✧ Scene: The Discovery

It came as a whisper from an old professor neither of them particularly liked.

A forgotten box catalogued under a misnamed shelf — mislabeled during colonial inventory. Found in a small private archive outside Seville, undergoing digitization. The staff didn’t know what they had. But the scanned documents hinted at something unusual.

Fragments of poetry in Arabic, but with strange annotations in Latin. References to a “hidden line” — not of rulers, but rememberers.

“Their tongues turned silent, but they did not forget.
Their sons became priests.
Their daughters carried verse in breath.”

Aaric saw it first — a sample sent to him because of his previous writing on sacred memory.

He stared at the digital file for hours. The script was Andalusi — unmistakably feminine in rhythm and formation. A woman’s voice. A woman writing through erasure. He traced the notes, the references to lineage, and something snapped into clarity:

This wasn’t just historical.
This was personal.

It shook him.

Because he had written about this possibility before — but hypothetically.
Because Zahra had lived as if this had always been true.

He knew he couldn’t explore it alone.

He needed her.

And so, for the first time, he reached out — not with apology, not with pretense. But with reverence.

Subject line: “Your verse knew before mine did.”
Attachment: A single page from the archive.
Message:
You once wrote that memory travels through the blood unseen.
I think we’ve found a river.
Would you come with me to its source?

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