Jim Gem's Arc

Chapter 1 of 23

Jim Gem wanted to become a dragon, but he could not hold a bear for the length of a breath. He crouched in the clearing outside the little hillside home, its round door carved with old runes, and forced his body to grow. Fur pushed through his skin. His hands turned to paws the size of dinner plates. For one moment he was a polar bear, huge and white. Then his legs shook. His muscles cramped. He crashed back into his own lean shape, gasping in the dirt. He had done this eleven times since morning. Each time the big form drained him faster. His arc was simple and impossible: master every shape until he could hold the purple dragon of his family's line. But the dragon dwarfed a bear. If a bear emptied him this fast, the dragon would kill him. The cracked gemstones on his necklace felt cold against his chest. Something watched him from the tall grass. A small green cat with glowing dots along its sides stepped out, ears tufted, eyes steady. It did not run. It sat and studied him, the way a teacher studies a slow student. "I'm fine," Jim told it. His voice cracked. The little lynx padded closer. It stared at his shaking hands, then at his face. It seemed to weigh him. Jim had shifted into wolves and stags and horses. He had never once become something so small. He had always reached for size, for power, for the bear. He stopped reaching up. He reached down instead. He pictured the lynx. He pictured light bones, quick blood, a body that took almost nothing to hold. His shoulders folded inward. His spine curled. Green fur bloomed along his arms, dotted with soft glowing spots. In seconds he stood on four small paws, no taller than a fox. And he was not tired. He felt light. He felt like he could stay this way for hours. The real lynx blinked at him, then turned and vanished into the grass, its lesson delivered. Jim shifted back to himself and sat down hard. He finally understood. Size was not the wall. Size was the trap. He had been pouring his whole self into holding a shape as fast as he could grab it. Small forms cost little because he let them settle slowly. A dragon would not yield to force. It would come only if he learned to grow into it by inches, holding each stage before adding the next. He pressed his hand flat to the runed door of the burrow to steady himself. His breath came back. His plan changed in that moment. He would stop chasing the bear. He would build up to the dragon one careful layer at a time, starting from the smallest thing he could hold. But layering meant time, and time meant somewhere safe to practice unseen. He looked east, toward the woods, and knew he could not do this alone.