THE FIFTH REALM: TURQUOISE — Listen before explaining

At dawn, the birds in the cherry tree woke her. Helio asked her to spend a few days in silence.

“Your task is to listen. To everything, even your own thoughts. Try to distinguish the sounds without chasing after them. If something comes to life, watch it as you would a leaf being carried down a river.”

Skyblue closed her eyes. She heard a mockingbird, then the chicks in a nearby nest. They must be asking for food. Farther away, a blackbird sang, and a few moments later another answered. They must be courting. Perhaps they had been searching for each other for a long time and…

“Listen,” Helio reminded her.

Skyblue opened one eye.

“I am listening.”

“You’re telling yourself a story too.”

The dragon laughed. It was true. In a very short time, she had decided what some birds needed, what others felt, and what ought to happen to them next.

“Let the sound reach you before you give it an explanation,” Helio went on. “If you fill every space straightaway, you’ll miss some of what’s happening.”

The exercise sounded simple. It wasn’t.

Skyblue was so used to keeping things to herself that she had learned to hold entire conversations inside her head. She asked the questions, answered them, argued with the answers, and rehearsed what she would say next time. Sometimes she carried a gathering around with her that was noisier than the one in the Green Realm.

“All this time I thought I was alone, and it turns out I’ve got a crowd with me,” she told Helio. “I wish they’d all be quiet for a moment so I could listen.”

“At least you know they’re there now.”

“The hard part is not paying attention to them.”

“You’ll have time to get to know that world better in the Indigo Realm. For now, feel the sounds. Let them enter through your ears and travel over your skin. You don’t have to stop every thought before you can listen again.”