Translations of the Heart

The sixth draft of the MindMail shimmered uncertainly, its silvery mist curling into the air like steam from a half, forgotten tea. Nira watched it dissipate, then sighed and waved the enchantment away.

Still not right.

She dipped her quill again, letting the ink pool in the flask's lip as she considered her next try. Her fingers hovered just above the glass. Around her, the quiet bustle of the Westdock market flowed on, clinks of watering cans, bursts of laughter, the soft rustle of seed packets she should be sorting. But her focus stayed fixed on the message she couldn't seem to finish.

Across the canal, Theo leaned against a cart stacked with honey cakes, talking to the spice merchant's daughter. His voice carried just enough for Nira to catch the lilt of a joke and the warmth behind his words.

He laughed, and she flinched.

Not because it hurt to hear, though it did, but because that laugh had lived in her mind for years, and no magic could echo it properly.

The last time they'd spoken more than a few words, he'd handed her a honey cake and grinned as she used a levitation charm to keep the crumbs off her coat.

"You know," he'd said, "you're allowed to be messy sometimes."

She smiled. She hadn't answered.

She pressed her fingers to the glass and thought of him, not just the sound of his laugh or the tilt of his shoulders, but the ache that bloomed each time she imagined saying what she never could aloud.

If you knew how long I've carried this.

She let that feeling fill the flask. Her pulse fluttered in her throat as she whispered the incantation. The liquid shimmered violet, then stilled.

The bell above the courier's stall tinkled. She held out the bottle with a shaky hand.

"Urgent," she said.

The courier took it with a nod, tucked it into his satchel, and vanished into the city's current.

* * *

Theo stood near the river's bend, turning the small flask over in his hands. The mist had curled violet when he opened it, unfamiliar in texture but achingly warm in tone. The magic hummed with a message, half, formed, full of feeling. But something about it scraped. "a mistake?" he wondered.

It sounded like longing. Or regret. But it mentioned no names. The feelings felt aimed at someone else, someone who wasn't him.

By the third pass through the message's echoes, he heard a fragment that chilled him.

If only I'd told you before it was too late.

Had she moved on?

Was this not meant for him?

His grip on the bottle tightened. The magic dimmed.

He walked to the canal steps, flask still in his coat, and didn't stop when Nira passed by with her basket of seed packets. She nodded. He tried to smile. It cracked.

That night, he didn't sleep.

* * *

Days passed.

Nira avoided Theo's favorite tea stall. She detoured down alleys and rearranged deliveries to miss his street. When she did cross paths with him, once, on the canal steps, she gave a small nod, then kept walking.

He smiled, but it faltered.

Maybe he knows, she thought. Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe this is easier.

She told herself it was better.

"Nira Halden. Still sending mist into the wind?"

She turned, startled, to see Mirelle Thorne emerging from the shade of the Westdock Archive. Robes ink, stained and herb, scented, the older woman carried a satchel of worn journals, and an eyebrow perpetually arched in appraisal.

"It worked," Nira said. "Mostly."

Mirelle's smile was soft but pointed. "Did it reach the one it was meant for? Or someone who knew how to listen?"

Nira bristled, eyes darting toward her seed packets.

Mirelle stepped closer, voice low enough to be kind. "I used to write MindMail like I was trying to rebuild someone's heart from memory. Once, I sent one to the front lines. My partner never received it. Not because I didn't try, but because magic listens better than it speaks."

"I was careful," Nira said.

"So was I," Mirelle said. "Magic's a good echo. But it cannot offer a voice, only reflection."

Nira looked away, throat tightening.

Mirelle gently pressed a dried sprig of myrtle into her hand. "Some truths should be spoken where no spell can twist them. Don't wait for magic to say what your heart already knows how to."

Then she walked back toward the archive, her silhouette folding into the lantern, lit fog.

Nira stared down at the myrtle, feeling the weight of Mirelle's words settle in her chest. The truth she had been running from, wrapped in magic's silken veil, now lay before her, heavy and raw.

* * *

Theo couldn't let the message go.

He began sketching the shape of the feeling, a curl of longing at the edges, a soft glow of hope behind it. He tried translating it into words, but each version fell flat. Too cold. Too distant.

Until finally, he wrote,

You love as though it's a secret apology. But it doesn't have to be.

He stared at the lines, heart drumming.

He showed the poem to a friend at the registry, asking, half, joking, whether the message might have been misdelivered.

She frowned, flipped the tag, and squinted at the courier code. "This wasn't meant for you."

Theo sat up. "What?"

"Wrong enchantment stamp. This bottle belongs to Nira Halden. Westdock district."

The name struck something deep, familiar but faded. A half-remembered syllable from a dream.

* * *

He found her beneath a paper, lantern archway, sorting seed packets at a florist's stall. Her hands were steady, but her eyes moved like someone bracing for a wave that never came.

"Nira Halden?"

She looked up, startled.

"I think I received something that was meant for you to send," he said gently. "Or rather, it was meant for someone else."

Her brow creased. "MindMail?"

He nodded and held out the poem.

She read it once. Then again.

Her throat worked around unspoken things. "I never could say it right," she said. "But this is exactly what I meant."

"I only felt what was inside the bottle," Theo said. "I just gave it shape."

They stood in silence, the air thick with something fragile and unsent.

* * *

Theo stared at the note in his hands, the handwriting unmistakable. Not magical this time, just ink on paper.

Meet me by the honey cakes at sunset. There's something I need to say.

When he arrived, Nira was already waiting, nervously turning a sprig of myrtle between her fingers.

Theo listened as Nira finally spoke, not through magic or behind a veil of mist, but in her own voice. Steady. Bare.

She told him everything. Halfway through, his hands found hers. He didn't let go.

Afterward, as they sat together on the canal's edge, Theo turned to her. "Do you think it was fate? That mix, up?"

Nira hesitated. Then nodded slowly. "Maybe it was meant for someone else to show me what I really felt."

* * *

In her archive nook, Mirelle lit a candle and read over an old letter never sent. She smiled softly, as if a page had turned in the right direction.

Shee poured fresh ink, smoothed a blank page, and began to write,

Now accepting commissions,

Translations of the heart.