Elowyn's Arc

Chapter 6 of 12

Elowyn set down her pen. Morrowyn stood on the journal, small and worried. The words on the page still glistened. Wakes dormant seeds. Ends long sleep. Elowyn wanted to press more blooms, to fill her herbarium and find the lost plants she had chased for months. But Morrowyn had asked her something first. "Show me the seed," Elowyn said. Morrowyn led her to a glass jar resting on the windowsill. Inside, a pale seed sat in soft moss, glowing faintly. Tiny blossoms circled its base. "It called the loudest," Morrowyn said. "So I stayed." She touched the glass with one small hand. "But it won't wake. And my season ends soon." Her voice dropped. "When a seed dies in my care, I shrink. I go back smaller." Elowyn understood then. This was not a favor. It was Morrowyn's whole self, closing like a door. Tavian leaned in the doorway. "You only have one bloom," he said quietly. "If it doesn't work, you can't press it into your book after. You'd lose both." He was right. The bloom was the crown of her herbarium. Using it might waste it and stall everything. Elowyn looked at the sleeping seed. Then at Morrowyn's amber eyes. Her grandmother had drawn waking words for a reason. Not to fill a page. To use them. "A picture of a cure isn't a cure," she said. She lifted the fresh bloom from her worktable. Morrowyn opened the jar. Elowyn crushed one petal between her fingers and let the pale dust fall onto the seed. Nothing happened. Tavian shifted. Morrowyn held her breath. Then the seed's glow brightened. A thin green thread pushed from its tip. It uncurled, slow but certain. The moss stirred around it. Morrowyn made a small sound, half laugh, half cry. "It woke," she whispered. "It started." She pressed her face to the glass. For the first time she looked steady, not shrinking. "You spent your bloom." "I did," Elowyn said. The herbarium page sat open behind her, holding only the dried, spent flower. It would never be whole now. She had traded her prize to end one seed's sleep. But Morrowyn turned to her, eyes wide with something new. "You kept your side," she said. "So I keep mine." She climbed back onto the journal and tapped a fresh row of symbols near the spine. "These are directions. To another bloom. Rarer than the first." Her small finger traced a curved line. "It grows where the boundary is thinnest. Where few things live." Elowyn copied the symbols with a shaking hand. Her one bloom was gone. But the path opened again, deeper than before. Tavian read over her shoulder and frowned. "Thinnest boundary," he said. "That's the dangerous part." Elowyn closed the journal. She had saved a dying seed. Now she had to walk toward a place that might not let her leave.