THE SEVENTH REALM: AMETHYST — You never travelled alone

They talked about the days beneath his branches. About the stories she brought back from each adventure, the sorrows she confided to his trunk, the blossoms that had returned one day. For him, those had been the happiest moments of a life whose beginning he could barely remember.

“When you told me you were leaving, I didn’t know how I would bear your absence.”

“I saw you cry.”

“There was sadness and joy. Both. I knew you had to go, though part of me wanted to ask you to stay.”

Skyblue lowered her eyes.

“More than once, I thought of coming back.”

“I know. I was happy to hear from you. But I was happy you kept going too.”

Feliz told her that her messages had done much more than ease the distance between them. As she traveled through the realms, something had been waking in him as well. Her questions, her discoveries, even her mistakes had restored fragments of himself. What came through the roots of the trees reached deeper and deeper into him.

Gradually, he had remembered.

That was why he came to her in dreams. Skyblue couldn’t yet recognize his phoenix form, but she could already hear his laugh.

“Then I haven’t made this journey alone,” she said.

“Never.”

They stayed together without needing to say more. Skyblue felt the warmth of his blue feathers and, at the same time, the firmness of the old trunk she had leaned against so often.