Chapter 8: Farewell, woven in light
The world had not ended in fire, but in a terrible, quiet grey. The smell of wet ash and charred wood hung over our house like a permanent shroud. It seeped through the shutters we kept tightly closed.
Inside, the silence was worse.
The house didn’t feel like our house anymore. It felt like a sickroom in a foreign land, the air thick with the scent of bitter herbs and a silence so heavy it pressed against my eardrums. Father lay on the large bed, not the pallet by the hearth.
After the Fairy King left, after the terror had cooled into a numb dread, something in me had broken open. Not the raging, destructive power from the square, but a desperate, weeping trickle.
Mother sat in a chair pulled so close to the bed that her skirts tangled with the blankets. She hadn’t moved for hours. One of her hands was wrapped tightly around his, the other rested on his forehead, as if constantly checking for the fever’s return. She hadn’t spoken to me since it happened. Her gaze, when it flickered from Father’s face, was unreadable—a swirling eddy of awe, terror, and a profound, weary relief that seemed to hurt her.
I stood in the doorway, a ghost in my own home. I had pulled him back from the edge, but I had also been the reason he almost died. The power that healed was the same power. The guilt was greater than anything, it only leave a hollow, aching zero inside my chest.
On the second day, the silence took on a rhythm. The healer came and went, muttering about “miraculous sealing” and shaking her head. Mother finally moved, but only to perform a slow, deliberate ballet of care.
I watched from the kitchen threshold as she prepared broth. It was a ritual I knew by heart: the careful chopping of the precious stored onion and wilting carrot, the simmering of the herbs, Wilhelm had brought. But every movement was weighted. When she lifted the spoon to taste, her hand trembled slightly.
She poured a small bowl, carried it to the bedroom, and sat. “Heinrich,” she whispered, his name a soft prayer. “You need to drink.”
With a gentleness that cracked something open in me, she slid an arm behind his shoulders and lifted him just enough. He groaned, his eyes fluttering open—glazed, confused, but aware. He sipped, the sound loud in the room. Some broth trickled down his chin, and she caught it with the cloth she kept ready, her touch infinitely tender.
I was a statue in the doorway. This was love. This was the real magic. Not my glowing lines, but this patient, persistent offering of warmth and nourishment, spoonful by spoonful. My magic had closed a wound, but hers was fighting to fill the emptiness it left behind.
Her eyes met mine over the rim of the bowl. For the first time, the unreadable swirl was gone. In its place was a simple, devastating exhaustion, and a question: Can your power do this? Can it sit through the long night? Can it feed him?
I had no answer. I looked at my hands—the hands that had drawn circles of fury and lines of healing. They felt useless in the face of the broth bowl.
At supper, Wilhelm’s voice was hollow. “The Elder says three days,” he said, staring into his uneaten porridge. “To get your things. To… say goodbye.” The word goodbye cracked in his throat. It wasn’t just for me leaving. It was a farewell to the life we’d all known.
I looked at my hands resting in my lap. The same hands that had, last night, drawn circles of ice and wind. They looked alien. They felt charged even now with a strange, sleeping hum. The G-Pen was gone, but the memory of its vibration lived in my bones.
The only sound was Father’s breathing—a wet, shallow rasp, each inhalation a struggle. A living reminder of the cost. My cost. The village’s salvation had nearly been its destruction, and the bill had been paid in my father’s flesh.
I was to be taken away to learn control. To become what they needed. But in this house, heavy with pain and the specter of death, I wasn’t a chosen savior. I was the daughter who had broken everything.
***
The well was a gauntlet.
The path I’d walked a thousand times now felt exposed, every window a watching eye. The silence that trailed me was different now. Before, it had been the silence of dismissal, of being beneath notice. Now, it was the silence of held breath. I felt their stares on my back like points of heat.
Old Man Hemlock was there, drawing his own water. He froze when he saw me, his gnarled hands tightening on the rope. For a long moment, we simply looked at each other. I saw the fear in his eyes—the same fear he’d had when he spoke of the closed road and black ribbons. But now, the fear was of me, not just for himself. I was the confirmation of all his terrible rumors.
I moved to lower my bucket, my arms trembling not from the weight but from the tension. The rope scraped against the stone well-curb, the sound obscenely loud.
“Elsbeth.” His voice was a dry rustle.
I flinched, expecting a curse, a condemnation.
He didn’t speak again for a long moment. He just stared at me.
Then he gave a curt, awkward jerk of his chin, hauled his bucket up, and walked away, his steps quicker than usual.
As I hauled my own water up, the muscles in my shoulders straining, I understood. This was part of the leaving, too. Saying goodbye to the girl who had been invisible, and facing the girl who would always be seen as either a monster or a saint. There was no returning to the quiet grey. Even if I stayed, I would forever be the girl who drew storms from her hands.
