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The door clicked gently shut behind the last visitor of the day, and silence settled like a soft blanket over the room. Fireflies blinked lazily in the high corners. Instruments gleamed in the low golden light.
The following days after the first night of his own Gift acceptance had been filled with curious eyes and ears from nearly the whole town. Something this unexpected, following both the tragedy of the Madrigal Encanto collapse and Meribel’s skipped Gift, was nearly guaranteed to be on everyone’s mind. It had been a struggle to find a quiet nights peace or a privet chance to explore the new space.
Samuel stood near the piano still, but his gaze wandered—tracing the walls, letting his gift room feel quiet again. Personal again.
Then he saw it.
Not hidden. Just… quietly waiting.
The music box sat nestled between two stacks of blank manuscript paper, its edges well-worn, a little scuffed at the corners. Wooden, simple, carved with a spiraling sun-and-vine pattern he didn’t recognize—but his heart did. Instantly.
He reached out a hesitant hand.
Bruno, across the room, had started gathering a few things to carry back with them, but paused when he heard the first chime.
Samuel didn’t fully remember winding it. He wasn’t even sure he’d touched it. But the soft lullaby drifted out into the room, delicate and haunting. A bridge. Just the bridge.
He closed his eyes, brow furrowed, lips parting.
He knew this song.
Not in his head, not in memory the way he remembered chords or tuning pegs or Bruno's voice telling him bedtime stories.
This lived in his bones.
The music around him shifted, pulled by instinct, not choice. Light gathered, curling at his feet in warm amber and starlight silver. The Memory Mirror shimmered to life—not as a sheet overhead this time, but as a circle forming around the music box itself, spilling the memory outward.
Bruno stepped closer, breath caught.
A woman’s voice filled the room. Gentle. Softly accented. Singing the lullaby.
Samuel was barely standing. His fingers brushed the edge of the box, and the light answered with a glow—purple, green, gold.
Then they saw her.
A young shapely woman sitting by a window, the twilight sky behind her turning lavender. She had Samuel in her lap—smaller than he ever remembered being. Toddler-small. He looked barely older than two. His hair was longer, his face round and sleepy, pressed against the lady's shoulder. The woman’s arms were wrapped around him as she hummed the melody and then—sang.
Not just the bridge. The whole song.
It was about home. About being loved even when lost. About how the stars would always know the way back. It was a lullaby of returning.
Bruno stepped closer, heart hammering. He didn’t speak.
The woman had Samuel pressed against her chest, her hands stroking his curls just the way Bruno had done hundreds of times. Her voice shook only once, on the final note, and she kissed the crown of his head.
“I love you, mijo,” she whispered into the memory.
Samuel was crying now. Silent, still.
He didn’t remember her face—never had. But this memory—this feeling—it had lived in him all along. His gift hadn’t created it. Only unlocked it.
“I… I didn’t know I still had that,” he said softly.
Bruno stepped beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder. His own eyes were wet. “She gave you something stronger than memory,” he whispered. “She gave you a piece of her soul.”
The music faded, but the warmth stayed.
Bruno turned to him, voice thick. “You don’t have to share that one again, if you don’t want to.”
Samuel looked down at the music box, then at the place where the memory had been. “Maybe not for a long time.”
Then he turned and leaned into Bruno, letting himself be folded into an embrace that held both past and present. That said: You are still held. You are still loved.
And Bruno whispered, as he held him close again, “Sleep, mijo. You’ve brought enough magic for one day.”