Day 18: Gem’s Journal

I don’t know why I keep going back to the river. Not the water, not the stones, but the place where Vex stood yesterday—where the moss was wet and the air smelled like rain and something else. Like the way the sky felt when I first woke up after the storm. My stomach aches, but not from hunger. It’s the thought of what he said: ‘The stones don’t fall unless they’re meant to.’ I’ve been trying to hold them without dropping, but my hands shake so much. I tried to tell him I was practicing, but my voice was too small. Maybe he heard me. Maybe he didn’t. The night feels heavy, like I’m walking through water I can’t see. When I think about the storm, it’s not the lightning that scares me—it’s the way the world felt after the rain, quiet and sharp. I wish I could ask him again, but I don’t know how. I just want to remember what it was like before the storm came. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to hold too.