And then I wasn't in the war room anymore.
I was seven years old.
My knee was bleeding. I'd fallen in the garden, tripped over a root while chasing a butterfly, and the stone path had torn the skin open. It wasn't a bad cut, but it hurt, and I was crying because I was seven and that's what seven-year-olds did.
My mother knelt in front of me.
Her hands were soft as she cleaned the wound. Her kimono pooled around her on the ground, pale blue silk with white cranes stitched along the hem.
She smelled like jasmine and ink, and her voice was so gentle. "Kenji, you're a dragon. Don't cry."
I sniffled and wiped my nose with the back of my hand. "A dragon?"
"Yes." She pressed a cloth to my knee and held it there. "I see it all around you. Your little dragon rising out of that little body and peeking at me. It tells me you're strong."
She lifted the cloth and kissed my knee. Right over the cut.
I felt the warmth of her lips and the sting of the wound at the same time.
“You see it?”
“Yes, Kenji. It lives in your shadow.”
“My shadow. . .” I looked around the space. At the walls. At the ground. At my own shadow stretched across the tatami in the afternoon light.
But. . .my shadow looked like a boy, not a dragon. “I can’t see it, Mommy.”
“No. You can’t.”
"Why can't I see it?"
My mother smiled. That soft, knowing smile she saved only for me and Hiro. "Because it's within you,my love. Itisyou. Therefore, you can't see yourself the way others who are special do."
“Special?” I frowned. “Is it a lot of special people that can see my dragon?"
"No." She cupped my face with both hands and her fingers brushed my cheeks, wiping away the tears. "Only the one who truly loves you will see it."
My heart lifted. "So, youtrulylove me? Because you can see my shadow?"
“Yes, my love.” Her smile deepened. "And mothers will always be able to see their child's shadow beast.”
“Why?”
“Because we are special, and you are a part of me. You grew inside me. And now you carry a piece of my soul." She tapped my chest with one finger. "That's what your shadow beast is made from, Kenji. It is a piece ofmysoul."
I grinned.
The pain in my knee didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered except that my mother loved me and could see my dragon and I was strong.
"What does it look like, Mommy? My dragon? Is it big?"
She opened her mouth to answer—
"Enough!" My father's voice cut through the space like a blade.
He stood in the doorway.
Tall.
