Celeste Windwhisper's Arc

Chapter 8 of 14

By midday the stranger had not moved. His blue hair lifted in the breeze, and his red eyes stayed fixed on the frame above. Then one of the watchers came running from the trees. She carried something wrapped in cloth, and her hands were shaking. "We found this in the old hollow," she said. "It fell years ago. It never dissolved." Celeste unwrapped it on the grass. Inside the weathered wooden edge was a small, faded scene — a quiet tower beside still water, painted in muted greens and soft browns. It was her very first sky work. She had let it go seven years ago and believed the wind had eaten it. But here it was, whole, sleeping in a frame someone had built around it long before she knew anyone watched. The blue-winged man stood. He walked over slowly and knelt. His red eyes went wide and wet. "I caught this," he whispered. "I caught it when it fell. I have kept it all these years." He looked up at Celeste, and the claim drained out of his face. "I did not follow the light first. I followed you." He did not take down his tower. But he turned it. The carved wings on its sides now faced her frame and her old work both, like a watcher, not an owner. Celeste held the small painting in her lap. For seven years she had thought she was the only witness. She had been wrong from the very first day.