, glided between the niches, slowly, mindfully. Music without instruments hung in the air—a vibration heard in the bones. Varaan lowered his brow, as if he wanted to touch the salt without scratching it. Kaelen realized that the mirror showed him what his kind had lost. Not just a place, but a rhythm in which they breathed together. A dance of vigilance and rest, of flying and landing, of carrying and being carried. And in that rhythm, which his people once knew, lay also the memory of what they regretted: the day the shores broke because they had clung too long to the old nets, which were already brittle. They had believed that the tried and tested would always hold, and had become too late for the new. A hoarse, deep hum rose in Varaan's throat. The mirror responded with a flicker, as if distant sparks were caught in the salt veins. Kaelen placed her hand on his side; she felt the steady pressure of his breath, heavy yet calm. "I see it," she said. "And I see you." She forced herself to look again—not out of punishment, but out of a refusal to run away from her own truth. "Regret is a way of measuring time," she thought. "Not to remain stuck in it, but to feel its weight." As she placed her fingers on the surface, a final image emerged from the salt: Kaelen, who would visit the mirror again later, not as a sinner, but as a guardian. She saw herself drawing lines in the ground: paths of caution that still allowed room to breathe; knots that could be untied if a storm came. This was not a promise of the world, but of her own doing. "Enough," she whispered, for every measure needs an end. The mirror obeyed, albeit reluctantly, like a sea that rises and then falls still again. The light sank. Across the salt ridge, dusk crept like a gray, gentle cat. Varaan took a step back. He shook his head, slowly, as if untying invisible threads from his horns. Kaelen reached to the straps of his pack, automatically checking the knots; she tied no new one, she untied none.