Some whispered that the storm would come again for me. Others thought keeping me close meant keeping me contained.
In the end, High Lady Seraphine decreed that I would remain under Verdant’s canopy, watched, measured, but not abandoned. They gave me a cabin at the edge of the wilds, close enough for eyes to track, but far enough to keep me out of the way.
They placed ledgers in my hands and called it mercy, teaching me the clean weight of numbers and the steady comfort of order.
I took it, grateful perhaps, but never fooled. This was control dressed as charity, protection offered only so long as I stayed small, quiet, and useful.
The roots twined around me, but they never closed. I grew there anyway, learning the shape of a space that would not claim me.
The path to my cabin curls through lanes thick with ivy and out toward the edge of the wild. It was small, the kind of place no court official would choose for themselves, but it has been mine ever since Verdant claimed me.
Moss coats its roof like a second skin, and ivy creeps up the walls, finding every crack. From the outside it looks almost swallowed by the forest, perhaps that was why I love it.
I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.
Inside is order. Ledgers are stacked neat as bricks, quills are sharpened to identical points. Parchment corners are aligned like soldiers on parade. If my life cannot be controlled, at least the shape of my work could be.
The cabin smells of ink and drying herbs — rosemary hangs over the hearth, the lavender dries in bunches from the rafters, the scents steeped deep into the wood.
I unfastened my cloak and hang it by the door, my gaze catching on the lavender as it sways faintly overhead.
On quiet nights, I imagine my mother’s hands arranging them there, though I have long since forgotten the weight of her touch.
By day, I keep the accounts of Verdants markets and tithes, each column of numbers a way to pretend the world obeys some balance. By night, I return here, to the edge where civilization thins and wildness presses close.
The brook whispers just beyond my window. Foxfire lanterns mark the border of the road like green stars. And always, above it all, the promise of storms waits beyond the horizon.
The council’s voices were still ringing in my head. Their stares. Their fear. The way the storm itself had curled around me in the chamber, tasting, memorizing. Their judgment followed me home, lingering in the cabin, crowding my chest until my lungs burned.
The need for open sky overtook thought and my feet carried me outside.
The great oak beside my cabin waited as it always did, tall and mighty, its roots curled like fists deep into the soil. I settled at its base, the bark rough against my spine.
Above, the storm had gathered, a black weight over the valley. Lightning flared like veins across the clouds. Thunder rolled, slow and deliberate, shaking the world as if reminding who ruled.
The first drops struck my upturned face. I closed my eyes and breathed. Here at least, the storm was no enemy. Here it was the only thing that didn’t ask me to be small.
A raven cried somewhere above, its voice jagged as the lightning itself. When I opened my eyes, I caught the shadow of its wings cutting across the storm-lit sky. It circled once before vanishing into the dark.
The sound lingered, threaded through the thunder, low and insistent, before thinning into the wind.
I didn’t know then why it chilled me, only that it did.
The storm pressed closer. Rain slid down my cheeks like the memory of hands I had not felt in years. My parents faces rose uninvited, blurred by time and grief, but the fragments were sharp enough to wound.
My father’s hand shoving me back inside. My mothers voice calling my name, torn away by the wind. The door banging open, the world consumed by lightning, then silence.
Since that night I have lived with storms the way others lived with shadows, something you stop trying to outrun. They had spared me when they had taken everything else, and I didn’t know if that was mercy or cruelty.
Still, the storms came.
Sitting at the base of that mighty oak, I swore the storm bent low like it were listening.
The thunder rolled slower, deeper, almost like a voice circling a thought not yet spoken. Lightning froze in jagged veins above me, holding too long before it bled away.
The rain pulled strange patterns across my skin, spiraling, curling, as if it meant to write something there.
I pressed my palm flat to the earth at my side, tears streaking my cheeks and mixing with the rain. The soil trembled, not from thunder but from something deeper, a vibration that settled into my bones.
