Symphira Starweaver's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Symphira held both scales in her open hands. The whole one drummed strong and warm. The broken one, split again down its middle, pulsed faint and slow. The name still lived inside the cracked scale. To move it into the whole scale, she needed heat, and her dragon carried the only fire that could wake it. But that fire incinerated whatever it touched. One wrong breath would melt the broken scale and burn the name away. She climbed down and laid both scales side by side on the ground between the great golden trunks. "I can't aim this," she told her dragon. "You have to." Through the thin thread she pushed one picture: a flame small as a candle, nothing more. The dragon lowered its vast head until its jaw hung above the scales. Smoke leaked from its teeth. Symphira's breath caught. If it gave too much, she would lose everything. The dragon breathed. A thread of golden fire slid out, no wider than a finger. It touched the broken scale first. Symphira's hands clenched. The cracked surface glowed. She waited for it to run like wax. It held. The gold light sank into the fractures and the faint drum grew louder. Inside the broken scale, the name woke and began to move. "The other one," she whispered. "Now." The dragon tipped the flame toward the whole scale. The two scales glowed together, broken and flawless, their light bleeding into one pool between the roots. Symphira felt the name lift from the cracked scale. It crossed the small gap. For one heartbeat it hung in the fire, belonging to neither scale. Then the broken scale split one last time and went dark. The name was gone from it. Symphira's chest tightened. She looked at the whole scale. Its drum had stopped. The forest went silent. She had gambled the name on a guess, and the guess had emptied both vessels. She reached for the whole scale with shaking fingers. It was warm. Under her skin a new drum started, slow, then steady, then strong. The name had crossed. It lived in the flawless scale now, held in a vessel that would not crack. The old broken scale lay in pieces, spent and useless. Through the thread Symphira felt the change at once. The faint compass-pull swelled into a clear, warm current. Her dragon lifted its head and looked at her with both eyes. For the first time she felt its thought arrive whole, not in scraps. The name was safe. The vessel was strong. But the thread was not yet a bond. The name sat inside the new scale like a seed in ground. To wake it into a true soulbond, she would have to speak it aloud over the scale, and she did not yet know where such a naming could safely be done.