The Song That Came After

Lira was finished before the song existed.

I knew Henry and Lira's voices on the page. What I didn't have yet was the sound of them answering each other — not in dialogue, but in something closer to what they would keep when the years ran out.

That song is "What We Keep." It's a duet between Henry and Lira, released under AshleyInStereo. It sits beside the book the way a quiet companion piece should: not a trailer, not a hard sell. Just the two of them, singing what the story already knows.

I'd love to tell you the song came to me in a dream, but the truth is simpler. I handed the Lira manuscript to ChatGPT just to see what song it might find in Henry and Lira's story. What came back had something in it. I tweaked it, then tweaked it again, several times over, until it sounded like them. Then I brought it to life in Suno. "What We Keep" is what came out the other side, and hearing those two characters sing to each other still catches me off guard.

It's one of five songs that grew out of the book — Choose the Morning (Lira's), What Time Allows (Henry's), In Time (for Chapter 24), The Last Leaf, and this duet. They're all on ashley-mason.com/lira if you want to hear the rest.

If you've read Lira, you already know what they're holding onto. If you haven't, the book is on Kindle and free with Kindle Unlimited:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HKV5Q66N

Ashley