Mother 's Lullaby

The echo of the waves had always reminded Ren of her.
He could still picture her slender form silhouetted in the kitchen window, her voice weaving through the steam of boiling noodles and the faint clatter of dishes. There was never any radio playing. Never a smartphone speaker buzzing. Only her voice, soft and sure, humming a melody that seemed older than time.
Ren stood in front of the modest wooden piano she had once played, his fingers lightly hovering above the ivory keys. It hadn’t been tuned in years, but somehow, it still remembered her touch. He played the first few notes of the lullaby—not mechanically, but like drawing water from a deep, sacred well. The melody emerged with a fragile strength, trembling like the first breeze before a storm.
She used to sing it at night. After tucking him in, she would sit beside him and hum, fingers gently combing through his hair. He never understood the words, if there had been any. But the tune itself was imprinted on him, like seafoam burned into stone.
And when she passed away… the music stayed.
It became his anchor.
That evening, after returning home from the beach, drenched and dazed, Ren had tried to dry his gear and unpack the odd events of the day. But his hands kept drifting back to his keyboard, his phone’s recorder, the cracked notebook where he’d scribbled fragments of inspiration. What came from his fingers wasn’t a song he was writing, but her song—the lullaby.
He sat in the dark, surrounded by low lamplight, letting the notes spill out like a confession. And suddenly, for a second—no, a heartbeat—he thought he heard another voice. A harmony. Faint, ghostly, and beautiful.
Ren froze.
He stood up. Walked to the window. The sea outside looked the same.
But something had shifted.

---
Flashback: Years earlier.
Rain pattered on the rooftop like fingers drumming a distant rhythm. A little Ren sat cross-legged beneath a blanket fort, a flashlight glowing between his knees, illuminating a treasure trove of musical scribbles. Crayon-colored notes, childish lyrics about space whales and underwater cities. But the centerpiece was always the lullaby.
She ducked under the fort with him.
"Still composing, maestro?"
"Mom," he grinned. "Does this part sound like the sea or a spaceship?"
She listened to his little toy keyboard. "Both. Maybe it's a sea in space."
He giggled.
"Where did your song come from?" he asked. "The one you always sing to me."
Her eyes dimmed a little. Not sadness, not quite. But nostalgia, deep and liquid.
"My mother sang it. And hers before that, I think. No one really knows where it began. It’s like it just… came from the tide."
"Is it a magic song?"
She tapped his nose. "Only if you believe in magic."
He did.

---
Back in the present, Ren stared at the recordings he had captured by the sea. When slowed and reversed, he noticed something strange.
A buried melody.
Faint.
Identical to the lullaby.
It was woven into the waves themselves.
He sat back, heart thudding. Impossible. But the harmonics matched perfectly.
Why?
His fingers hovered over the keys again. The song was no longer a comfort. It was a map. A cipher.
And when the storm rolled in again the next night—faster, darker, fiercer—Ren didn’t hesitate.
He grabbed his gear, clutched his composition notebook, and ran into the wind.
This time, when the sea pulled him under, he didn’t resist.
The lullaby played in his ears.
And somewhere between the notes, time shattered