Burned Journal Page – “The Ceremony of Reflections”

~ Hidden entry. Scrawled in haste. Ink blotched by the tide. Only this copy remains in memory. ~
 
Tonight was the Ceremony of Reflections.
 
They placed us in the Luminous Vaults—one by one—each of us with a shallow bowl of moon-tide water. We were told to peer into the basin and watch.
 
No spell. No song. Just see.
 
The water did not show me doctrine. It did not show me the face of Thal’vanna. It showed me moments.
 
Small, ridiculous, precious things.
 
I saw Varoz—young, before the Watch ever weathered him. He was dripping wet, breathless with laughter, holding up a stinging coral to dare me into touching it. I remember how the burn swelled along my palm, and how I swore never to trust him again. I remember how he spent three days in silence beside me as penance. I forgave him on the fourth without a word.
 
I saw my first dive. My fingers breaking the vent-warm surface above Nimbrassa. My lungs screaming as I touched open current. I thought it was the entire world. I thought I would never come back.
 
I saw the memory of a lullaby—half-remembered, sung in the dark of the hatchery crèche. I do not know who held me. I do not know the melody. But I remember feeling warm, even in the cold.
 
I saw myself. Before the rites. Before the training. Before I ever spoke the name of the Queen aloud.
 
A girl, alone in the tide, clutching a shell she thought could whisper back.
 
I was told to let these things go. To release them into the tide, let them be carried away like sand from a trench shelf.
 
But I couldn’t. Not fully.
 
So I did what no faithful should do.
 
I wrote them here.
 
One page. One breath of rebellion. One soft echo of who I was.
 
I know it must burn.
 
But I needed it to exist. Even just once.
 
If only so that the Current knows what it takes to make a servant.
 
And what it costs to make a weapon.
 
This page was burned in the Rite of Salt and Silence.
The memory is gone.
But I remember.