THE THIRD REALM: YELLOW — The seedlings’ own time

One morning, she went with a yellow fugaín to the edge of a burned area. A few small leaves poked out between the roots of a fallen tree. Skyblue brought the torch closer to warm them, but the leaves curled inward.

She drew it away at once.

The fugaín suggested trying from farther away. The dragon took one step back, then another. After a while, the leaves opened again.

Skyblue sat beside the shoot. This work was less spectacular than wielding an enormous torch. No one fled before her strength; no one proclaimed her the victor. For a while, the only sounds were the soft crackling of the fugaín’s embers and the rustling of the grass.

When sunlight reached the leaves, they both moved away.

“Is that it?” Skyblue asked.

Her companion looked at the shoot, which was standing upright, and moved on to another spot.

Skyblue followed him. She felt a quiet satisfaction as she left those leaves open to the sun.

At other times, the urge to do too much returned. She wanted to bring warmth to every shoot, mend every tree, prove as quickly as she could that she had changed. Then she wore herself out and began to get bad-tempered.

Helio invited her to stop.

The shoots kept their own time. The trees’ wounds would not disappear simply because she was impatient to heal them. Skyblue was learning to stay with them and come back the next day.

She returned to the burned area several times. With each visit, she learned to look a little more closely.

She laughed when she made mistakes, and her friends laughed with her. It reminded her of the dwarves at work and the ties making their shapes.

The heat in her belly began to change. It was no longer an insatiable hollow demanding to be filled, but an energy that urged her into motion. She felt it as she tended a shoot, shared a conversation, or thought of the road still ahead.