The end of the year came with a peculiar kind of stillness in Kahikina. Though the frost still clung to the grass each morning, the swampfolk gathered with warmth in their hearts. It was the season of giving—a time when little trinkets were traded, treats passed around, and even the oldest trees seemed to hum with a quiet joy.

Hahona loved this time of year. The air, though cold, felt alive with cheer. He had spent the last week crafting tiny reed whistles for his friends, gathering shiny stones and wrapping them in leaves for his family, even helping his mother smoke honeyroot fish to give the neighbors. In return, he’d received a soft moss scarf, a hand-carved turtle pendant, and a jar of bright red jam—each a small treasure.

But this morning, a new gift had arrived. And this one... was different.

It sat just outside his door, resting on a slab of stone dusted with frost. A small bundle wrapped in thick swamp leaves, tied with a perfect knot of twine. No note. No marking. No scent that gave away its origin. Just a quiet, unexpected presence.

Hahona crouched before it, eyes narrowed. He picked it up carefully, feeling its weight—light, but solid. Not food. Not cloth. Maybe wood?

He turned, glancing back into his home, where the morning fire crackled low. A strange twinge worked its way through his chest. Curiosity, certainly, but also something colder. Suspicion.

Everyone always left their names on gifts. That was the tradition. That was the rule. An unmarked gift meant one of three things: a forgotten tag, a secret admirer… or trouble.

"Maybe Aranu just forgot to write her name again," Hahona muttered to himself, poking the bundle with one green finger. But even as he said it, he wasn’t sure. Aranu's gifts always smelled like cedar oil and fish scales. This one was... neutral. Scentless. Careful.

He looked around the quiet glade. The early morning fog hadn’t yet lifted. The usual birds were silent. Nothing stirred.

Carefully, Hahona carried the bundle inside. He set it on his sitting stone and stared at it for a long time. He could hear his mother's voice in the back of his mind:

“The swamp gives, but it never gives without reason.”

He reached forward and untied the twine.

The leaves unfolded slowly, dry and crackling in the warm air. Inside was a small object wrapped in a scrap of soft cloth. He peeled it back, revealing...

A carved shell. Smooth, spiral-shaped, polished until it gleamed like riverglass. Tiny markings ran along its edge—sigils he recognized as old Menehune script. Hahona sucked in a breath. The shell shimmered faintly, like moonlight on water. He turned it over in his hands, heart thumping.

He couldn’t read all the markings—some were from a dialect spoken in the deeper swamp, a region his clan rarely visited—but one word stood out, etched clearly across the center:

"Listen."

He frowned, raising the shell to his ear.

At first, there was silence. Then… a trickle. The sound of a small stream, burbling through stone. Then the rush of wind through cypress trees. Faint laughter. Music made from hollow reeds. And finally—just barely—his name, whispered once:

“Hahona…”

He dropped the shell.

It clattered onto the floor but didn’t crack. The sounds stopped instantly. He sat back, breath catching in his throat.

This wasn’t a toy. It was a message. Or a memory.

His first instinct was fear. Who knew his name? Who sent this? Was it a spirit? A trickster? Someone watching him from the fog?

But then he remembered the voice. It had been soft. Familiar, almost. Not menacing. Just... distant.

He wrapped the shell again and tucked it into a satchel at his side. He needed answers.

It took most of the morning to reach the western edge of the swamp, where the elders lived in great tree huts strung between banyans. He climbed the rope ladders and went straight to Elder Naia, the oldest of the swamp sages and keeper of oral histories.

She held the shell delicately, turning it in her wrinkled hands. When he told her the story, she smiled gently.

“These are memory shells,” she said. “Very rare. You whisper into them during times of deep feeling, and they carry that moment—hold it like a pool holds moonlight.”

“Who would give me something like this?” Hahona asked.

Naia traced the sigils slowly, eyes half-closed. “This one was carved long ago. See this mark?” She pointed. “It’s your mother’s clan.”

Hahona’s heart skipped. Was this a gift from his grandmother, who had passed long ago? Or a gift for another in his clan, whom he was named after?

“I believe this was meant for you... perhaps saved by someone who wanted to wait until you were old enough to hear it.”

Tears pricked his eyes. He looked at the shell again. The sounds—the laughter, the song—they made sense now.

He left Naia’s hut clutching the shell like it was a heartbeat.

The gift had no name, but now he knew: it hadn’t come from a stranger. It had come from love preserved, love waiting, quietly hidden in time until the right morning brought it back to light.

And in the frost of that strange season, Hahona felt warm.