Aurelith's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The white markings on Aurelith's arms began to burn at moonrise, and there was no one left who could tell her what they meant. She stood on the threshold of her canopy home, one pink hand braced against the curved wood of the doorway. The light from her skin threw pale shapes onto the floor. She was the first in three generations to be marked. The elders who had once read these signs were gone before she was born. Her wings twitched against her back, restless. The marks always led somewhere. That was the one thing the old songs agreed on. Aurelith stepped down from her home and followed the pull in her skin toward the grove of blue trees at the village edge. The trunks glowed the way they always did. Tonight her arms answered them. The lines on her skin brightened when she faced the tallest tree, dimmed when she turned away. She circled the trunk twice to be sure. She was sure. She pressed her palm to the bark. Nothing happened. She waited. Still nothing. A cluster of giant butterflies lifted from the white leaves above her. Their wings scattered pastel light across the clearing. Aurelith watched them settle on a low branch, then on her shoulder, then on the bark beside her hand. One folded its wings over a shallow groove in the trunk she had not noticed. She brushed it aside and found a symbol carved into the wood. A spiral inside a circle. The same spiral glowed on the inside of her wrist. She had two choices. She could wait until dawn and ask the older wingfolk who might remember fragments of the old teachings. Or she could act now, while the marks were bright, and trust her own reading. She thought of what waiting had cost her people already. Three generations of silence. No one left who could teach her anyway. The fragments they offered would be guesses dressed as wisdom. Aurelith pressed her wrist against the carved spiral. The bark warmed. The tree's glow climbed her arm and spread across her chest. For a moment she felt she had chosen right. Then the light in the grove shifted. The other trees dimmed. The butterflies scattered. A low sound came from inside the trunk, like something waking that had been asleep a long time. The marks on her skin were no longer white. They had turned the same deep blue as the tree. She pulled her wrist back. The color stayed. Aurelith stood alone in the dimmed grove and understood two things at once. She had answered the sign. And she had answered it without knowing what she had agreed to. Something inside the tree was moving toward the surface. She could hear it in the wood. She took one step back, then another, and did not turn to run until the bark began to split.