The Cracks in the Sky
The lake at Lirenfall holds the last light of evening like a cupped palm, gold bleeding into violet at the horizon's seam. Kaelin kneels at its edge, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and draws a ribbon of water up from the shallows with a flick of her wrist. It obeys her the way it always has—not with force, but with something closer to trust. She shapes it into a bird, wings translucent and trembling, and sends it looping over the heads of the children gathered on the bank.
They shriek with delight, the good kind, the kind that makes the tightness in her chest ease for just a moment. Little Sena claps her hands together, trying to catch the water-bird as it dissolves into mist above her, and the mist drifts down like blessing, cool against upturned faces.
"Again, Kaelin! Make the fish this time!"
She laughs, and it feels almost easy, almost like the world isn't cracking somewhere she cannot yet see. She draws more water, coils it, and a school of glass-bright fish burst from her palms, swimming through air as though the evening itself were some vast invisible sea. The children chase them down the bank, laughing, and for these few minutes Lirenfall is simply a village and she is…
