Elentári Springborn's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Elentári Springborn woke before dawn, sure her King had come. She had waited for Christ in the Garden since God breathed her out of the first spring. All night she had planned the gift she would lay at His feet: a crown of Eden's rarest blooms, proof she had kept His creatures well. She rose from the castle of mossy stone and gold and ran to the flower patch to gather the first petals. The frost stopped her at the gate. White crystals coated every leaf. The exotic blooms she needed hung stiff and gray. She touched a pink petal and it cracked like glass. No frost had ever crept into the Garden. She pressed her palm flat against the cold ground and felt no spring beneath it. "They will all die by midday," she said aloud. The crown she had promised her King was dying before her hands could weave it. Hoofbeats broke the silence. Laurelin Meadowstride came through the white grass, her green horse-legs quiet, blue flowers in her white hair. The centaur had tended these same creatures beside Elentári since God made them both. She knelt low to study the frozen patch. "Your blooms shiver, dear keeper," Laurelin said, her voice soft and singing. "But frost cannot hold where fire still breathes." Elentári did not understand. Then she remembered the bronze lion that guarded the far edge of the Garden. Its eyes burned with living flame that never went out. Heat lived in that creature. Heat could save the flowers. "Help me bring the warmth here," Elentári said. "We cannot move the patch. We must move the fire to it." They ran to the lion together. The bronze beast stood tall, its mane catching the gray light, flame flickering in its gaze. Elentári laid her hand on its cold metal side and begged it to walk. The lion turned its burning eyes to her, then paced toward the frozen blooms. Where it stepped, the frost hissed and thinned. Laurelin circled the patch and cupped the dying stems in her hands. Elentári led the lion slow around the flowers, close enough that its heat washed over them. Ice melted from the petals and dripped into the warming earth. Color crept back. The pink and peach blooms lifted, soft again, alive. Elentári gathered the first petals before the sun fully rose. Her crown could still be made. She held the wet blooms to her chest and laughed with relief. Then she saw the ground where the lion had walked. Its heat had saved the patch, but it had scorched a black path through the Garden grass. The frost was beaten. Yet the creatures beyond the castle still shivered in the cold, and now the one beast that could warm them left ruin wherever it stepped. Yet, how did the frost come to this place? God had deemed it eternal spring? Who could have done this? She must go to the Tree of Life for answers.