If you found this without reading Part 1, it is here.

#The Memory of the Rains

The clearing fell silent as the woman of bark and leaf stepped forward. Only the hush of high branches marked her passage, as if the entire canopy bowed to her will. Jyoti straightened, the white chrysanthemum trembling between his fingers.

“Turn and face the court,” the rain-eyed nymph commanded, her voice neither loud nor soft, but everywhere at once. “The flower you severed was a child of my heart-wood. Its life was a thread, woven to hold this glade in harmony. You have plucked more than a blossom… you have loosened a stitch in the tapestry of seasons.”

A murmur rippled through fur and feather. Hedgehogs pressed noses to moss; the buck dipped his antlers in either reverence or threat. Chalak, coiled upon a vine, flicked his emerald tongue as though tasting destiny on the air.

The judge—an ancient owl crowned with frost-white feathers—blinked slow golden eyes. From the branch that served as his bench he spoke, each syllable landing like a gavel stroke. “Jyoti of the Streambank, you stand accused of thoughtless harvest. The penalty may be exile from these woods… or worse. Before judgment falls, the court allows remembrance. Let the prisoner’s past rise and speak.”

The defender—sleek, ink-furred, whiskers glinting—padded to Jyoti’s side. “Hold fast,” she murmured so only he could hear. “Memory is a door. Do not flinch when it opens.”

She touched a velvet paw to his ankle.

…

A wind only he could feel corkscrewed around Jyoti. The clearing dimmed, shapes smearing like wet paint until darkness swallowed everything.

Water… endless water.

He was sinking through black, storm-tossed seas—lungs afire, fists clutching something unseen. Lightning carved brief tunnels of light, revealing a vessel shattered on jagged rocks, its name lost beneath algae and tide. Above him, rain hammered the waves; below, a soft glow pulsed like a beacon.

Remember.

The voice was neither Chalak’s nor the defender’s; it thrummed from bone and star alike. Jyoti reached toward the glow. When his fingertips brushed it, memory unfurled—

an ark carrying seeds and songs of forgotten kingdoms… himself as its tender, sworn to guide life from one shore of time to another… a tempest—no ordinary storm, but the fury of heaven—rending planks and hopes alike until seeds and songs spilled into the churning void, and he with them.

In the vision’s final shudder he lay blind upon a riverbank beneath drumming rain. His own name was ash on his tongue until the stream whispered a new one: Jyoti… light that endures.

#…

Color seeped back into the world. He stood again before owl and nymph, gasping as if dragged from deep water. The flower in his hand drooped, its stem already browning.

The defender’s tail flicked. “The court has witnessed,” she announced. “Jyoti is no trespasser. He is a reborn steward, cast ashore when the Rains of Reckoning drowned the first age. His forgetting was mercy bought with pain.”

Gasps fluttered among wings. The nymph’s bark-toned skin darkened, a storm gathering within her. “Steward or not, the severed thread remains. The glade sickens even now.” She pointed to the flower—petals curling inward, their white fading to ash. “A life must be given for a life undone.”

Jyoti opened his mouth, but words failed. The defender answered for him. “Balance need not demand blood. The weave may be mended by devotion.” She faced him, black eyes bright. “Will you bind yourself to the chrysanthemum’s lineage? Seven cycles of leaf-fall and rise, nursing each sprout until the pattern sings true?”

Seven seasons… seasons upon seasons. Exile might be kinder. Yet something within—the same tide that once steered an ark—beat yes… yes… yes. He knelt and pressed the flower to earth.

“I vow,” he rasped, “to tend what I have wounded. Let the roots judge my sincerity, and let the rains bear witness.”

The owl’s great head dipped. Wings opened; the air chimed with unseen bells. “So recorded. The sentence is stewardship, not banishment. Jyoti shall labor until the weave is whole.”

Relief drifted across the gallery like pollen. Still, the nymph warned, “If even one bud withers through your neglect, Light-Enduring, the storm will return—and with it every grief you were spared.” She stepped back, merging with her tree until bark and body were one. Rooted again, the chrysanthemum straightened as though remembering sun.

Chalak hissed approval. The defender circled Jyoti once, brushing his calf with her tail. “Come morning,” she said, “we begin. The soil keeps no lazy companions.”

#Twilight

As stars pricked the canopy, Jyoti settled beside the wounded flower. Fireflies stitched gold around them, and the forest breathed a cautious lullaby. He pressed his palm to the fresh mound, sensing the faint pulse of green beneath. In that tremor lay promise—of atonement, of rekindled purpose, perhaps even of finding the others whose memories outlived storms.

Somewhere beyond sight, thunder murmured—a reminder that the Rains, like judges, may sleep but never die. Jyoti drew a long breath, tasting loam, berry-sweet wind, and the first hint of dew. He would not squander minutes again.

For now, the trial was ended. The tending had begun.