Celeste Windwhisper's Arc

Chapter 12 of 14

Celeste closed her fingers around the warm drop. The red-winged girl pointed to a small glass house drifting just past the crystal canopy, its panes catching every color of the sky. Inside, a pouch of crimson powder waited on a table. "Mix it there," the girl said. "But you must paint before dawn. After that, the pigment goes back to the air, and no sky will hold your work again." Celeste flew to the glass house. The stranger waited below. She tipped the warm drop into the pouch and stirred. The red powder drank the light and bloomed into a color she had no name for. Her hands shook. Seven years of thin pigment, of falling work, and now this — one night, one chance. She lifted from the glass house and climbed above the crystal canopy. The girl watched from the steps, small and still. Celeste swept her wings wide and began. She painted long curves of deep red, then layered them with the new color until the sky itself seemed to lean toward her brush. The pigment held. It did not thin. It did not fall. Dawn pushed at the horizon. Celeste pulled the last stroke and dropped, breathless, to the stone. Above them, a great red bloom hung in the sky, fixed and burning. The red-winged girl looked up and finally opened her mouth in wonder. "It stayed," she whispered. Celeste sank to her knees. The painting was real. It would stay. But the canopy was empty of any other witness, and the bridge of light behind her was already fading. She had made the work — and now she had to find a way to bring the crowds to see it before the sky chose to forget.