Rising from ashes, the boy drew himself upwards like the air from lava trails, still hot.

Eyes closed, he sang in a clear shrill voice a mountain folk song he had grown up hearing long before the volcano did anything but smoke.

And around him, the trees seemed to awaken, bending their heads towards the boy and one another in appreciation. As the song drifted through their branches, they carried the sound between one another, and nodded. They fiddled with the echo of his melody up over the valley and into the river. There, the marmots looked up from their dam and paused. It was its familiarity, like the promise that bygone times would be bygone no more, that made them pause, made them look over the mountain expectantly.

And the boy, alone in the whirl of died out fires, went on singing, telling himself that someone somewhere really was listening.