Mud was practically vibrating with questions. “Okay, but when you make things back on your world—like the fork—what does it feel like?”
Adaline tilted her head, rolling the fork between her fingers. “Back home, it’s just… creation. Like pouring metal into a mold. I picture what I want, summon the energy, and shape it.” She paused, frowning. “But here… it’s different. When I made this fork, I could feel its origins.”
Droplet tilted her head, blinking wide, blue eyes. “Feel its what?”
Adaline’s gaze dropped to the fork again, now resting in her palm. “It was like the metal spoke to me. Not with words… but with impressions. I could feel where it came from. The ground. The ore. The fire that shaped it. The star that created it.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It was alive.”
Dew, standing a few paces away with her arms folded, smiled softly. “Because it is. All things are. The fork may seem ordinary, but it was once part of something greater. The metal came from the earth… and before that, from the stars.”
Dew lifted her hand and gestured upward.
Adaline followed her gaze, the sky stretching open and endless above the misty lake. Something clicked into place. A memory from school, from science class—how every element in the universe had once been part of a dying star. A supernova. The atoms in her hand were the same as those in the stars.
Her breath caught. She looked at the fork again, but this time with reverence.
“Everything,” she murmured, “is made of stardust.”
“Can you change it to stone?” Droplet asked eagerly.
“Or wind?” Breeze added.
“Ooh! What about fire?” Mud chimed in, his eyes gleaming.
Adaline frowned in concentration and focused on the fork. She pictured rough, heavy granite. The weight of it. The coolness. The feel of jagged edges.
With a soft shimmer, the metal shifted in her hand—turning to solid stone.
A ripple of gasps surrounded her.
“I did it,” she whispered, staring in wonder.
Then, curiosity tugged at her again. She held out her hand and thought of water.
The fork didn’t change.
Her hand did.
Adaline gasped as her fingers shimmered, then dissolved into clear, rippling liquid. She stared at them—translucent and flowing—yet somehow still attached to her.
She wiggled her fingers.
Her watery fingers wiggled back.
A startled giggle burst from her lips.
Dew was suddenly at her side, wrapping a reassuring arm around her shoulder. “Are you alright?”
“I… I think so,” Adaline breathed, turning her hand over and watching as it shifted back into flesh. “What’s happening to me?”
Dew’s voice was low and filled with quiet awe. “I’m not certain, child. But I believe… you are like Princess Gem. Like the royal bloodline of the Elementals. You don’t just use energy. You are energy. You’re connected to the very elements themselves.”
Adaline stared at her hand. Slowly, she curled her fingers into a fist and opened them again. “Then maybe I’m not broken after all.”
“No,” Dew murmured with a comforting smile. “You’re awakening.”
For the next hour, Adaline practiced. She shaped stone and shifted air. She coaxed fire to dance across her palm and felt her own body shimmer into mist and back again. Lessons from school—theoretical concepts she had memorized—suddenly made perfect sense. She wasn’t just recalling facts. She was experiencing them. Living them.
And for the first time… she wasn’t trying to be Alice. Or her father. She was herself. Adaline. And that was enough.
