The light found me before I saw her. She rose from the water as if dawn had chosen a single body to wear that morning—half fire, half river, all memory. The sky behind her was a quiet blaze of orange and blue, mirroring her form as though the world had been waiting for her to step forward again.

Her hair moved like currents—soft, unhurried, full of stories it was not in a hurry to tell. Beneath her chest, the blue deepened into something older than the lake itself, like a pool where forgotten names go to rest. The ducks drifted around her without fear, circling her like disciples returning to a familiar teacher.

I felt the air around me shift, as though the water itself held its breath. The surface glowed under her, each ripple carrying a small remembrance. She did not walk toward me. She simply stood, and the world arranged itself quietly around her presence.

Some lights come like warnings—sharp, loud, demanding. But this one arrived like someone knocking gently at a door I had locked for too many years. She was small and steady, and her steadiness felt like truth. It asked nothing. It waited.

In the dream, I recognized the place she stood. It was the same water where I had once left a question unanswered. A question about who I was before the world taught me how to hold back. The clay-colored walls of memory rose around me, and I felt myself walking into a room I had not entered since childhood.

She lifted her hand—not to summon, not to warn, but to remind. The motion stirred the water, sending a soft glow into the reeds. For a moment, I thought she might speak. Instead, the silence around her grew thick enough to hold meaning on its own.

I thought of names again—grace, memory, God, mother, river—but none of them were big enough to contain what she was. Each word I reached for wilted in my hands. She was none of them and all of them, a quiet truth that did not ask to be defined.

Somewhere beyond us, the world argued with itself, shouting about endings and beginnings. But here, in this small corner of water, nothing ended or began. There were only middles—steady, sacred middles—where breath could return without being chased.

When I stepped closer, the water warmed around my ankles. The ducks swam aside, making room. She did not retreat. Her eyes held me with a gentleness I had not earned, but still she offered it, the way some gifts arrive only when we have finally stopped running.

I realized then why she stayed. Not to lead me. Not to save me. But to show me the shape of something I had forgotten how to carry—my own light, small but unwavering, even when everything else dimmed.

When I finally turned to leave, the light did not follow. It rested back into the water, folding itself like a blanket returned to the place where it belongs. A quiet bowl of warmth remained on the shelf of my memory, patient and still.

I closed the door softly behind me—so softly that the dream did not break. The light remained, doing its work long after I woke.