THE FIRST REALM: RED — Much to unlearn
The days passed in discoveries, conversations, and experiments with music. Skyblue joined the dwarves at their tasks and was happy. So she was surprised when she began to feel an unease she could not explain.
One morning, she went to find Yaseee.
“Please give me a job. I feel as if I’m wasting time.”
“You want to learn a trade? Which one would you like?”
“No. I want you to put me to work.”
The dwarf took off his hat and scratched his head.
“Let me see if I understand. How can time be wasted?”
“I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve been doing nothing for too long. I want to do something useful.”
Yaseee tried to look serious.
“You’ve seemed very busy to me. You’ve explored the village, learned things, and made friends.”
“Yes, but that’s not the same.”
“Not the same as what?”
Skyblue took a deep breath, as she had been taught at school to keep from losing her patience.
“As doing something useful.”
“And what would be useful to you?”
The young dragon felt that everyone understood something except her. Yaseee’s smile, so friendly a moment before, was becoming unbearable.
“I want to do something!” she repeated.
“Then tell me what you want to do.”
Skyblue sank onto the grass and began to cry. She was ashamed and furious, and could not even explain exactly why.
Yaseee stopped smiling, sat beside her, and waited quietly for her to calm down.
When her breathing had settled, the dwarf spoke:
“Young dragon, you are brave. You’ve set out on a demanding journey. Some learn by meeting the same obstacle again and again until they can see it differently. Others choose to go in search of what they need to understand. You’ve chosen that path.”
The dragon wiped her face.
“I thought I was going to learn new things.”
“And you will. But there will also be things to unlearn. Ideas you’ve carried for so long that they now seem to be your own, even when they make you suffer. Coming across them isn’t always pleasant. In the dragons’ land, you learned to do things, to keep busy. It makes the dragons feel important. But doing something has little meaning if you don’t know why you’re doing it or who you are as you do it.”
Skyblue began to recognize in her own voice the tone her parents used when they spoke to her about routines.
“I ask you with respect, young dragon of the Blue Planet, of the golden eagle lineage: how can you need to do something when you don’t yet know what you want to do? Do you need that activity, or do you need to feel busy?”
For a while, she did not know how to answer.
She searched for reasons to prove she had a right to be upset. Then she remembered her arrival, the joy of exploring without hurrying, and her excitement at trying unfamiliar things. When had she decided that none of it counted?
A laugh escaped between her last few sobs.
“I have a lot to unlearn, don’t I?”
Yaseee smiled again.