Page 28 of In Your Light

Fyn’s gaze darted to Pax, who was standing by his hut with his arms crossed, before he gently booped Cyd on the nose. “One day soon,” Fyn answered, leaving it up to Pax to tell them Fyn wasn’t exactly welcome back. “And I’ll bring you both a seashell,” Fyn added. Both boys were excited by this, and Fyn felt much happier making them smile instead of letting them stay sad.

“You two be good for Pax,” he said, giving them each a pat on the head. “And listen to Zaq, okay?”

They both nodded, and with a final glance back at Pax, Fyn walked out of the camp. He’d usually set off at a run, but today, walking felt right.

He wanted his herd to know he wasn’t running away. He was sure-footed, stepping into whatever his future held.

Zaq met him down the path a ways and fell into step beside him. After a few strides of silence, Zaq bumped his shoulder into Fyn’s. “Race you to the border,” he said, then took a running leap, landed on hooves instead of feet, and took off at pace.

Fyn let out a bray of laughter as he morphed into faun-form and gave chase.

Chapter

Eight

HADEOM

Hadeom sat cross-legged on the jetty in the misting rain. The clouds were low, much like his mood, the cold as biting as his self-deprecation.

His eyes were closed, his breaths deep and even, and he tried to call his true form to light.

He knew what he was. He knew what he used to be. He’d almost had it while sitting in the hut, but the crackle of air around him was a sharp reminder that the dusty, old, very flammable wooden hut probably wasn’t the best place for it.

Not that he expected flames...

Far from it. But he remembered how, when he once had the ability to morph at will, the air around him would charge with static, and he didn’t want to risk the hut falling victim to energy displacement.

Yes, he remembered... energy displacement. Now he remembered that much.

So he sat on the jetty in the cold and rain, remembering the energy. The instantaneous vacuum and snap of the air around him when he used to morph. How the space around him would suck in, then expand out as he took to his true form.

Hadeom reckoned this would be the key to unlocking the muscle memory his body was refusing to recall.

Because simply wishing for it to happen and demanding his body do it wasn’t enough, apparently.

You need to want it, the wind said, again sounding very much like Cern.

“You know, you could just come here and talk to me,” Hadeom said.

The wind tousled his hair in reply.

Hadeom almost smiled. “I do want it, by the way. In case you haven’t noticed. I’ve been out here for hours, trying to do this.”

You haven’t wanted it enough, Cern said, a whisper through the trees and across the water.

“I didn’t realise there was a criteria for wanting,” Hadeom added. “Is there a metric I should know about?”

“Do you talk to yourself often?”

Hadeom spun around, his heart squeezing. He hadn’t heard anyone approaching. He’d been listening to Cern and trying to focus.

Fyn stepped onto the jetty, his smile wide. “Did you not hear me approaching?” he asked. “I wasn’t sneaking up.”

Hadeom’s heart was thumping, and perhaps for a different reason this time; one he was choosing to ignore. “I wasn’t paying attention,” Hadeom said. “It’s been a long time since someone has had the upper hand on me, Fyn.”

He laughed and sat himself down next to Hadeom, seemingly without a care in the world. Of course, it was that moment that Hadeom noticed the rain had stopped, and even a ray of sunshine somehow broke through the clouds, shining directly over Fyn like a spotlight.

As if Cern was making a point.