THE SEVENTH REALM: AMETHYST — Little lights along the way

Their names were among those signs.

Skyblue had spoken in a dream to the one who would become her mother, asking her for that name. It was to remind her of the color of her home, even when she couldn’t understand why she bore it.

She smiled at the thought of the arguments it had caused.

“Who names a dragon Skyblue?”

She did. She had thought of it herself.

Feliz had chosen a name that meant happiness, one that would preserve his essence through the deaths and rebirths of the phoenixes. Even in an unfamiliar land, even joined to a tree that remembered nothing of its former life, joy would find a way to show itself.

And Aurora would herald a new dawn.

The three had left those small lights along the path without knowing how their meetings would unfold. Skyblue now saw how the signs had survived their forgetting: a laugh, a hug on the other side of a mountain, the color of a stone she carried with her.

Their star family had never stopped being with them. Reuniting with that family would give them strength to return to the enchanted lands, where there was still work for them to do.

Skyblue no longer felt that return as a distant obligation. She thought of the village. Of the dragons guarding their treasures, the young ones learning to look important, Evarista caring for those who came to her tree.

She wanted to go back.

At last, the healer’s words, which had so irritated her before she left, fell into place.