Preparations were made with haste. My mother seemed on the verge of tears every time my father stepped more than two feet away from her. “Do I need any clothes?” I asked.

“You may bring whatever you wish. It is up to your color of choice to decide what objects you retain in your trainings,” Lia said. She and the Red stood in the doorway. My mother and father felt that they were intruding on what was probably a private leave-taking. I, however, was thankful for their presence since they blocked the door so Jessy couldn’t see the gathered villagers.

The moment I entered my doorway to warn my parents I’d earned a crown’s trust, Jessy barged through the open doorway and started prancing around the living room, toppling father’s oak chair and knocking countless books off the library shelves.

Jessy screeched loudly and repeatedly at my father, who barged from the kitchen brandishing a long knife when he heard the commotion, stopping wide-eyed when he saw the hunched crown ready to pounce. Only my feelings of calm and scratching beneath Jessy’s neck calmed her down enough for my mother to come in shrieking with joy. She didn’t seem to care about the books at all and kept trying to pet Jessy.

It took nearly half an hour before Jessy let anyone touch her, and only then with me holding her wing the whole time. I told her she was being silly, so she knocked me over with a swipe of her other wing. After gaining no enjoyment out of the attention my parents gave her, Jessy resigned to post herself to one of the stout wooden rafters holding up the roof. My dad didn’t seem to mind her knocking out half the lights.

There she sat as I packed, staring and occasionally growling at the doorway. The Prophets made no attempt to pet her, and with them in the doorway none of my friends tried to enter, though their shouting was irritating Jessy.

“What about food, his tent? Should he bring those?” my mother asked, and suddenly went searching for my father’s hand.

“His accommodations will be adequately provided,” Lia insisted. “He may bring as little or as much as he wishes.”

“Can I bring my stick?” I asked, and grabbed the pike from where it rested against the timbered wall. Jessy raised her head when I held it.

“Not only may you bring the weapon with which you slew your beast, but I insist upon its presence.”

“Think you use too many words to speak,” my father said, momentarily pausing gathering my clothes as he held my mother’s hand. “All Prophets do that?”

“No,” Hednar insisted.

“Oh, my near partner and friend has the best of it I’m afraid,” Lia said with a laugh, and patted Hednar on the shoulder. “Culture of variance like the fracturing prism of light is what lies in wait with the Sevens Prophets, hence the sharp contrast of my speaking mannerisms to the pragmatic speech so common here on Mother.”

“I think that’s it,” I said as I finally decided on the last of the books I was going to take with me. “Ready to go, Jessy?”

A lesser house may have shook violently with the crown leaping from the rafters to pounce not quite on top of me. When Jessy leapt, the stout logs didn’t so much as creak as I patted her behind her crimson ears.

My mother cast me a wondering glance and I smiled back. I later learned that to anyone but a Mother-Dweller, that emotional exchange would have meant a novel of words. As it was, my mother merely wiped away a tear and nodded as she tightened her grip on my father’s hand.

“Will he be able to visit?” my mother asked.

“His training lies entirely in the hands of the color he chooses and the speed of his ascension,” Lia said. “He is allowed to maintain as constant a stream of communication as he wishes, however, and messages can be sent on a liberal basis. We are aware of the emotional trials Mother-Dwellers experience and have accommodated many novices of this type before.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“I don’t want special treatment,” I insisted.

My father’s eyes betrayed no visual change, but I could feel his pride.

“Then we should be off, brave beast slayer,” said Lia.

“And I don’t want to be called that,” I said.

“Crown-tamer? Tree-wielder? What then?”

Jessy growled.

“Just Kagis,” I said, and walked out the door.

My village had always been no more than a five minute walk away. Each house of felled logs, each unique and of reputable build, lay on its own plot of land surrounded by whatever garden the particular resident chose to create. My home, like so many others and yet unique in ways only we villagers could see, had a row of barley for my father’s brewing lining the clearing out front. I didn’t look back as I crossed the tree-lined path to the square.

The square was where people gathered, where each night the low, long, bench-lined bar entertained brewers and drinkers alike in a sing-song gathering amongst fires occasionally boasting roasting beast. The bachelor apartments and bachelorette apartments, separated by the steep-roofed college building, were by far the biggest buildings with near constant musings flowing through open windows. At the center of it all was a clearing where a banner had been posted. To honor the Prophets’ visit, someone had stitched the logo of the Sevens Prophets and raised it on a long pole.

On a black background deep as the night sky three colors came from the edges to swirl together as one like light swirls entering a black hole, coming together in a chaos of the three colors in the middle. Red, White, and Gold they were, the three colors and branches of the Sevens Prophets.

“So you’re really going?” Sarah asked when I stepped into the clearing. She and nearly everyone in the village who wasn’t farming or smoking that beast I’d killed were gathered, humming a low song of sorrowful joy I’d rarely heard. Those who knew me best jockeyed to whisper congratulations. Those who didn’t stayed back and hummed their silent, powerful farewells.

“Can I pet the crown?” Griffio asked when he saw Jessy, though she was screeching at everyone so much none of them felt the desire to approach. Egred stayed behind Griffio and couldn’t stop staring at Jessy’s enormous eyes.

“She doesn’t like to be petted,” I said as Jessy flapped her wings to keep Griffio back.

“You’re petting her.”

“Because she likes to be petted by me.”

“When will you be back?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t know. I will be back, sometime.”

“That’s not much help.”

“Sorry.”

“The boy is journeying with us for quite some time, dear villagers. I suggest that your goodbyes be given in full while the boy still has an attentive ear,” Lia said.

With that, all my friends embraced me and offered overwhelming feelings of joyful sorrow as they wished me good fortune in my awaiting life. I received countless small tokens, knives, paper, pens, medicines, and a flask of my favorite bearded brewer’s private collection, along with the choicest cut of smoked beast, from the one I’d killed that morning. I could tell Sarah desperately wanted me to stay so I gave her feelings that I would think of her constantly and return as soon as I could. It was only later that I learned this was done in words everywhere other than Mother. It never ceased to baffle me how something of that magnitude could possibly be communicated in words.

“Maybe you can become a Prophet too,” I said.

“Maybe,” she replied, though I could tell her heart was not in the life it offered.

“Are you ready to go now, Kagis?” Lia finally asked as Jessy grew impatient.

“Yes,” I said, and mounted Jessy. She spread her wings and I had to send feelings of calm and promise of better places to fly before she folded her wings with a loud grumble.

“Eager, good,” Hednar said.

“That boldness will serve you well in your time with the Sevens Prophets, young Kagis. Or it will destroy you,” Lia stated with a smile that suddenly disappeared. “This is it, Kagis. We are going now. Are—”

“I’m ready,” I said as Jessy screeched with anticipation.

“Too eager,” Hednar said with the first smile I’d ever seen him wear. “May be good Red material.”

“Perish the thought, dear,” Lia said.

“I get to choose, right?” I asked.

“That and more you will learn in time. For now, you may want to close your eyes.”

I kept my eyes wide as possible as a perfectly white light burst from the tiara atop Lia’s brow and quickly enveloped my person and all sensory images surrounding me with a burning, stretching, exhilarating thrill like the sensation of having one’s body consumed from the inside out but without a cell damaged in the slightest as the light suddenly evaporated and I had to blink.

I had to blink again.