The villagers looked at her with confusion.
“Not at all,” Piper said. “Whatever you need.”
For the next two hours, I watched Adele work.
She walked through the fields, crouching to examine the soil with her magic, crushing dried leaves between herfingers, tasting dust and making notes. She asked about normal rainfall patterns, seasonal variations, and historical drought conditions. The villagers answered as best they could, their initial wariness fading as they recognized her genuine interest.
She actually cared. And more than that, she understood what she was seeing in ways I never could.
I was a king. A dragon shifter. I could fight, lead, negotiate, and intimidate when necessary. But I couldn’t fix this with strength or authority. I couldn’t command the clouds to open or the rain to fall.
I needed her expertise. Her knowledge. Her magic.
“The topsoil’s been depleted for weeks,” she said, crouching near a withered stalk. “But look at the subsoil.” She dug deeper with a flick of magic, exposing darker earth beneath. “There’s still moisture here. The problem isn’t groundwater. It’s the atmospheric delivery system.”
“Meaning?” Piper asked.
“As you said, the rain isn’t reaching you.” Adele stood, brushing dirt from her hands. She turned to study the sky. “I need to see the larger picture to understand why. I need to go higher.” Adele looked up at me. “Can you take me into the mountains? I need to see the wind patterns from above, how the air moves around the valley.”
“Of course.”
I shifted again, and Adele climbed onto my back, settling into position like she belonged there.
I was beginning to believe she did.
I launched us skyward, spiraling up above the valley in widening circles. Adele’s focus sharpened, her mind working through calculations I couldn’t begin to follow.
“Higher,” she said. “I need to see the full mountain range.”
I climbed until the air thinned, and we were level with the highest peaks. There, I found a wide ledge on the northern ridge and landed, shifting back to my usual form as Adele dismounted.
Brightmore Valley spread below us, a brown scar in the otherwise green landscape. To the east and west, neighboring valleys flourished, their fields lush.
The contrast was damning.
Adele moved to the edge of the outcropping, her hands already moving in complex patterns, magic gathering around her fingers. Frost formed in the air, creating visible currents that showed wind direction. She muttered to herself, too low for me to catch the words, her brow furrowed in concentration.
I stayed back, giving her space to work, and tried not to think about how beautiful she looked. Strands of hair had come loose from her braid during the flight, and they whipped around her face in the wind. Her eyes were distant, seeing patterns invisible to me. Her lips moved as worked through problems.
She was wonderful.
“There,” she said suddenly, pointing. “Do you see the wind pattern?” She traced it in the air with frost, showing me how the prevailing currents hit the mountain range and split. “It should flow over the valley, carrying moisture-laden clouds from the western ocean. But instead—” The frost showed the current easing around the valley, rejoining on the far side. “The mountains create a barrier that diverts the airflow. No clouds reach Brightmore during this season.”
“Why this season specifically?”
“Because of the atmospheric pressure systems.” Her excitement was building, her words coming faster. “Inspring and fall, the pressure differential is strong enough to push clouds over the mountains. But in summer, when the pressure equalizes…” She created another frost pattern, showing how the summer winds took the path of least resistance around the valley instead of over it. “It’s a fifty-year cycle because of a larger continental pressure pattern that shifts the base wind direction slightly. When it aligns with the summer season like this,” she snapped her fingers. “They see drought.”
I stared at the patterns she’d created, trying to understand. “So it’s not that there’s no rain. It’s that the rain is being diverted away from Brightmore.”
“Exactly.” She turned to me, her face lit with the thrill of discovery. “The valley is sitting in a rain shadow created by seasonal atmospheric conditions that only occur once every fifty years. Your ancestors probably noticed the pattern but didn’t understand the mechanism.”
“Can we fix it?”
Her smile widened. “We can.”
Hope flared in my chest. “How?”
“Cloud seeding.” She was already pulling out her notebook, sketching diagrams. “If we introduce a certain magic into the clouds that form to the west, we can trigger precipitation and keep them from diverting around the valley. The rain will fall over Brightmore instead of being carried past.”
