THE FOURTH REALM: GREEN — The frozen heart

One night, the sign came in a dream.

She was walking through a desolate place. Her paws were heavy, her wings would not respond, and the cold had become so intense that she could barely move. She searched for a cave, a campfire, any shelter at all.

“Look inside yourself,” Helio told her.

Skyblue closed her eyes.

Her heart was a block of ice.

She saw it suspended in the center of her chest, dark beneath a clear crust. The cold spreading through her body began there.

“How could I not have noticed?” she asked. “After all this traveling… Has none of it done any good?”

“Each realm shows you something that still needs care.”

Skyblue approached that heart as she would a wounded creature. In the ice, she recognized scenes from her life. She had learned to protect herself from pain, but her shelter had grown cramped. She decided in advance who could understand her and who would never have anything to teach her.

It was easy to love those who were like her. She kept everyone else at a distance she called caution, though it was sometimes made of contempt.

“In the Orange Realm, you learned to choose whom to form bonds with and care for what grows between you,” Helio said. “The Green Realm invites you to go beyond that circle. It is the realm of unconditional love.”

“To love the ones who reject me, too?”

“To recognize that there is life in them, too, and fear, and suffering. Your heart can understand without having to close itself.”

Skyblue looked at the ice. For a long time, she had been convinced she needed no one. She remembered saying it to her parents, the way she and her friends mocked “normal” beings, the satisfaction of feeling different. The oasis had helped them breathe, but she had carried another dividing line with her when she left: those who were like her, and everyone else.

“Hurts and resentments build up around the heart,” Helio continued. “The farther we withdraw, the more distrustful we become. In time, even the wall seems natural.”

Skyblue remembered her relief at finding a group whose scales were the same color as hers. Exhausted as she was, all she had wanted was to belong.

“How do I thaw it?”

“Begin by looking at yourself with love. You’ve been afraid, too.”

Skyblue stayed beside her frozen heart. She didn’t try to break it open. She remembered the little one who used to hide to cry, and for the first time in a long while, she didn’t demand more strength or wisdom of that little one.

Around her, the dream’s landscape began to change. The wind lost its harshness. Small patches of green appeared among the stones.