Dorian Wraith's Arc

Chapter 17 of 27

The pull behind Dorian's eyes ended in nothing. He stood in a gray field with no ground under his boots and no sky above him. Mist hung at every side. He turned once and saw the winged man standing a few steps away, pink hair bright against the gray, wings folded low. The fairy raised one hand and the gray began to shape itself. Log walls rose. A blue door set itself into the wood. Two sunflowers pushed up from a floor that had not existed a moment before. A hearth built itself stone by stone and lit. Dorian stood inside a small brown cabin now, warm, and did not know why the sight of it made his throat tight. "Come here," the fairy said. Dorian walked to him. The fairy's green eyes searched his face and found no recognition there. "You came to me a year ago," he said. "You couldn't hold a flame without burning the table. I taught you wind. I taught you light. Somewhere in there I stopped being your teacher and started being your friend." Dorian shook his head. The words landed on him but slid off. "I don't know you," he said. The fairy's jaw tightened. He lifted his hand again. "Then watch." The cabin around them shifted. A second Dorian sat on the floor by the hearth with his hands over his face. A bakery had burned. People had run. He was saying he was a monster, that he should leave before he killed someone he cared about. The fairy from the memory knelt in front of him and pulled his hands down. "You are not a monster," that other fairy said. "A monster wouldn't be sitting here hating what he did. You're a man learning a hard thing." The Dorian on the floor cried without sound. Then he looked up and said, "Thank you, friend." It was the first time he had used the word. Dorian felt it hit. Not as a picture returned to him but as a weight settling back into a place shaped to hold it. He remembered the smell of the hearth. He remembered the fairy's hands on his wrists. He remembered saying friend and meaning it. He turned to the winged man beside him and the gray at the edges of the cabin began to thin. "Beak," Dorian said. The name came out on its own. Beak's shoulders dropped an inch. His eyes went wet and he did not wipe them. "There you are," he said. "Part of you." He stepped back. The cabin around them held. "I have to go now. Evander comes next, then Callie, who has known you the longest. Don't lose what you just found." Dorian nodded. He held the memory in both hands like something breakable, and the mist began to lift.