Mira draws the vessel from beneath her robe and holds it steady between them. The sand figure's free hand descends — each grain slow as settling snow — and its fingertips brush the vessel's rim. The cold rushes inward, not outward. The amber at the figure's core flares once, brilliant, and then the melody blooms: full-throated, loud enough to exist in the open air at last. It is her mother's voice. Not a likeness of it — the voice itself, exact to its warmth, to the catch it made on the high note before turning gentle. It pours from the vessel's mouth like water finding the brim. The spiral groove at the figure's face moves in time with the sound. Then the words arrive, felt in the sternum: Before the burning, she asked me to keep this for you. She said you would come. She said you would know what to do with it. The melody holds, steady, waiting in the cold air between them.