Through the cold, misty night, a quaint and mellow old town sat in silence by the calm low tide of the coast in the Republic of Padokea. The town had survived, mostly on its own, for hundreds of years, and was untouched by outsiders.
The townspeople were rarely, if ever, disturbed by outside forces, until this very night, when a middle-aged woman stumbled upon something that could only be described as a miracle.
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The sea was quiet. The sky wavered between golden and gray.
Maren stood barefoot on the cold sands as she stared out into the dark, unfeeling night.
In her hands was a bundle of white flowers, damp at the stems, and half wilted already. She had no strength left to cry anymore, as she had done so years ago when she lost her son to this same, now quiet, sea. Not even the tide had come to apologize to her.
She crouched at the place where the rocks formed a shallow crescent. The same place he'd played as a child. The same place he'd vanished.
She placed the flowers down with care. Not reverence, exactly — but something quieter. Something more human.
And just as she stood to leave, something in the water moved.
She didn't panic. Didn't speak. Just watched as the ocean rolled forward, a little faster now, pushing something toward her across the surface.
A basket.
Small, worn, sealed with strange cord. Not rope — something finer. Something she couldn't put a name to.
Inside, wrapped in cloth and not making a sound, was a child, no, rather, an infant.
Black hair like wet ink. Eyes like glass — unblinking. Not crying. Just… watching her.
"Have mercy on you, child, where could you have come from?" Maren seemingly asked the boy.
'I don't understand how this is possible.' She thought to herself. 'No child could ever survive a trip across these seas by themselves, let alone in a woven basket.'
"This… is a miracle." She said slowly, almost in shock at her own words.
She picked up the small, quiet boy, and grabbed the basket with her other hand.
On her night of melancholy, somehow, the sea had given her an apology, and despite what it had taken from her, she knew in her mind now that this child was one she had to raise as her own. A call of destiny, if you will.
She quickly made off back to her home, carrying the miraculous infant and his basket through the still streets of the town.
The wind blew soft and low across the town of Balnoa, brushing loose shutters and empty cobblestone streets with gentle, salty breath. The lanterns had long since gone out. The stars were fading into the morning.
No one saw the woman slip through the mist with a child in her arms.
No one saw the sea give something back.
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The coast had not changed, but the town had. Slightly.
A new home had been built closer to the rocks. Small. Rounded roof. Painted carefully in fading white, with ocean driftwood worked into its walls. It sat just out of reach of the tide, like it, too, was watching the waves.
Inside, it was always warm.
Maren now walked with a faint limp in the colder months, and her hair, which once had streaks of dark brown, had dulled to ash. She wore thick linen coats and hummed old songs she didn't remember the names of.
And Kaien — the boy with black-ink hair and eyes like frozen glass — had grown.
Not tall yet, but graceful. Still. Too still.
He moved like a reed in shallow water — always slow, always deliberate. His hands were rarely idle. If he wasn't reading, he was drawing lines in the dirt, mimicking the flow of birds in flight, copying the stance of the fishermen as they cast their nets.
The other children in the town had tried to play with him once or twice. It didn't last.
He wasn't unkind. Just quiet. Distant. He never looked confused, even when he should have been. It made the other kids feel uneasy.
"He talks like an old man," they would whisper.
"Like he already knows what you're going to say."
Kaien didn't mind.
He preferred the quiet anyway.
One morning, he sat on the wooden porch outside the house, legs crossed, hands folded in his lap. The sun had just barely started rising. Mist clung to the ground like a sleeping blanket, and the trees beyond the dunes swayed without wind.
Maren opened the door with a soft creak and stopped when she saw him.
"You've been out here all night again, haven't you?"
Kaien didn't answer right away.
"The stars were particularly loud tonight," he said simply.
She blinked.
"Loud?"
He nodded once, then tilted his head toward the horizon.
"They say things, sometimes. Not words. Just… ideas."
Maren sighed through her nose and smiled, not understanding — but no longer surprised.
"Come eat. Before you catch something."
The kitchen was small but full of warmth. A kettle boiled on the stove. Herbs hung by the window, drying in the early light. On the shelf above the counter sat a basket — the basket — now empty, lined with a bit of faded cloth, kept not for use but for memory.
Kaien looked at it sometimes, like someone staring at a painting with a secret in it.
He never asked about it. Not yet.
But Maren sometimes caught him glancing at it with an expression far too heavy for someone so young.
Like he was trying to remember something that didn't want to be remembered.
"You're a little strange, you know," she said to him once while cleaning vegetables at the table.
"I know," he replied, eyes still on the page in front of him.
"Not in a bad way," she added quickly, pausing her work. "Just… different. Like you're watching everything from the outside."
Kaien looked up.
"Isn't everyone?"
Time passed like the tide — slowly, inevitably.
Kaien learned faster than she could teach. He read books twice his age. He could remember entire pages after a single glance. When he tripped, he never tripped the same way again. When he touched someone's hand, he would sometimes pull away quickly, like he'd felt something strange beneath the skin.
He didn't like to be touched.
He didn't cry.
He didn't laugh.
One evening, as the sun began to slip behind the cliffs, Kaien stood by the edge of the sea, staring at the waves as they slid in and out in their continuous cycle.
Maren approached slowly, arms crossed against the wind.
"What are you doing out here, Kaien?"
"I was trying to figure out why I feel so far away," he said, not turning to her.
"From what?"
He didn't answer.
He simply reached down, touched the surface of the tide with his fingers, and then pulled back like it had burned him.
Later that night, he drew spirals into the dust on the wooden floor of the house, muttering under his breath.
Maren watched from the doorway.
She didn't say anything.
She just watched and wondered.
Where did you really come from, my boy?
And what are you becoming?
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Kaien's POV:
He didn't understand why people liked to touch each other.
He'd seen it, of course. Mothers brushing hair from their children's faces. Friends pulling each other along by the wrist. Boys wrestling in the sand, loud and clumsy. He'd watched it all with the same still expression — not envy, not confusion, just… observation.
And the thought that always came to mind was, "How do they bear it?"
Because when someone touched him — even gently — the world became louder. Their emotions didn't stay inside. They spilled. Their thoughts pressed against him like fingerprints on glass. The simple contact became something tangled, vibrating — a sudden wrongness that set his nerves humming like threads pulled too tight.
It wasn't pain. Not exactly.
It was more like standing too close to thunder.
Maren had learned not to press it. She never forced a hand on his shoulder. She let him choose when to take hers — and he rarely did. Not because he didn't trust her. He did. If there was anyone in the world he felt something close to safe around, it was her.
But safety wasn't enough.
Even with her, the moment skin met skin, something shifted. He felt things she never said out loud. A flicker of fear. A memory. A shape of sadness she didn't know he could sense. It hit him like a scent, like a sound, like the weather. He couldn't stop it, and he couldn't stop reacting.
So, he kept his distance.
Not out of fear. Out of necessity.