“That’s the spirit!” Peeble said cheerfully. “Nothing says coping like festival wine and denial!”
We wandered deeper into the celebration, and I tried to lose myself in the wonder of it all. A vendor offered me something that looked like candied daffodils and tasted like summer rain. Children ran past trailing ribbons that painted colors in the air. Music shifted and swirled, sometimes sounding like home, sometimes like nothing that I’d heard before.
But everywhere I went, I felt the stares. Some curious, some fearful, some calculating. I was the anomaly, the thing that shouldn’t be, the human wearing marks meant for their realm.
“She’s the one,” I heard someone whisper. “The one who turned Hunt riders into trees.”
“Look at her marks—they’re spreading.”
I glanced down at my arms. They were right. The marks had crept past my collarbone, delicate tracings now visible on my forearms when the light hit right. But there were dark veins too, shadows of corruption that matched Kaelren’s. They appeared when I woke up from the dream. Kaelren assumed it was a symptom of the deepening connection of our bond.
I paused at a stall selling bottled memories—actual memories trapped in perriwinkle-like gems that played when you held them to the light. The vendor, a creature made entirely of shifting sand, offeredme one for free.
“For the prophet,” they whispered, pressing it into my palm before I could refuse.
The memory bloomed in my mind—warm and comforting, like a hug from the person you love most.
A Florakith mother teaching her daughter to dance for the first time. The child’s wings weren’t fully formed yet, just translucent nubs that trembled with excitement. They stood in a garden that had existed a hundred years ago, maybe more, surrounded by flowers that no longer grew in Wynmire. The mother’s laughter was like wind chimes, and when the little one stumbled over her own feet, she caught her gently, spinning her in the air until the stumble became part of the dance itself.
“See?” the mother’s voice echoed across time. “There are no mistakes in dancing, my bloom. Only new steps we haven’t learned yet.”
The child giggled—a sound so pure it made my chest ache—and tried again. This time her wings caught the rhythm, and for a moment, just a moment, she floated. The joy in her face was so fierce, so bright, that it hurt to witness.
Then the memory shifted. The same daughter, grown now, teaching her own child the same dance in the same garden—except the flowers were different, the realm older, the steps slightly changed. She spoke the same words her mother had spoken: “There are no mistakes in dancing, my bloom.”
It was a tradition, I realized. Passed down through generations, evolving but never lost. A small moment of beauty and continuity in a realm that seemed built on chaos and change.
The memory faded, leaving me gasping—not with horror this time, but with something deeper. Loss, maybe. Longing for traditions I’d never had, for roots that went deeper than one generation, for the kind of love that survived through teaching and time.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” The sand vendor’s voice rippled like water over stone. “That family line stretches back four hundred years. The current daughter still teaches that dance every Harvest Moon.”
I looked down at the crystal in my palm, its surface still warm. “Why give this to me?”
“Because you’re building something new,” they said simply. “Andsometimes, when building the new, it helps to remember what’s worth keeping from the old.”
Despite everything, I smiled. It felt good, real.
That’s when I saw the dancers. The vendor nodded his head in their direction and shooed me away.
They moved in the center of the festival, bodies telling stories without words. Some had wings, some had too many limbs, some seemed to be made of plants themselves. But they all moved together, creating patterns mesmerizing.
“You should join,” a voice said beside me. A local, her bark-skin glowing with health, her leaf-hair rustling with the music. “The dance chooses its partners, and tonight, it’s calling for you.”
“I don’t know the steps.”
“The dance knows them for you.” She smiled, and it was kind despite the sharp thorns that served as her teeth. “Besides, the one with stormy eyes has been watching you all night. Perhaps the dance will call him too.”
I didn’t have to ask who she meant. Even without looking, I could feel Kaelren’s presence at the edge of the festival, his attention like a weight between my shoulder blades.
“Maybe later,” I said.
But later had a way of becoming now in this realm.
The music shifted, and suddenly dancers were reaching for me, pulling me into their spiral. I tried to resist, but their joy was infectious, their movement hypnotic. Before I knew it, I was spinning with them, my feet finding steps I didn’t know, my body moving to rhythms that were both beautiful and sensual all in one.
The world became a blur of light and sound and motion. I forgot about death and doom. Forgot about choosing between love and realm. Forgot everything except the dance and the way it made me feel—alive, present, real.
That’s when I felt him.
