THE FOURTH REALM: GREEN — The misty threshold

After that, she found it easier to notice the secret understandings among the young of different species. They exchanged glances, made signals, shared something on the sly. When an adult appeared, each went back to their own place.

‘When do we learn to separate ourselves like this?’ Skyblue wondered.

In the older ones, she discovered a fear she recognized: of rejection, of losing what was theirs, of not knowing what to do when faced with someone different. They had learned to call distance safety.

Understanding this didn’t make all their actions kind. But she wondered how often the dragons in her village had acted from that same fear. The thought didn’t erase her pain; it set it within something larger.

For the first time, she wanted to approach them without having to prove that they were wrong and she was right.

When she spoke of the meadows, the inhabitants of the cold region told her it wasn’t easy to cross the border. There, the species lived together in communities they could scarcely imagine.

“They say your heart has to be very light,” one female dragon explained. “Every so often, someone manages it.”

“Someone from here?”

“Someone of any species. And when it happens, we celebrate.”

Skyblue thought how strange this place was. They could fear one another in their daily lives and still rejoice when one of them crossed into a different way of living.

She stayed with them until she felt it was time to go on. She understood that the opposite of love was fear. The feeling of being separate turned others into adversaries; feeling part of the same life allowed them to trust that there was enough for everyone.

On the day she left, many creatures came to say goodbye. Besides dragons, there were pegasi, laces, and other inhabitants she had spoken with on her walks. Some kept a little distance from the others. Even so, they had come.

Skyblue looked at them with gratitude. Among the pegasi, she recognized the little ones from the pit. One gave her a quick signal and hid a smile.

Mist covered the passage to the meadows. The dragon approached the threshold, then turned her head.

“I think you’ll be able to cross, too,” she told them. “There are so many things that bring you together. You’ve been showing them to me.”

Then she entered the mist.