Her name was Derya.
One of the early ones.
She led the fourth-ever memory circle in a ruined library on the Aegean coast.She wrote the first Kara poem that was ever painted on a wall.And she hadn't spoken to Emir in nearly a year.
Until now.
—
She stood in the bookstore's back room.
Staring at the humming device.
Coils glowing.Condensation glistening in the basin.
She said nothing for a while.
Then:
— "It's beautiful."
Emir smiled softly.
— "It works."
She turned.
— "That's not why I came."
—
They sat near the door, away from the Builders.
Ziya was still adjusting frequency tuning.
Ece was sketching version three.
The others spoke in technical shorthand that didn't need explanation.
Derya watched them.
Then whispered:
— "This isn't remembering anymore."
Emir didn't respond.
She continued:
— "This is application.Structure.Institution."
She looked at him.
— "We were building a language.You're building… machines."
He nodded.
— "Yes."
—
"Let her speak," Atatürk whispered in his ear."This isn't an argument.It's mourning."
—
Derya's hands were trembling slightly.
— "I came to Kara to feel.To cry in public without being fixed.To remember the parts of myself that schools and borders erased."
She glanced at the prototype again.
— "And now you're soldering dreams into steel."
—
Emir spoke quietly.
— "Do you remember when we first sat in that ruined depot?"
— "Of course."
— "What did you say when the rain leaked through the roof?"
She paused.
Then smiled despite herself.
— "I said, 'We should patch it before we drown in metaphors.'"
Emir leaned forward.
— "That's what we're doing.We're patching the roof.Not erasing the poetry.Just… making sure no one freezes underneath it."
—
She didn't answer immediately.
But after a long silence, she looked at him with softer eyes.
— "Do I still belong here?"
He reached for a folded piece of paper from his pocket.
One of her earliest poems.
She gasped.
— "You kept that?"
He handed it back.
— "You started this."
Then pointed to the prototype.
— "This is what your poem did.It taught us to listen to dreams with tools."
—
That night, she didn't leave.
She stayed in the bookstore.Watched the Builders work.And when they paused, she read aloud.
Her voice cracked—but her hands were steady.
"I was afraid they'd forget how to cry.Now I see they're building machinesthat remember why we wept."