Trace

WRITTEN IN THE SPACE WHERE A SHADOW SHOULD BE

My pen was a feather once, before the Ink Fig chose it for something else. I don't know why it picked me over anyone standing closer. I've stopped questioning things that decide to be kind to me without asking permission first.

I can trace the shadow of a Chosen and, for a day, carry a little of what makes them who they are. It doesn't always take. Some people hold their power the way you'd hold a door shut against weather — I've learned to respect that, even when it costs me. And I've learned, more quietly, that it can be carried from one borrowed day into the next, stacked, if I'm patient and careful and no one is watching closely enough to ask how.

There's someone teaching me the parts of this I couldn't have learned alone — an old wanderer who talks like every word costs him something, and never once has made me feel small for needing to ask twice. What he's teaching me isn't something I've told my father, or Sable, or Addonis. I tell myself it's because they wouldn't understand. Some days I think it's because I'm afraid of what they'd understand perfectly.

I keep drifting further from the people who raised me and closer to something waiting patiently in the dark. I haven't decided yet whether that's a warning.