Instead of running, Pabung knelt. He did not pray for wealth or power. He simply offered her a lotus he had carved from a piece of driftwood. “Then let me learn to remember,” he said.

His name was Pabung, a royal chronicler and a sculptor of rare skill. He was gentle, with hands that carved gods from stone but trembled when he tried to hold a flower. They had met by accident one moonlit night when he, lost while sketching the water lilies, saw her dancing alone. Her feet did not touch the ground. Her laughter was the sound of rain on bamboo leaves.

When he reached her, Thoibi was no longer glowing. Her feet were firmly on the ground. Her hair had lost its ethereal sheen. She looked human. She looked tired. She looked beautiful.

“You are a sculptor. Carve a new heart for her—not of stone, but of your own memories. If you give her every happy moment you have ever known, she will remain Leisabi. But you will become hollow. You will remember nothing—not the lake, not the lotus, not her name. You will live, but as an empty vessel.”

Leisabi were not ordinary women. They were weavers of magic as much as cloth, guardians of the night’s secrets, and keepers of the Lai —the forest spirits. Thoibi, with hair as dark as the monsoon clouds and eyes that held the green of the phumdi (floating biomass), was the most gifted of her kind. Her loom sang songs older than the hills, and her touch could heal a broken heart or curse a cruel king.