Raindrop's Arc

Chapter 5 of 15

The cloud body Raindrop wore began to thin. The berry-pulse that had thickened him was fading, and his edges peeled off in pale wisps. He drummed harder, but the beat slid through him like water through a sieve. Below, the pond blurred. Above, the spinning ring tilted away. "You are coming apart." The voice was flat and close. Raindrop turned his thinning face. A figure stood on a small wooden pavilion strung between two clouds, a spring running clean through its floor. Lightning crawled along his arms. "I am Thundar Stormstrider. Hold still." "I can't," Raindrop said. "I'm losing the shape." "I know." Thundar raised one hand. A pale icy figure drifted up beside him, shedding small flakes — a frost spirit, quiet as breath. She pressed a six-pointed charm into Raindrop's center. Thundar poured raw storm water around it. The cloud body stiffened. Dark blue billows locked in place around a bright spine of light, anchored, fixed. Raindrop felt the drift stop. He was held. He drummed once, and the beat carried clean. A nearby drop leaned. Then another. The ripple moved. On the pavilion's edge, a pale spirit in a leaf dress watched without speaking. "It will hold," Salix Tearbrook said. "Until it doesn't. Use the time." Raindrop did. He pulled the suspended drops in tight, anchored now, heavier, closer to the spinning ring than before. But the charm at his center had begun to hum — a thin warning sound. He was fixed in place. He could gather. He could not move.