The dim, enchanted lights of Spectral Murmurs cast a soft glow over the small alcove where Bell and Callum had found a quiet corner. Spectral Murmurs was famed for its ambiance—a place where, amid low light and murmuring voices, magic wove whispers through the air, soft voices drifting in and out of earshot like ghostly song.
Bell leaned into the velvet seat across from Callum, her fingers brushing her sketchbook as she listened intently. Fragments of words floated by like the remnants of long-forgotten conversations, phrases half-formed, emotions lingering in the air. She looked up, meeting Callum’s gaze, their faces close in the dim glow.
“Shall we make a poem of it?” Callum asked, his voice a quiet murmur that blended seamlessly into the whispers around them.
Bell grinned, her heart warming at the thought. “Yes,” she whispered back, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Let’s gather them like fallen petals.”
They leaned in, each listening carefully to catch words and snippets, weaving them together like a tapestry of language.
“Ghosts linger... like faded dreams…” Bell began, her voice barely a whisper as she pieced together the words of long-lost souls.
Callum picked up where she left off, his eyes gleaming with the thrill of the game. “Their laughter, bright… a spark… a shadow drifting… to where they once belonged.”
The air in Spectral Murmurs thickened, almost humming with the energy of voices long silenced. Callum's fingers drummed softly on the table as he caught another phrase and added, “In shadows we remain… memory like rain… through leaves that breathe…”
Bell took a breath, letting the words fall into place. “The past, a golden chain… tangled, yet unbroken…”
They shared a smile, voices low and intimate as they shaped the murmurs around them into poetry, each line a mystery, each phrase a flicker of lives that had once passed through Dûrnarn’s winding streets.
Finally, Callum took Bell’s hand across the table, and they leaned even closer, finishing their whispered poem together:
“In the dim light, we stay… anchored by the softest breath, bound by words that drift like stars… till morning slips them away.”
They sat in silence for a moment, each feeling the weight of those borrowed words, the beauty of creating something fleeting, only for them. Their shared smile was all they needed, a gentle acknowledgment of the evening’s magic, one that would linger in their minds like a sweet, spectral memory.
The sun filtered through the stained-glass windows of Ephemeral Letters of the Veil, casting shimmering fragments of colored light across the polished marble floor. The space hummed with a quiet magic, shelves lined with ghostly scrolls and translucent pages suspended mid-air. Words shimmered in and out of existence, as if they were alive, fading and reappearing with the rhythms of unseen breaths.
Bell and Callum wandered through the maze of floating letters, their hands occasionally brushing against the faint glow of an ethereal script. Bell found herself drawn to one particularly delicate page, its words a soft gold that pulsed gently with light. She reached out, her fingers barely grazing the edge, and the page shifted, revealing a sentence so personal it made her cheeks flush.
“It’s like they know us,” she murmured, turning to Callum with a nervous laugh.
“Maybe they do,” he replied, his eyes twinkling as he leaned over her shoulder to read the phrase. “Or maybe you’re just drawn to the ones that speak your truth.”
Bell’s breath hitched. The words on the page rearranged themselves again, forming an entirely new message that seemed just as intimate. She tore her gaze away, glancing at Callum. His brown curls caught the light, and his grin was warm and inviting, as always. But there was something in his gaze—an openness, a vulnerability—that made her heart flutter.
They continued through the exhibit, pausing to admire a letter that seemed to sing softly as its words scrawled themselves into delicate poetry. Callum leaned in close, reading the lines aloud in his rich, lilting voice. Bell barely heard him, too caught up in the way his lips shaped each word, the way his presence seemed to fill the entire room.
“You’re quiet today,” Callum observed, tilting his head to look at her.
Bell laughed nervously. “Just… thinking.”
“Dangerous,” he teased, nudging her playfully. “What about?”
She hesitated, glancing down at a shimmering page that hovered in front of her, its glowing words twisting and reshaping into something new. Be brave, it urged silently. Her heart raced.
“I was thinking…” she began, her voice softer than she intended. She glanced up at him, her cheeks burning. “I think I’m… falling in love with you.”
The words tumbled out before she could stop them, like the letters rearranging themselves in the exhibit—honest, inevitable, and impossible to take back. She clamped her mouth shut, her hands twisting nervously around the strap of her bag.
