Lumina Nightglow's Arc

Chapter 19 of 34

Lumina stepped through the wall of dark trees. On the other side, the forest's heart pulsed clean and slow, free of shadow at last. The last dark power sat quiet in her chest, tamed. She held all the forest's strength now, and it no longer hurt. The starlit host spread through the trees behind her. For the first time, no enemy waited ahead. She had only one task left. She needed a place to call her own. Her new body felt light. She raised the star-tipped wand, and her wings answered. They spread wider than before, huge and bright, their feathers flashing with every color at once. The forest's power had reshaped them. She lifted from the ground, and the whole clearing glowed beneath her. Lumina chose a quiet spot where three old trunks leaned close together. She pressed the wand to the soil and reached through the roots. "Grow," she whispered. The trees bent toward her. Vines climbed and wove. Branches folded into walls. Leaves layered into a roof, and flowers bloomed along every seam. A small house rose from the living wood, round-doored and warm, ferns nodding at its base. A soft padding sound came through the grass. A creature stepped out, its fur marked with glowing lines of pink and blue, its eyes calm. Behind it came more, smaller and larger, a whole family. They shared the same gentle look she wore. They were her companions, changed by her power as she had been. The first one pressed its head against her hand. "You waited for me," Lumina said. She knelt and touched each one. They circled the new house and lay down at the threshold, claiming it with her. Light bloomed above the trees. Lenora came down through it, her silver hair loose, her flower dress trailing pale petals. She was the form Lumina had once worn, made whole when the frozen tree thawed. Lenora looked at the little house and smiled. "You could have built a palace," Lenora said. "You hold the whole forest now." "I don't want a palace," Lumina answered. "I want a home." Lenora walked to the doorway and ran her fingers along the woven wood. "It suits you better than any throne." She stepped back. "The elders feared what you would do with so much power. They should have feared less." Lumina stood in the door of her house. The radiant emblem of her merged heart shone gold and pink at her chest, its loving light spilling across the clearing. Inside, the forest's heart beat clean. The host had a sanctuary. Her companions had a hearth. She had a home at last. But the heart was clean, not yet awake. Its glow still thinned each night. Lumina looked past her new door toward the pulsing heart beyond the trees. She had a place to live now. Tomorrow she would wake the forest fully, and finish what she began.