This story is dedicated to my mom, Jane.

You always see the delicate beauty in life. You’ve taught me that love is found in a thousand quiet acts, like coaxing earthworms from the driveway after rain or keeping watch on a mourning dove nest above your front door. I know you’d place stickers on every window of every skyscraper if you could - even if it was only to prevent one solitary bird from injury. I watched with you as a single pearl of an egg appeared.

And when dawn revealed the nest abandoned, its fragile contents gone, grief crept in on tiptoe to sit beside us. It was a stark lesson in things beyond our control, a quiet ache that reminded us that even in loss, there is a process of enduring. But still, the nest remains, just as real as the hope that there will be a next time with a better outcome. That is the very essence of Ashfeather, born from sorrow yet stubbornly aloft, just like the child who would later instinctively name it.

This story is for your boundless mercy - not only a reminder, but a testament that tenderness endures. May it open like wings, soft, steady, and unafraid, guiding every chapter toward the light where absence sings.

• KBS