THE FOURTH REALM: GREEN — Learning to stay

She returned to the shrub and leaned against its trunk. For a while, she did nothing. Then she began to laugh, tentatively at first, then out loud. She could hardly believe she had stood in the middle of that scene without ending up convinced there was something wrong with her.

‘If only I’d known how to do that before…’

The thought tried to take her back to school. Skyblue let it pass. She knew now; she could begin from here.

She decided to spend a few days alone. She went out to explore, bathed, studied the plants, and came back to tell the shrub about her discoveries. It moved its branches with an attentiveness that reminded her of Ernesto. Sometimes it seemed to nod; at other times, it seemed every bit as surprised as she was.

As long as she paid attention to her body, she stayed comfortably warm. If she lost herself in an imaginary argument, the cold found a crack to slip through again.

The natural world around her began to interest her. Before, she had mostly noticed what was missing: tall trees, abundant flowers, warmth. Now she discovered how much ingenuity lay in a small leaf, in a root sunk between stones, in the fine down that protected a plant from the wind. She remembered finding life where she had least expected it in the Yellow Realm. The Mother had many ways of sustaining her creatures.

At dusk, she went into her shelter, blessed her food, and lay down. She knew she dreamed, but the images dissolved before she could remember them. She was waiting for a sign to tell her she was ready to meet the dragons again.