I frown. “But every time I feel something, something else happens.” I pause. Fuck it. “I’m scared I’m going to hurt someone.”
“Then learn how to do it right. Words are spells asmuch as anything else.” She makes it sound so simple. “Pretending you’re not powerful isn’t going to make you, or anyone else, safe. It makes you fragile.”
That lands like a blow. She’s right and we both know it.
I look down at my hands again. Simple. Ordinary. Thin, pale fingers. Narrow palms. I keep my nails fairly short and paint them when I feel like it. Dangerous.
“Okay. Teach me.”
The afternoon stretches on as we move through exercises that don’t really make sense — grounding emotion through sensation, calling light and shadow, letting them dissolve again, ignoring the emotions going on around me until I can identify which emotions are mine and which belong to those in the area.
Sometimes, I succeed. Sometimes, the grass catches fire – although usually only when a particularly angry individual passes by our spot. Betsy always stamps it out with practiced efficiency, muttering something about “emotional arsonists”.
By the time the sun starts to set, mymuscles ache, my heart feels wrung out and my hands are practically vibrating with residual power.
Betsy crosses her arms. “One more.”
I groan and flop back on the grass. “You’re trying to kill me.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive, should the need arise. Now. This one is about peace.”
“Peace?”
“Find it. Whatever that means to you.”
Peace? Has she met me? The girl with no memories, no ability to concentrate or focus. Who showed up one day with no family, no friends, no money or prospects. I get distracted, my mind races like I have all of the browser tabs open and at least two of them have random sounds playing. What the fuck do I know about peace?
My brain is a storm. My emotions feel like colliding galaxies. Peace feels like something that other people are able to find in soothing candlelit yoga classes rather than something I have the capability to conjure on demand.
But I try to anyway. What brings me peace?
I close my eyes and think of Flint.
Not the chaos of him. Not the aches, or the fear, or the longing. Justhim.
The steadiness. The quiet way he breathes when he’s asleep. The way he looks at me like I’m something holy, rather than someone broken. The way he touches me in small ways, in innocent moments — a brush of his hand against mine, a squeeze to my thigh. Holding my hand or brushing my hair off my face. Tracing a fingertip down my leg when we’re sitting together on the couch, reading or watching TV. Stroking my back as I drift off to sleep.
It’s small, at first. A thread of silver light that windsbetween my fingers, soft and lovely. It feels like exhaling after holding a breath for too long.
I open my eyes.
The clearing glows.
Not bright or blinding. Just enough to make everything look gentler. The trees shimmer faintly, the air hums like music. It’s beautiful and, for the first time, the power that I appear to have doesn’t scare me.
Betsy lets out a low giggle. “Well, I’ll be damned. You did it, pumpkin.”
I turn to her, oddly breathless. “I did?”
“You did. You made your peace visible.”
Calida flutters her wings, tiny sparks trailing from her scales. ‘Took you long enough.’
I laugh, real and unguarded. The sound vibrates through the clearing and the light shifts, catching on the edges of my joy. A rainbow arcs faintly above us, despite the lack of sunlight to make any logical sense.
I stare at it, heart full to bursting. “It’s beautiful. It feels like… like I’ve done this before. Like remembering.”
Betsy tilts her head, almost like Calida. “What does?”
