The Alchemy of Ivy Mae
“The Song That Was Broken… or the World That Was?”
The signal from Alex faded, but something else had already begun. 📻✨
Not from the radio.
From the past.
They traveled at first light.
North, just like Alex said.
The road was no longer a road—just memory carved into dust and stubborn weeds. Jas walked ahead, scanning the horizon, while Roman carried what little they had salvaged. Ivy Mae lingered behind, as she often did… watching, listening, collecting.
That’s when she found it.
Not a signal.
Not a voice.
A fragment.
Half-buried beneath cracked earth and rusted metal—like everything else the old world had left behind—was a small, broken disc.
Black. Shattered at the edges.
A record.
Ivy brushed it off carefully, like it mattered. Like it still held something alive.
“What is it?” Jas asked, crouching beside her.
“Music,” Ivy said softly. “I think… it used to be.”
Roman let out a quiet breath. “Used to be a lot of things.”
Back at camp that night, under a sky that felt too big for just three people, Ivy opened the Alchemy of Transformation.
The pages shimmered faintly, as they always did—responding, almost, to intention.
Or memory.
She placed the broken record beside it.
And the book… responded.
Words appeared that hadn’t been there before.
Not instructions.
Not formulas.
A story.
A woman.
A voice.
A choice.
Nina Simone
Ivy read aloud, her voice barely louder than the fire:
“A woman who could have played in grand halls…
but chose instead to tell the truth.”
Jas looked up. “Chose?”
Ivy nodded slowly.
“She sang about what was happening. Not gently. Not later. Not metaphor.”
Roman leaned forward. “And?”
Ivy hesitated.
“They broke her music.”
Silence settled between them.
“What do you mean… broke it?” Jas asked.
“Literally,” Ivy said. “They snapped the records. Sent them back in pieces.”
The fire cracked.
Somewhere in the distance, something moved—but none of them turned.
“Why?” Jas whispered.
Ivy’s fingers traced the edge of the broken disc they had found.
“Because she named things.”
The book flickered again.
More words surfaced.
Not history.
Truth.
“She didn’t destroy her career,” Ivy said, almost to herself now.
“She refused to lie.”
Roman stared at the flames. “That’ll do it.”
Ivy looked down at the record in her hands—the fracture running through it like a scar.
“What if…” she began slowly, her thoughts catching up to something deeper,
“What if she wasn’t the one who broke?”
Jas tilted their head. “What do you mean?”
Ivy’s voice steadied.
“What if the world couldn’t hold what she was saying?”
The wind shifted.
The fire bent, then steadied again.
“She was trying to warn them,” Ivy continued. “To wake them up.”
Jas let out a quiet breath. “Like Alex.”
Roman added, “Like us.”
Ivy closed the book gently.
“But they didn’t listen.”
For a moment, no one spoke.
The stars stretched endlessly above them—silent witnesses to everything that had come before.
And everything that hadn’t been heard.
Jas finally broke the silence.
“So what happened to her?”
Ivy looked down at the page, where one final sentence had appeared.
She read it quietly:
“I had to express what I felt… or I would have gone crazy.”
The fire burned low.
Roman shook his head. “Sounds like she paid for it.”
Ivy’s eyes lifted—clear, certain.
“Or maybe,” she said,
“she’s the reason anything survived at all.”
Jas smiled faintly. “Because she told the truth?”
Ivy nodded.
“Because she kept telling it.”
She held up the broken record.
Not as something ruined.
But as proof.
“Maybe this isn’t a warning,” Ivy said.
“Maybe it’s a map.” 🧭✨
And somewhere, deep within the pages of the Alchemy of Transformation, something shifted again.
Not gold.
Not power.
Something rarer.
Recognition.