The bucket felt heavier than the world.
***
The smell of iron and metal oil was a comfort, a relic of the world before. I sat on a stool in the corner of Father’s smith—no, a cold voice in my head corrected—watching my brother rhythmically sharpen a scythe blade. The grating ring of steel on stone was the only sound between us, a physical barricade against all the unsaid things.
“Elsbeth.”
His voice, when it came, was tentative, breaking the rhythm. He set the stone down but didn’t look up, his gaze fixed on the blade’s gleaming edge.
“That… pen thing. Can I see it?”
The request was a shock, a small bolt of lightning in the dusty room. No one had asked about the magic directly. Not like this. They spoke around it, in whispers about the “Starlight King” and the “elemental,” but the G-Pen itself was a silent, terrifying secret.
“I… I don’t know if I can,” I whispered, my fingers curling into my palms. The memory of its last appearance was tied to the smell of blood and burning. Summoning it felt like inviting the chaos back in.
“Just to see,” he said, finally looking at me. His eyes weren’t fearful or awestruck—just curious. The way he’d look at a new type of steel. It was a look I understood.
“Not to use. Just to see the tool.”
His framing of it—a tool—loosened something tight in my chest.
I took a shaky breath, held out my hand, and focused. Not on the rage or fear, but on the craft. The intention of a line. The first try, my will slipped. A faint blue shimmer sputtered and died. Shame heated my cheeks.
“It’s alright,” Wilhelm murmured. “Try again.”
The second time, I thought of drawing a simple circle. Just a line.
The air cooled. Light coalesced. The G-Pen materialized above my palm, glowing with its serene, celestial blue light. It hummed softly, a note that vibrated in my teeth.
Wilhelm let out a slow, reverent breath.
“Gods above,” he whispered. He leaned closer, his smith’s eyes analyzing it. “No seam. No quill. It’s like it’s made from a single piece of… frozen light. The balance must be perfect.”
He was in awe—but it was the awe of a craftsman, not a peasant gawking at a miracle. He saw its form. Its function.
“May I?” he asked, his hand hovering.
A part of me screamed no. But this was Wilhelm.
I gave a tiny nod.
His calloused fingers, soot-stained and strong, reached out to gently take it from the air.
The moment his skin made contact, the G-Pen didn’t just disappear.
It vanished.
Not with a pop, but with a silent, definitive negation—as if it had never been. One second it was there, solid and beautiful; the next, my hand was empty. Only a faint, icy tingle lingered in the air.
Wilhelm jerked his hand back, staring at his empty fingers as if they’d betrayed him. A flash of hurt crossed his face, then understanding.
“It’s yours,” he said, not upset, but matter-of-fact. “Truly yours.” He looked at me, a new respect deepening his gaze. “It’s bound to you. Not just your magic. To you.”
The realization was a lonely one. Even here, in the safest place left to me, the most fundamental part of my new self was untouchable. Unshareable.
I was isolated by my own power.
Wilhelm wasn’t discouraged. A determined spark lit his eyes.
“Alright then. You hold it. Can you… keep it there? Just for a minute?”
Puzzled, I concentrated, summoning the G-Pen again. It appeared, hovering obediently.
Wilhelm didn’t try to touch it. Instead, he hurried to a cluttered bench and pulled out a worn piece of parchment. I recognized it—my own design. A detailed blueprint for a small, elegant dagger, its hilt intricately woven like the roots of a tree.
He smoothed it on the anvil and grabbed a stub of charcoal.
“It disappeared when I touched it,” he muttered, thinking aloud. “But the magic came from you. What if…”
He began to draw over my old lines.
His strokes were confident, clean. He widened the blade’s forte for strength, refined the curve of the guard, added a subtle fuller to lighten it without sacrificing rigidity. He wasn’t just redrawing it; he was engineering it. My childish fantasy was transformed under his hand into something of lethal, practical beauty.
“Here,” he said, pointing with the charcoal. “The balance point. And see this curve? It’s not just for show—it guides a parry, directs the force. The tang would run full through the hilt, peened here for a weld that’ll never break.”
He looked from the redesigned blueprint to the glowing G-Pen in my hand.
“You can make anything, right? Not just water and ice. You could make this.”
He wasn’t asking to wield my power.
He was offering his own.
“When you’re out there,” he said, his voice gruff, “you’ll need more than storms. You might need a blade that fits your hand. Think of this. Think of this line.” He tapped the parchment. “Your magic. My design. It’d be… ours.”
Tears blurred my vision, softening the glow of the G-Pen.
