Anesh didn’t start right away.
He remained with his hands resting on the railing, looking at the point where Yantra’s lowest lights faded into the distance and the coast became just a dark band, featureless. From up there the sea seemed both near and unreachable at the same time. Zena didn’t rush him. She had sat down on the utility box with the guitar case next to her leg, one hand resting on the edge as if she were still on stage and the instrument might call her at any moment. The device on her wrist gave a small red flash, then went dark again. She barely glanced at it.
“The cave wasn’t far from home,” Anesh said at last. “Or maybe it was far from everything else and only close because I knew it.”
Zena didn’t interrupt.
“As a child I sometimes went there with my father. Not often. He said a place where sound changes shouldn’t be worn out. That’s what he called it: a place where sound changes. I don’t know if it had a real name. Maybe it did, but I’ve only ever remembered that one.”
He spoke softly, not out of fear of being overheard, but because the cave, once evoked, seemed to demand a different measure of voice. Below them Yantra kept moving, with its elevators, its bridges, its lights that never stayed still; but the terrace, leaning against the side of Mount Uruk, had begun to belong to a slower rhythm. Even Zena, who until a moment before seemed always about to get up, now didn’t move.
“When the war came to Altaluna, it didn’t come all at once. That’s why at first it seemed possible to understand it. First there was news, then maps, then closed roads, then people who no longer passed through the same places. The Austral League and the Northern Alliance were words adults pronounced as if they pointed to two different skies, and yet at some point they had entered homes, warehouses, markets, even families. Altaluna no longer knew which way to look. Or maybe it knew too well, but in opposite directions.”
Zena lowered her eyes. She said nothing. Kemet’s face, seen just before on the city screens, seemed to pass between them without needing to be named.
“I didn’t understand everything,” Anesh continued. “I don’t think I wanted to understand everything. I only knew that people started to ask themselves different things when they said the same names. Neighbors who had shared water and work stopped sitting at the same table. Some left. Some came back changed. Some never came back. Then one day there wasn’t much left to interpret.”
He stopped.
Zena waited, but this time not just out of discretion. It was the waiting of someone who knows that certain sentences, if brought out too soon, break.
“I was left without a home,” he said. “And without a family.”
The sentence fell onto the terrace without echo. Anesh didn’t add names, nor dates, nor images. He didn’t say whether his mother had died before or after, whether his father had been taken away, whether he had seen anything or arrived too late. Zena didn’t ask. Maybe because she understood that part wasn’t yet a story, just an edge.
“At first I hid wherever I could. Barns, collapsed walls, empty rooms, a dry cistern. Then I went back to the cave. Not because I had decided anything. I got there one evening almost without realizing it, with scratched hands and a throat full of dust. I had brought a few things, badly. Some food that ran out immediately, a blanket, a knife, a rope. My father’s guitar. I don’t even know how I managed to bring that.”
“And you stayed there.”
Anesh nodded.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
Zena almost smiled, but the smile didn’t come. “Not a very useful answer.”
“I know.”
“But true.”
He looked at her. There was something strange in hearing her say that word. True. Not compatible, not provisional, not declared. True. Then he turned back toward the darkness of the coast.
“In the cave time didn’t pass like outside. At first I slept a lot, then very little. I went out when I needed to, fetched water, looked for wood, avoided the paths. There were days when I saw no one. Others when I heard vehicles passing far away and stayed still until the noise faded. I was afraid, but not always. Fear, after a while, becomes a way of measuring things. It tells you how far you can go, how long you have to wait before lighting the fire, how much noise a foot makes on a dry stone.”
Zena listened with her hands clasped between her knees. The guitar case cast a long shadow beside her.
“Did you play?”
Anesh let a little time pass before answering.
“Yes. Softly. Not always. There were days when I couldn’t even look at it. Others when I held it on my lap without playing, just to remember the weight. My father had left some imperfections in the wood. When I ran my fingers over them, it felt like I was still touching his way of thinking. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
Zena looked at her own case, then at him again. “Yes.”
Anesh didn’t ask her how.
“I drew too,” he said. “With charcoal. At first just marks to remember the days, the water level, the directions of noises. Then maps. Then maps that were no longer useful for finding places. There were lines of the sky, cracks in the rock, positions of the moon, paths I hadn’t taken. Sometimes the cave seemed bigger inside than outside. Not because it really was. Because every wall began to contain a piece of time.”
“And you left the guitar there.”
The question didn’t have an accusatory tone, but Anesh still felt a pressure in it. Maybe because he had been asking himself that long before Zena voiced it.
