Even so, I hear them.”

         A long silence stretched between them. Finally, he spoke, as if finally willing to listen. “Tell me, daughter, where the spirits have led you.”

         His tone, usually abrupt and demanding, was kind, open. Mirella felt her heart soften. Perhaps he cared for her, after all.

         And so, she’d confessed everything. Mistaking the horror in his eyes for disbelief, Mirella had told him everything. How the voice had come to her at odd times, telling her odd things, sometimes bits of information, sometimes sentences that she didn’t think were meant for her, even as a child. She reminded him again that she’d told them both. 

         “It was babble,” he replied. “You always had a headful of dreams.”

         “It was real then, and it’s real now,” Mirella, feeling her old frustration rising, had dared to shout. “I hear the voice every spring. It leads me to the Spring Calling.”

         And so she’d plunged deeper into her confession, desperate to be believed, recounting the strange gibberish in a flawless imitation of the Gibbor’s. Too late she’d seen the anger held deeply in check.