Lorelei Withervale was always really lively. She couldn’t sit still, and was distracted by the tiniest fluttering of wings, which, for a fairy, made life quite difficult. Lorelei loved learning. About plants, about magic. About anything that crossed her path, really. But her eagerness often ran away with her. She asked too many questions, moved too fast, and every so often, her magic slipped from her hands before she had fully thought it through. People thought she was strange. And the talking to herself didn’t help. But her thoughts seemed to spill out before she could catch them, like she was always a step behind a conversation no one else was part of.
This made it difficult for Lorelei to find her fitting. Until she met Velora. She was a member of The Conclave of Hollow Bloom. Where others had seen strangeness, Velora saw something rare, something worth nurturing. Through her, Lorelei was welcomed into the Conclave. Upon joining, she was given a new name: Liora, meaning “light unto me”. Where someone came from no longer mattered there, and so surnames were left behind.
The Conclave of Hollow Bloom believed that life and death were not opposites, but part of the same cycle. To them, decay was not an end, but a return—a soft undoing that made way for something new. They taught that some souls were meant to hear the call of that next bloom, long before their bodies failed them.
At the Conclave, Liora’s wandering thoughts and restless magic were not dismissed, but listened to. They even called it a gift. And for the first time, Liora felt understood. Valued even. The place made her feel calm and peaceful, which made her able to listen more closely. She could follow the rhythm of the voices, rather than be carried away by them.
Elian was one of the leaders at The Conclave of Hollow Bloom. They called them the Elder. According to him, Liora was an open being. This is something rare, and deeply valued within the Conclave. The voices she heard were not random, he said, but visions. They were echoes of a soul already reaching for her. This soul had to be her life partner, and this made perfect sense to her. Even the voice was the perfect yin, to her yang. Where Liora was restless, they were calm. Where she moved without thinking, they paused and listened. They never tried to restrain her, only to steady her, and somehow that was enough. With them, the noise in her mind seemed to soften, to fall into something almost like harmony. It wasn’t long before the Conclave began to see them as a bound pair. They were two souls destined to complete the cycle together.
However, finding who belonged to the voice was a more difficult task. The Elder encouraged Liora to listen closely, and follow the voice. During a guided trance beneath the Hollow Blooms, she finally found Pippin. From that moment on, she was never alone again. The Conclave began to speak of what was already unfolding: this was no mere vision, but two bounded souls finally meeting in real life.
For a few years they lived happy lives. If Liora was feeling overwhelmed, Pippin could make her feel grounded again. But this seemed to weigh heavy on them. They seemed to fade a little bit more every day. It almost felt like something was eating the life in their eyes. The Conclave said Pippin wasn’t sick, they were just being called to the next bloom.
It felt all wrong. Pippin seemed sick, even if the Elder didn’t think so. And just letting them go like that… A bounded soul deserved more care, or at least Liora thought so. So she tried. She tried spells, she tried potions, she tried everything she could. And the voice became louder, and more present. And they told her everything she could try.
The Elder found Liora, in the middle of the woods, trying some other weird combination of herbs and magic that probably wouldn’t work. They took her to a beautiful meadow, with Pippin laying in the middle of it. Flowers all around their body, wuthering away whilst they laid there. The voices whispered softly, as Pippin was blowing out their last breath. “I hear you. Are you coming?”. The Conclave encouraged you. Not to save the bounded soul, but to let that soul go. And for the first time, Liora did just that. She let nature run its course, as Pippins soul went into the next bloom. “Until we meet again, some day”, Liora whispered back in her head.
For a while, the voices stopped. But they came back, louder and more clear then ever. They sounded and felt like Pippin. They said it was okay, and they were waiting for me to go into the next bloom. According to the Conclave this confirmed they were bounded souls. Even in the next bloom, they could talk to each other. They told Liora she should listen to the voice; “you only have to follow”.
And so she followed the voices. She laid out a bed of flowers, got down, and killed herself. So she could go into the next bloom, and hopefully find Pippin again. Whilst letting go of this world, the voices were so loud and so clear. “You’re so close now.” And then distorted and talking over each other “come to me”.