THE SEVENTH REALM: AMETHYST — Love at first laughter

He told her about his life as a phoenix. He too had grown up with an absence he couldn’t name. He had rebelled, searched for answers in many places, and given himself over to excesses that only took him farther from what he sought. Sometimes a memory of his origins would come to him, a fleeting clarity; then he would lose it again.

He had traveled through the enchanted lands telling stories, as the troubadours of his kind did. Some were about the journey home. As he told them, he felt they were meant for him, but he didn’t know how to follow them.

“I was looking for something,” he said. “Now and then I seemed to remember that I was looking for someone too.”

Skyblue listened without interrupting.

When his weariness became too great, Feliz turned to the ancient cycle of the phoenixes: he gave his form to the fire so that another could rise from the ashes. His travels had brought him to the land of the dragons. There, the essence that survived the flames joined with a mango tree.

“With Ernesto.”

Feliz nodded.

He hadn’t known how long he would need to rest in that form. Nor had he imagined that Skyblue would choose a dragon’s body. He had come to think dragons so selfish that he would never have thought to look for her among them.

“I had my own ideas about what everyone else ought to be like too,” he admitted.

As he merged with the life of the tree, he forgot his travels, his name, and the love he had come seeking. When Skyblue appeared before him, he didn’t know who she was.

Yet he smiled at her.

“And I fell in love with you again,” he said. “Before I remembered anything.”

Skyblue felt her throat tighten with emotion. She remembered their first meeting: the old dragon’s warnings, the branch that had lowered to welcome her. It hadn’t mattered to her that the tree no longer bore fruit. She had known she wanted to live there.

Love at first laugh.

Feliz remembered too.