I woke to Oliver’s snoring, deep echoing sounds that tugged at the air like he was pulling the whole night into his lungs. The space around us felt tighter with each breath he took.
He slept so peacefully, as if life had always been kind to him, as if the earth was not breaking beneath our feet. I wondered what he dreamed about. What shape his nightmares took, only so that if they ever became real, I would know their faces before they could touch him.
I had never felt anything like this before. Never wanted to protect someone. To help them. To stay close simply to exist in their light. I wanted to be in his life in a way I was not sure I had the right to touch.
I pushed myself up from my bedroll and rolled it tight.
No.
I cannot feel this for him. I know how this ends. If I show it back, if I let him in, then when I am gone, it will break him. And he does not deserve that. He deserves a future that is not built on losing me.
I started pacing the dirt road, waiting for him to wake. I told him I would trust him. I can do that. I do not need to let him in to trust him.
He stirred as the sun drifted in.
“Good morning, Sahora.” He stretched, warm and unguarded.
I stiffened. Every resolve I had shattered instantly.
“Good morning.”
I leaned against a tree, and it flared bright orange in response, betraying exactly how I felt. My heart hammered so loudly I could barely breathe. Something inside me tugged at every frayed thread, saying Tell him.
“I am worried,” I blurted before I could stop myself. Regret slammed into me. I wanted to melt into the bark and vanish.
“I know,” he said softly. “You talk in your sleep.”
He stepped closer. “I already knew what you were thinking about.”
My breath caught. “What did I say?”
No one had ever told me I talk in my sleep.
“Oh,” he said gently, “just that you are hopelessly willing to live simply to be around me. Something very different from how you normally feel, like you are walking toward the gallows, ready to accept a death you believe is coming.”
My face heated. “You don’t get to just know things about me.”
I crossed my arms, trying not to fall apart.
He smiled, soft and infuriating.
“You can know me just as well,” he said. “If you let yourself accept this world.”
“Look, I already agreed to trust you. I am not ready to accept anything else right now.”
“I am not rushing you.”
“Well, I feel rushed.”
I turned and started down the dirt path—
—and Elyon stepped out of the treeline, eyebrows raised.
“Rough morning?”
I nearly jumped out of my own skin.
“What the fuck? Where did you come from? What are you?” I whipped around, shouting before I could stop myself. Their features were soft but sharp, masculine yet not, and every inch of them screamed not normal. “I am so tired of beings that are out of my depth.”
Elyon blinked at me, unbothered.
“Skyborn,” they said gently, like naming me was the same as soothing me. “I am a part of Celentra. Just like the trees or the rivers. I play a part in Celentra.”
“My name is Sahora, not Skyborn.” I put a hand on my hip, refusing to be mystically renamed before breakfast.
Oliver stepped up beside me.
“That… sounds sort of like the same name the trees were calling Briar.”
“Do you know what it means?” I asked Elyon.
“It is the name you are given before you take your first breath,” Elyon replied.
“But my first breath was in Serlane,” I shot back.
“Hmmm.” Elyon hummed, low and knowing, as if they understood something I did not and were not planning to tell me.
“If you have something to say, just say it.”
A small wind picked up and hovered at my side.
“Nothing to say, Skyborn. Nothing to say.” Elyon drifted on.
I was instantly more annoyed, and the wind thumped against my hand like a pet I did not ask for.
I clenched my fists and pushed forward, ignoring the nagging feeling and the wind that walked with me.
We walked for a while. Elyon hummed under their breath. Oliver tried talking to me through the bond, tugging at my mind.
Hey, talk to me. Are you okay?
Don’t ask me that. I am trying to control it.
What if you don’t need to? You literally have a storm cloud that looks like a hound following you. Use it. Wield it. Train it.
I looked down at the wind running beside me. It had the shape of a hound, shaggy, made of lightning and storm, its edges fraying into cloud. It bounded at my heel as it had always belonged there, like it would follow me anywhere.
I reached out to touch it. The moment my fingers met its mane, cold rushed up my arm, but it did not pass through. It was solid. Real. As if it were not only wind and thunder after all.
“I think I will scout ahead and see what is out there,” I told the group.
“See you soon,” Oliver said, smiling that infuriating smile.
“Enjoy the road, though nothing lies ahead,” Elyon called after me.
I kept walking up the dirt path until the trees opened into a small grove.
I turned in a slow circle, making sure it was just me and my little storm.
“Okay,” I said aloud, looking down at it. “What can you do?”
The hound paced once, then lifted its head. Lightning swam in its eyes.
Tell it the command: Harkinth. Kathera’s voice slipped into my mind.
“Harkinth,” I said.
The stormhound launched forward and leapt into the sky. Wind snapped through the grove. The air tightened, then split. Clouds spiraled overhead and broke open, rain spilling down in a sudden roaring curtain.
How did you know to say that? I asked her.
I studied Stormcalling, she said, almost in awe. But I could never call a storm. Not once.
“I don’t want to call anything,” I whispered.
In Celentra, we do not get to choose what we are called to. It is born with us into this world. You were meant for this world, Sahora.
I swallowed, staring up at the storm I had made. “I have already agreed to save it,” I muttered. “But I do not feel any closer to finding the essence, and it is somewhere in this massive forest.”
Have you listened to the trees? She asked.
I let out a rough laugh. “What the hell is it with you, your mom, and trees?”
Try listening, Kathera said. Then we will talk.
Her silence echoed.