You are clean, white bones, washed up on a forgotten shore. Three ribs, six knuckles, two femurs, and a sacrum. The bone is porous and old. Empty of marrow. You were not laid to rest. Was there anyone to mourn you? I can't know. But you are caught between sharp rocks, and no one has found you.

But I found you! I searched for so long, and now I've found you. You are clean, white bones, but you are singing! You are singing to me–each bone the same song. I resonate with it. I can feel it deep within me, in this tiny core of me, reaching out to what those bones could be.

I see you, into you, with a burst of blue light. It sinks into your bones, and I see every promise they make. I'm bringing you back to me, back home, back where you belong. At my side. With me.

This is who I am, what I am. What I was made to do. I cover your bones with flesh. I cover your flesh with cloth. I bring the rest of you to me. I bring you back to a moment of your life, and I will hold you there for as long as I exist.

You wake.

You take a breath. Your first breath. A first, Light-filled gasp. You open your eyes as if you had never used them before, blinking into the sun that had bleached your singing bones clean and white.

I tell you what you are. But I can't tell you who you are. You need to tell me that.

You stand, shakily, and walk out from the water. Pick your way across the treacherous rocks that held you captive for so long. Then you reach out and touch me, as if I couldn't be real. But I am real. As real as you, and just as alive.

"What is my name?" you ask, the first question. Then another. "Where are we going?"

"I don't know," I tell you. "Whatever and wherever you want. We get to choose."

You consider this. It scares you, but I'm here to comfort you. I've seen your bones, alone and forgotten. Waiting for me.

Down into the core of you, I know you as I know myself.