“Yes.”
“Hidden?”
“In a side cavity, where the water doesn’t reach. I wrapped it in the best blanket I had. Then I closed the entrance with light stones, not too many, just enough so it wouldn’t be seen right away. I left a mark on the wall, but small.”
“To come back.”
Anesh didn’t answer immediately.
“Maybe. Or so it wouldn’t see me leaving.”
Zena tilted her head slightly. “It?”
“The guitar. My father. I don’t know.”
The wind moved the metal mesh of the terrace. For a moment the sound resembled badly plucked strings. Anesh heard it and lowered his eyes.
“I couldn’t bring it. Not really. Not on that journey. I didn’t even know if I’d make it to the next day. And then…” He searched for words, but they all seemed too orderly. “If I had brought it, I would have had to still be the boy he gave it to. I wasn’t sure I was anymore.”
Zena remained silent. This time there was no ready joke, no procedure to use to move on.
“Kangen’s light came after?” she finally asked.
Anesh nodded, but the gesture was hesitant. “After. Or at least, in memory it’s after. In that period things didn’t always stay in their order.”
“What did you see?”
“Not the crater. I wasn’t there. And I didn’t go.”
That clarification came out sharper than the others, as if he had to correct a story that someone, sooner or later, would tell wrong.
“I was near the cave entrance. I don’t remember why I was awake. Maybe because of the wind. Maybe because that night I couldn’t sleep. The sky toward Kangen opened with light. Not like lightning. It wasn’t a single thing and it wasn’t many separate things either. It seemed to split as it fell, but too quickly for the eyes to catch it all. Some trails larger, others thinner. For an instant the mountain in front of the cave had shadows in different directions.”
Zena listened motionless.
“Then the noise came. Late. Much later than I expected. First I saw the light, then I heard the body of the earth notice it.”
“The body of the earth.”
“Yes.”
She didn’t correct him.
“After that there was silence. Not immediately. First dogs, birds, falling stones, maybe distant voices. Then, at some point, everything seemed to stop. Me too. I stayed at the cave entrance until the sky turned dark again. I don’t know how long. Maybe a little. Maybe almost the whole night.”
“Did you go to see?”
“No.”
“Out of fear?”
Anesh looked at the sea. “Because something told me that wasn’t where I was supposed to go.”
Zena didn’t ask what. Maybe because the answer would have been too easy and too false.
“Ku came after.”
The first time he said that name in front of her, he did so without preparing it. It came out as if it had already been said, as if Zena, somehow, had always known that inside the basket there wasn’t just an undetermined content.
She lowered her gaze to the wicker.
“Ku.”
Anesh placed a hand on the small container.
“I found her near the fire. Or maybe she found the fire. I don’t know. The morning after the light, or the next. It was very cold in the cave. I had lit a small fire, more smoke than flame. At some point I saw something move where the stone turned lighter. I thought it was a leaf blown in by the wind. Then it moved again.”
“A butterfly.”
Anesh didn’t turn toward her. “Yes.”
The word remained between them with an almost embarrassing fragility. After the Nerek LG51, Yantra’s panels, the war on the screens, Kemet, the concert, the terrace and the sea, saying “a butterfly” seemed ridiculous. Too little. Too weak to bear all that had been placed around it.
But Zena didn’t laugh.
“Was it hurt?”
“No. Or at least not as it should have been. It was cold, there were no flowers, nothing for her. Yet she was there. She approached the fire, but not too close. She stayed on a stone, wings closed. I didn’t touch her. I thought she would die.”
“And instead.”
“And instead the next day she was still there.”
Anesh felt the basket move slightly under his hand. This time Zena saw it. She said nothing, but didn’t look away.
“At first I didn’t call her Ku. I didn’t call her anything. I didn’t want to give her a name. Giving something a name means starting to stay. But she stayed anyway. If I went out, I found her closer to the entrance. If I sat by the fire, after a while she was on a stone not far away. She didn’t look for food from me. She didn’t ask for anything. Sometimes she disappeared for hours and I thought she wouldn’t come back. Then I saw her where I didn’t expect, motionless, as if she had always been there.”
“And then you put her in the basket?”
“No. The basket came much later. First we lived in the cave together.”
Zena lowered her eyes. “Lived” was a strange word for a boy and a butterfly. Anesh noticed, but didn’t take it back.
“I don’t know when I really started to feel her. It wasn’t like talking. It wasn’t even understanding. It was closer to when, in a room, someone stops moving and you still feel they’re there. The cave changed. Not because she did anything. Because her presence kept certain things from closing completely.”
