Petal's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Petal's wings flared violet without warning while she was guiding a traveler through the forest edge. She froze mid-sentence. The color rippled across the membrane like spilled ink, then shifted to pale gold, then back to their usual gray. She couldn't make them stop. The traveler stared. Petal turned away and pressed her hand to the necklace under her shirt, the one with the star and moon that she'd carried for years. Her wings pulsed again — deep blue this time — and the light caught the mist from the waterfall ahead. Colors scattered through the droplets like broken glass. She'd spent her whole life guiding others away from questions. Now her body was asking one she couldn't ignore. She told the traveler to wait and walked toward the old stone portal wrapped in vines. It stood at the forest's heart, reflecting scenes that no one else seemed to see. The surface shimmered as her wings shifted from amber to rose. Then the portal showed her something: two young moths standing close, wings touching. One set of wings blazed with changing colors. The other stayed steady, calm. Petal recognized herself. The other moth was the person she hadn't spoken to in years. Her wings stopped shifting and held one color — the violet they'd been when that person left. She understood now. Her wings had changed once before because of who stood beside her. They were changing again because she'd finally admitted what she'd been running from. She had to go back.