Lumina Nightglow's Arc

Chapter 5 of 34

The heart beat strong now, but Lumina did not rise. She sat back on the grass. Her wings had dimmed. The firefly glow at their tips flickered, weak as a dying candle. She lifted one hand and watched the light in her skin blink and fade. "I gave too much," she whispered. Her voice was thin. The clearing tilted around her. She pressed a palm to the ground to hold herself up. Celsius Heartwood knelt at her side. The forest's own soul had guided her to the gift, and now the small green fairy watched Lumina with worry in her gold eyes. Flowers trembled in her hair. "You are fading," Celsius said. "The heart woke, but you gave it a piece of your own light. Now yours runs low. If you fall here, no one will feed it when it hungers again." Above them, Luminara Tidewhisper floated in her ribbon of river water. Her blue hair spread through the current. She reached down, but her light only showed the way. It could not pour into another. "I cannot give you what you need," she said. "But look at the heart. Look at what you fed." Lumina turned. The ruby heart pulsed on its dark stand. Blue sparks swirled across its cracked surface. She felt a pull, a thread between the heart and her own chest, where the empty place ached. Celsius saw her notice it. "You are already part of it," Celsius said. "You do not have to give more from outside. You can join what you made whole." Lumina understood then. She had tried to feed the forest from the outside, drop by drop. Each gift only left her weaker. But the heart already held a piece of her. She could stop fighting the pull. She could become part of the forest itself, and take its strength as her own. She crawled to the stand. She wrapped both arms around the beating heart. "If I join you," she said, "we both live." She pressed her fading chest against the ruby glow. Light burst across the clearing. The heart's red poured into her wings. Her skin drank it. Vines curled up from the ground and wound around her arms. Flowers opened in her hair. Her wings spread wide, no longer flickering, but gold and steady, marked with fine lines like leaves. She rose to her feet. She was not the same fairy. She was Heart Solia sparkle now, fairy and forest heart in one body, able to walk free. Celsius stared. "You did it," she breathed. "You became the heart. You can carry it now, wherever the forest needs you." Lumina looked at her new hands. Strength ran through her. The ache was gone. But she felt the whole forest inside her chest, every dry root and dying branch, and she felt how much of it still needed waking. The heart no longer sat on a stand. It beat inside her. And it was still hungry.