The room shifted. At the same time the Ullu spoke, Riya's phone lit with an old message she had nearly forgotten: a recording from her grandmother made the previous summer. She hadn't listened yet. The coincidence made a shiver travel through her. She pressed play. Her grandmother's voice—wiry, warm—spilled across the kitchen like sunlight. She told of a mango tree on a hill, of laughter cascading like rain, and of a small owl statue the family kept by the window "to guard the stories."