The app on her phone was only a mirror into possibility: tracks stacked like translucent panes, waveforms that looked like the geography of a secret island. Tonight she’d been chasing an echo — not the literal effect, but a memory of a place that arrived in bursts: a train braking, a bell beneath water, a child's laughter muffled by rain. She isolated a clip from an old field recording, stretched it until the teeth of the waveform smoothed into a long, amber sigh. A low synth pad bloomed underneath it, filtered so carefully it was nearly invisible — just a suggestion of warmth. Automation brushed the filter open in little breaths, giving the pad a pulse that matched her own.