THE FIFTH REALM: TURQUOISE — Voices of the air

“Can you hear what I’m thinking too?”

One of them came closer. Her voice sounded like a metal flute, clear and warm.

“Thoughts take shape here too.”

Skyblue looked around her with fresh caution.

“How do you ever get any peace?”

“We try to let our words come from the heart. That way, we’re not afraid of coming face-to-face with what we say.”

“That must take an awful lot of practice.”

A voice like a harp answered from another branch:

“Your heart blossomed in the Green Realm. Now you’ll learn to listen to it as you think and speak.”

“How?”

“By paying attention,” said a third voice, this one with the sound of a clarinet. “Here, every stray thought comes to life. It’s hard not to notice.”

The creatures laughed again.

Skyblue had thought the Green Realm would be the hardest. Before that, she had thought the same of the Yellow Realm. She wondered whether she would keep feeling this way until the end of her journey.

‘At least I’ve learned to keep quiet,’ she told herself.

Then she noticed how much her mind was still saying while her mouth stayed closed.

“Ah,” she murmured. “That could be a problem.”

She thanked her hosts. Helio told her they were called silfis, distant relatives of the male and female sylphs who kept the air clean and carried messages in the land of the dragons.