“What things?”
Anesh searched for an answer, but didn’t find it right away.
“Me.”
Zena looked at the sea.
Below the terrace, a cargo line moved along an external rail, carrying three attached containers upward. Their red lights passed one after another against the rocky wall and then disappeared behind a tower. When the noise faded, the terrace’s silence seemed vaster.
“For a while we stayed like that,” Anesh said. “I went out when I had to, came back, lit the fire, drew, repaired things that weren’t needed, played softly. She stayed in the warm spots of the stone, or near the entrance, or where the light reached for a short time. There was no journey. There was no direction. There was only a way not to disappear.”
“And then?”
Anesh looked at the basket. His hand was still resting on top, but lighter.
“Then she started looking outside.”
Zena said nothing.
“At first I thought she wanted to leave. I opened up more often, left the entrance free. She went out, sometimes, but didn’t go away. She landed on a stone in front of the cave and stayed facing the horizon. Not toward the forest, not toward the water, not toward the paths. Toward far away. She could stay like that for a very long time. Too long, for something so fragile.”
“Always in the same direction?”
“Not always. Or maybe yes, but I didn’t know how to read her. At first she just seemed restless. Then I started to notice that, when she came back in, the cave felt smaller to me.”
The sentence came out with difficulty, but once said it felt exact.
“Smaller?”
“Yes. Not less safe. Just smaller. As if the place that had saved me was becoming the place that held me back.”
Zena leaned forward slightly. She didn’t press him. She waited.
“I resisted,” Anesh said. “For days. Maybe weeks. I told her there was nothing outside. That I didn’t know where to go. That I had no one left. That the war hadn’t ended just because we were silent. She didn’t answer. She kept staying at the entrance. Sometimes, when I came back with water, I found her already facing the horizon, as if she was waiting for me there instead of inside.”
“And you followed her.”
“Not right away.”
“But in the end, yes.”
Anesh nodded.
“Yes.”
He didn’t add explanations. Maybe because there weren’t any. Or maybe because, after saying everything else, leaving was the simplest thing: one morning, or one evening, he had looked at the guitar, the dead fire, the marks on the walls, Ku’s small body near the entrance, and understood that staying would have been harder than going. He had hidden his father’s instrument in the dry cavity, closed it with light stones, taken the wicker basket woven in the previous days with fibers gathered from the lower slopes, and waited for Ku to enter it on her own. She didn’t enter right away. She flew a short, uncertain circle, then landed on the edge. Only after, as if accepting a provisional form of shelter, did she go inside.
Anesh didn’t tell all this. Not at that moment. But part of it still passed in the pause.
Zena seemed to feel it.
“And the Nerek?”
“I found it further down. Or it found me. It was stopped near a service road, without a driver. Its lights were dim, but the side hatch was open. I didn’t know where it was going.”
“And you got on.”
“Ku was already facing that road.”
Zena lowered her gaze to the basket. The sentence explained nothing, but by now neither of them seemed to expect a better explanation.
The wind picked up for a few seconds, pressing against the terrace’s metal mesh. Anesh felt the wicker vibrate under his hand. It wasn’t Ku’s movement inside, not yet. It was the wind trying to get between the fibers and finding no space.
“So you got here by following a butterfly,” Zena said.
Anesh waited for the ironic tone, but it didn’t come.
“Yes.”
“And you left in a cave the only thing your father had built for you.”
“Yes.”
“To go where?”
Anesh looked at the distant sea.
The answer should have been “I don’t know.” He had said it so many times that day that by now it could seem like a defense. Instead, facing the dark line of water, after the concert and after Zena’s question, those words were no longer enough.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
Zena followed his gaze.
“And now?”
The wicker basket remained still between Anesh’s hand and the wind.
“Now I think it wasn’t Yantra.”
For the first time since they had come up to the terrace, Zena stood up. Not abruptly. Slowly, as if a part of the story had moved her too, without asking permission. She approached the railing and looked at the sea.
“Do you want to see if she still looks?”
Anesh immediately understood what she meant. The basket under his hand seemed to become more fragile, almost too small for what it contained.
“It’s windy here.”
“I know.”
“She’s a butterfly.”
“I know that too, now.”
Zena didn’t add anything else. She didn’t say she would be careful, didn’t promise nothing would happen, didn’t turn that moment into an experiment. She stayed beside him, with her hands on the railing, and waited.
Anesh looked at the sea, then at the small wicker container.
Ku didn’t move.
Or maybe she was already listening.