Lorelai and Rowan Ashfire's Arc

Chapter 2 of 1

Three winters passed after that day in the willow grove. Lorelai grew, and so did a strange gift she kept hidden. It began the morning a green lovebird landed on her windowsill. She whispered to it, half joking. To her shock, the bird answered back inside her head. Its mate soon joined it. The pair chirped stories of the gardens and the guards' movements. Lorelai laughed for the first time in months. This was proof. The goddess of nature lived inside her. She practiced in secret. In the gardens she called butterflies to her fingers. A large purple one came, shaped almost like a tiny dragon, its wings shining. It rested on her wrist and told her where Rowan walked each day. Lorelai used every scrap the animals told her. She still watched over her shoulder, always fearing a guard, or worse, her mother's grey eyes finding her out. But proof alone was not enough. Lorelai wanted her mother to love her, just once. So she carried her gift like a gift, running through the corridors to find the queen. Queen Margret stood in her chamber, brushing her long yellow hair. Her face held its usual frown. Lorelai stopped in the doorway, breathless. "Mother, I can speak to animals now," Lorelai said. "The birds, the butterflies. It means the goddess chose me. It means I'm special." The queen set down her brush. She did not smile. She looked at Lorelai the way one looks at a stain on the floor. "You speak to insects," the queen said. "How fitting. A worthless girl and her worthless little pets." She turned back to the mirror. "Get out. And stop imagining you matter." Lorelai's face burned. Something inside her cracked open. All the hope she carried curdled into heat. She turned and ran, tears blurring the stone halls, until she reached her own room and slammed the door. She pressed her back to the wall and shook. Her hands felt strange, too hot, like coals under her skin. "Worthless," the word beat in her head. "Worthless." The heat climbed her arms. She clenched her fists. A burst of flame leapt from her fingers. It caught the bedcurtains and roared up the fabric. Lorelai screamed and stumbled back. Smoke filled the room. She had no idea how to stop it. The door flew open. Sigrid rushed in, the nanny who had held both twins since their birth night. She saw the fire and did not pause. She grabbed a water pitcher and threw it, then smothered the last flames with a heavy blanket. Her hands trembled, but her voice stayed low. "Little one," Sigrid breathed, kneeling in the wet ash. "You did this?" Lorelai nodded, staring at her own hands in horror. She had spoken to birds and felt wonder. Now she had made fire from rage, and nearly burned her room down. The goddess inside her was not only kind. She was dangerous, and Lorelai could not control her.