“This is where we begin,” the Duchess says finally,her voice gaining a touch of excitement as she looks back at me. “Summer does not respond to brutal control. It listens when you ask without expectation.”
She lowers herself to kneel on the sand, one hand pressing gently into the soft grains and the other lifting, palm up, toward the open sky.
“Our magic isn’t conjured from nothing,” she says. “We draw from the energy that’s already here, and we never expect, only ask.”
Light begins to gather in her outstretched hand, slowly at first, a shimmer building into more. As the glow intensifies, an orange flame forms that is white-hot at its center.
At the same time, she lifts her other hand from the sand and a second flame blooms upward from where her hand touched the ground. The two fires–one skyborn, one earthborn–balance in her outstretched palms.
She closes her fingers slowly around each flame, and they vanish without a trace before she stands and gestures to the same spot. “If you feel ready to try, the energy is waiting for you.”
I don’t move at first. I just stand there in the heavy silence, hesitating.
A spark ignites within my chest and I decide I’m done hesitating. Either this will be a fit for me or it won’t be. I can’t delay the inevitable, and answers hold power, even if they aren’t the ones we want to hear.
I kneel in the same spot and my hand lowers to the sand, pressing against its surface where the heat lingers just beneath the skin of the world. I lift my other hand toward the open sky, fingers spread, trying to mimic the balance she showed me–ground and sky, fire from both, power only borrowed, never owned.
I close my eyes and breathe deeply.
I think of the warmth pressing into my palm from the sand. I think of the sun burning against my cheekbones. I try to gather it and pull it into focus. And for a moment, something stirs.
The wind stirs in my palm outstretched in the air and heat coils around the edge of my hand against the ground. But the moment I try to guide it, it slips away.
All I’m left holding is nothing.
No flame. No flicker. Not even a thread of light.
I let my hands rest against my thighs, careful not to let the frustration rise too quickly.
“You’re holding on too tightly,” she instructs. “Is a part of you scared?”
My throat tightens, and I drop my gaze to the churning water just a few feet away. “This is the last place that might still claim me,” I say quietly, unable to stop the truth from slipping free. “If I don’t belong here, then I don’t know where else there is.”
The words sit heavily between us, not dramatic or desperate, just raw.
“Have you considered that maybe you were nevermeant to belong to a single corner of this world?” she asks as she lowers herself to my side.
A soft tremble runs through the ground and she doesn’t skip a beat, as if she doesn’t feel it.
“Maybe the earth doesn't respond when you ask it to serve you. Maybe it answers when you offer to serve it.”
I close my eyes and reach out for the ties that have spoken to me and hope somehow it can hear me now.
If I’m meant to be here as your vessel, to serve a purpose I don’t understand yet, please give me a sign. I want to understand so that I can help you. Please.
Warmth rises slowly from the sand through my legs, threading upward within me in a thin thread of heat until it passes through my chest and outward through my arms.
I open my eyes and lift my palms, expecting to see nothing, but small radiant flames spark into existence. It’s not the same white-hot heat the Duchess produced, but tinged in blue with a white center.
Something shifts inside me then, quiet but undeniable as I keep my mind and soul open to this moment. For the first time, I don’t feel like I’m waiting for an explanation of who I am or what I can offer.
I don’t feel like I’m trespassing in a world that never asked for me.
I don’t know how long I sit there, watching the flames dance in my palm, but when I finallyblink and close my hands, I feel the wetness trailing down my cheeks.
The Duchess says nothing about being right or any words of what this moment means. She simply steps beside me and lifts one warm hand, brushing my tears away with a practiced touch that doesn’t demand thanks or recognition.
“We belong to our factions,” she says softly. “But you my dear…you belong to the earth itself, and that’s more beautiful than anything else I could imagine.”
