Faelan Wildwhisper's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Faelan walked through the night with the sealed gazebo tucked in her basket. The cold shape inside her did not sleep. It stretched. It pressed against her ribs from the inside, slow and curious, like a small clawed thing testing the walls of its shell. She followed a frozen stream until the trees opened around an old quartz altar dusted with snow. Ancient carvings circled its base. The stone hummed when she stepped close, and the cold inside her hummed back. She understood, with a sick lurch, that the shape was steering her now. It wanted the altar. It wanted to grow. Faelan knelt anyway. She set the basket down and opened it. Fox fur. A jay's feather. The snake skin she had never decoded. She lined them along the altar's lip, every warm thing she had ever been answered by. Her hands shook. The cold pushed harder, climbing her throat. Then a small shape uncurled from behind the altar. A baby dragon, pink and white and pale violet, scales pricked with frost. Its silver eyes met hers. It was made of the same cold she carried, but smaller, separate, alive. It tilted its head and chirped, a sound like ice cracking on a pond. Faelan understood. The cold did not have to live inside her. It could live beside her. She breathed out slow and pictured the shape leaving her chest, walking out on its own four feet. She pressed her palm to the altar. Light bled from the carvings, soft purple, and the cold inside her poured down her arm and into the stone. The baby dragon stepped forward and drank it in. When it was done, Faelan was warm again. Tired, hollow, but warm. The little dragon curled against her boot and made a low, contented sound — and she heard it. Not feeling. Words. Cold-blooded words, clear as any wolf's. She had not cracked the turtle yet. But for the first time, one cold voice had answered her, and it was hers to keep.