Sage winterwood's Arc

Chapter 17 of 29

By the fifth dawn Sage could barely lift her hands. The herd had doubled. Two more does grazed beside the first. Rabbits crowded the rows. Each morning she poured her light into the grass, and each morning less of it returned to her. Her glow had faded to a thin flicker under her skin. She knelt in the plot, fed the blades, then sat with her head bowed until the dizziness passed. She knew the truth now. If the animals kept coming, one morning she would give her light and not rise again. Aquaria found her there. Sage's oldest friend crossed the grazed rows in her flowing blue dress, took one look at Sage's dimmed face, and knelt beside her. "You've been burning yourself down to nothing," Aquaria said. She pressed a cool hand to Sage's cheek. "I felt it in the water. You've been giving too much." "The grass needs my light or the herd eats my rare rows," Sage said. "There's no other way." "You're wrong." Aquaria helped her stand. "You keep pouring out. You never draw in. Light isn't the only thing that feeds green things." She swept her arm toward the far ridge, the deep pool, the mossy fence, the wild trees beyond the plot. "You're the goddess of every plant that grows. All of this is yours to pull from." Sage stared at her. "Pull from it how?" "The same way you push out. Reverse it." Aquaria guided Sage's palms down to the soil. "Feel the roots. Feel the water Terros opened for you. Let it come up through you into the grass. You're not the source. You're the channel." Sage closed her eyes. She reached past the grass, down into the earth, out to the deep water and the living wood around her. At first she felt only her own thin flicker. Then something answered. A slow, wide strength rose through the ground, through her hands, into the roots. It did not drain her. It flowed through her and left her steadier than before. The grass sprang up thick and green. Sage kept her hands down and let the land keep feeding it. When she opened her eyes, her glow burned bright again, brighter than it had in days. She laughed and pushed to her feet without help. "I don't feel weaker. I feel stronger." "Because you finally stopped standing alone," Aquaria said, smiling. "You carry the whole living world behind you. Use it." Sage turned to the herd. Three does now, a fawn, and more rabbits than she could count. Yesterday the sight had frightened her. Today she saw only mouths she could feed without cost. The grass would never run bare again. Then she looked past the fence, at her rare rows waiting for water and space. The herd was safe. But a garden of every plant, mortal and divine, needed far more room than she had. She would have to grow.