In this dusty workshop, he found a way to bridge the impossible gap. He couldn’t touch my G-Pen—but he could shape its intention. He was sending me off not just with a brother’s love, but with a smith’s collaboration.
The dagger on the parchment was no longer a childish dream.
It was a promise.
A piece of home—and of him—I could someday summon into my hand.
***
The Fairy King’s presence in our yard made the morning air feel thin, as if the world itself were holding its breath. He was a statue of dawn mist and patient stars, waiting.
All the words I’d practiced dissolved.
Wilhelm broke the silence. Moving with the deliberate grace of his craft, he pulled a long bundle from his belt. The rough cloth fell away, and the dagger gleamed dully in the grey light. It was his translation of my blueprint, perfected.
He didn’t offer pretty words.
“The balance is true,” he said, his voice the low rumble of the forge. He turned it, showing the fuller. “It’ll cut clean. Won’t falter.”
His red-rimmed but dry eyes met mine.
“It listens to the heart. Remember that.”
He offered it hilt-first.
When my fingers closed around it, I felt more than leather and steel. I felt the ghost of his grip, the hours of pounding and grinding, the fierce, unspoken language of a brother who spoke best in made things.
I slid it into my belt. Its weight was an immediate, sobering anchor.
It was not a symbol of power.
***
Roric stood at the edge where the garden met the wild, a boy trying to be a statue. He stepped forward, his confidence gone, replaced by awkwardness.
“Elsbeth.” My name was rough in his throat.
He fumbled at his tunic, pulling a leather cord over his head. Dangling from it was a simple grey river stone, smooth and worn, with a natural hole at its center.
“It’s nothing,” he mumbled, avoiding my eyes. “Just a stone. But it’s solid. It doesn’t change.” He held it out. “For when everything else does.”
***
Then came the goodbyes that unraveled me.
My father, wrapped in blankets on a chair, pulled me into a one-armed hug. He felt frail—a bundle of sticks and bandages.
“I’m sorry,” he choked, the words wet and broken. “I wasn’t able to protect you.”
The apology twisted like a knife. He was the one in ruins, and he blamed himself for my destiny.
My mother crushed me next, her sobs silent, shaking through both of us. Then, by instinct, her hands fluttered up, pulling my travel cloak straight, smoothing a wrinkle, tucking a stray hair.
“Don’t forget to eat on time,” she whispered, her voice cracking on the mundane instruction. “And always… be kind to everyone.”
Her deepest fears laid bare: that I would forget to care for myself—or worse, that the power would make me forget to care for others.
“This will always be your house,” my father added, his voice finding a thread of steel. “Come back from time to time.”
The ordinary invitation was a lifeline thrown across an abyss.
Before the sorrow could swallow me whole, the Fairy King intervened. He presented my family with a simple parcel: parchment and a plain ink pen.
“A bridge of blood and bond,” he said. “A drop for ink. Your shared life will carry the words to her.”
A bridge.
They wouldn’t be left in silence.
I stood there holding their gifts, the dagger, the pendant, the promise of letters, their faces maps of love and loss.
I had no words left that wouldn’t become a wail.
So I spoke in my new tongue.
I closed my eyes, feeling for the calm center beneath the storm of goodbye. I held out my hand. The G-Pen materialized, not with a flash, but with a soft, persistent glow, like a hearth finally caught.
I didn’t think of elements. I thought of them.
I drew in the air before them. A single, intricate, circular pattern. It wasn’t water or ice. It glowed with a gentle, gold-tinged light. As I traced the final line, the symbol pulsed and then fractured into a shower of tiny, warm motes of light that drifted over my family, settling on their shoulders and clinging to hair and clothes like gentle, protective dust—a blessing of steadfastness, health, and connection.
As the last light faded into them, I let the G-Pen disappear.
I looked at their awestruck, tear-strewn faces, now touched by a glimmer of my love made visible.
My goodbye was not a word, but a weave.
Not a promise to return, but a piece of my soul left as a sentinel.
The Fairy King extended his hand.
I took it.
I turned my back on the only home I had ever known, the new weights of steel and stone against me—a perfect balance for the unimaginable journey ahead.
As promised, I’ve also shared the Fairy King’s point of view.
I’ve launched a new work titled
“Peeking Behind the Scenes: Character POV Stories,”
where I’ll be sharing stories from each character’s perspective.
I hope you enjoy the Fairy King’s story.
Thank you so much for reading, and Merry Christmas.
And next week—
what is the Fairy Realm really like?
Will Elsbeth be able to live peacefully in this world?
Find out next week,
same time, same place.
There’s no better way to celebrate the New Year than with the beginning of Elsbeth’s new life in the world of Oiklumen—
told next time from her mother’s point of view.
