OVERTURE — The world awakens

All around her, the colors looked as though they had just been born. She went over to a stone she kept among her most precious treasures and saw tiny sparks of light coming from it. When she held it in her paws, she felt something like a heartbeat.

‘I’m losing my mind,’ she thought.

She looked at Ernesto. He winked at her with his trunk again.

Skyblue went over everything she had eaten. Perhaps an odd berry, or one of those roots they had warned her about at school, the ones that made you see things. But she couldn’t remember eating anything unusual. She felt her forehead and her belly. No fever, either.

She decided to have some water. Perhaps she was thirsty.