Callum froze, his eyes widening slightly before softening with an expression she couldn’t quite place. “Bell…” he began, his voice quiet and steady. He reached out, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “You’re full of surprises, you know that?”
She opened her mouth to respond, but the words didn’t come. She was suddenly hyper-aware of the space between them, of the way his fingers lingered near her cheek, of the faint hum of magic in the air around them.
Before either of them could say anything more, one of the floating letters shifted, glowing brighter as it floated between them. They both turned to look, reading the new words that appeared on its translucent surface:
Love is fleeting, like letters on the wind—but its mark remains forever.
Bell’s chest tightened, the words hitting her like a physical force. She dared to glance at Callum, who was staring at the phrase with an unreadable expression. Finally, he looked back at her, his smile tinged with something bittersweet.
“I think this place knows us better than we know ourselves,” he said softly, his voice carrying a hint of laughter.
Bell couldn’t help but smile back, her heart aching with both hope and uncertainty. Whatever came next, she would always remember this moment—the magic of the letters, the glow of Callum’s eyes, and the way her heart had leapt when she’d finally let her feelings slip free.
The next morning, Bell woke to a pale, silvery glow filtering through the curtains of her small apartment above the shop. At first, she thought it was the soft light of early morning, but as she pulled back the curtains, her breath caught. The city was blanketed in a strange, white substance that glittered faintly in the weak sunlight, like frost covering every surface. It clung to the rooftops, the streets, and even the air itself, drifting in lazy spirals like ethereal snowflakes.
Her stomach churned with unease as she watched the spores float down in a gentle, surreal cascade. Dûrnarn had seen its fair share of strange phenomena—this city was nothing if not unpredictable—but this… this was different. The stillness of it, the quiet that seemed to press down on the streets below, was unsettling.
A knock at the door startled her out of her thoughts, and she turned to see Elspeth leaning against the frame, her usually sharp eyes shadowed with concern. “The city’s issued a lockdown,” Elspeth said, her tone brisk. “That mold—or whatever it is—seems harmless, but they need time to study it. Everyone’s being told to stay indoors until further notice.”
Bell frowned, glancing back at the window. “Do they know where it came from?”
Elspeth shook her head, crossing the room to peer out the window herself. “No. It doesn’t seem toxic, but who can say in a place like this? For now, we wait.”
The next few days stretched endlessly, each hour blurring into the next as Bell obeyed the lockdown orders and remained inside the shop. At first, she tried to keep herself busy. She sketched at her worktable, arranged the shelves in the shop, and even attempted to read one of Elspeth’s dense, cryptic tomes on magical theory. But her mind kept drifting back to Callum.
They’d had plans to visit another art exhibit—something he’d promised would “change her life.” She’d been counting down the days, the hours, until they could spend time together again. But when the lockdown was announced, he’d called to cancel with an apologetic laugh. “Guess fate has other plans, huh?” he’d said. Bell had tried to laugh along, but the disappointment lingered, heavy and sharp in her chest.
Now, she found herself at the window more often than not, staring out at the strange, snowy landscape of Dûrnarn. The mold spores drifted lazily on the breeze, sparkling faintly in the lamplight before settling onto every surface. People scurried through the streets below, their faces covered with scarves or masks, moving quickly to wherever they needed to be. The usual hum of the city was muted, replaced by an eerie, expectant silence.
Bell pressed her forehead against the cool glass, her breath fogging the pane. She thought about Callum—his crooked grin, the way his eyes lit up when he talked about something he loved, the way he always seemed to make her feel like she belonged, even in this strange and sprawling city. She wondered where he was now, what he was doing. Was he thinking about her, too? Or was he caught up in some whirlwind of creativity, oblivious to the longing that tied her stomach in knots?
She sighed, tracing absent patterns in the condensation on the window. Below, a child ran through the street, laughing as they twirled beneath the falling spores, their arms outstretched like they were catching snowflakes. For a moment, Bell’s heart ached with an unnameable longing—something bigger than just missing Callum, something vast and unknowable, as though the spores had unlocked a forgotten dream buried deep within her.
The days passed in a haze of waiting. Bell counted each hour, each drifting spore, as she stared out at the quiet city. The longing in her chest grew heavier with each passing moment, like a thread pulling her taut. And through it all, Callum’s absence loomed large, a silent shadow that refused to leave her thoughts.