Slowly the glittering ice of winter thawed away under the sun's growing warmth. Early spring in the forest was cool and wet, with frequent rain, overcast skies, and high humidity that made working with the fiber in Igmi's shop different than the static-heavy, dry winter had been. Hayzen had used the yarn she had spent most of the winter making to weave thick saddle blankets. Lissa had been delighted and proud that her work had been able to produce such lovely textiles. Her aunt had also taught her another method of fiber preparation called carding that resulted in lofty, fuzzy yarns.

For Lissa, the spring warmth was welcome, but her mousey brown waves fought the early season's humidity, and she constantly fussed over her own uncooperative locks. Beyond that though, her attempts in the evenings to connect to the [umbral fur]'s magic were still unsatisfying. She thought maybe she was making some kind of progress, and that alone was what prevented her from quitting outright. Immediately after her tantrum at Igmi, she had spent every evening after dinner trying to make the magical fur do something, but as the days went by without anything happening, she pulled out the fur less and less frequently. For some reason, she still believed she should be able to do something with it, and that alone led her back to getting out the fur every couple of weeks as spring came into full bloom.

Eventually, the clouds began to come less frequently, and the forest grew thick with new leaves and the sweet scent of spring flowers. All the fully-awoken trees put on their best spring attire and glowed all the brighter as the days passed. At her apprenticeship, Igmi had begun to introduce Lissa to fiber dyeing. The girl enjoyed the change of pace and the introduction of color into their work.

Along with new skills at her apprenticeship, the spring brought Lissa a fascinating new experience. As newcomers continued to move into Etoleem, the Albehsons and Brightglenns were treated to the strange sight of new homes and shops being grown by the [aware trees]. An [architect] would use a special skill to share their plan with the individual tree, and it would spend several weeks shaping itself and adjacent unaware plants into the [architect]'s desired structure. Most of the trees sported multiple structures along the height of their trunks, creating the city's strange and lovely multi-level organization that could only be expanded during the growing season.

Late one evening in early, early summer, after her parents had gone to bed, she pulled out the [umbral fur] to try again. It had not been quite a year since that night at their old home when her grey bracelet had first appeared, she was sitting in a bright pool of moonlight on her bed across from her open window. The grey bracelet of Anella shimmered brightly with the moon's light, but was otherwise inert. She held the inky black fur in her hands once again. Over the last half a year, she had become intimately familiar with the stuff. The wispy fur was incredibly soft, but also quite cool in her fingers, like trying to hold onto fog that was somehow solid and lacked the stickiness of water vapor. When it was fully solid, the length of the individual fibers, what her aunt called the staple length, was longer than her hand from wrist to fingertip, and tightly crimped along its whole length. It was as fine as lamb's wool and constantly shifted from solid to vapor, creating a lighter-than-air ephemeral softness that seemed to draw the light out of its surroundings. Even the moonlight seemed to not illuminate the clumps of fur spread out around her and held between her fingers.

She had eventually finished a few of her aunt's sample yarns, blends of just a small portion of the inky fluff with other fibers. None had had the resilience to survive in the sunlight, so they also lived in the satchel with the rest of her [umbral fur]. Tonight she was pulling the fibers apart from each other gently to create a fiber preparation called a cloud. All she needed to do was ensure that all the individual locks were separated from each other and that the individual fibers were as disorganized as possible. She didn't know if this attempt would make a fiber that could last in the sunlight, but it was to be her first time spinning the fiber all by itself.

She had tried any number of times to feel the fiber with whatever strange numb part of herself had been affected by the party potions, but she was quite literally feeling around blind and numb. Maybe she had accomplished things, but how would she even be able to tell. As she pulled at the strange fibers, a sudden thought came to her. She had kept a few of the party potions. Maybe she could drink one now, awaken that part of her that could connect with magic, and try again.

She threw the fur in her hands to the side, and rushed to the trunk at the foot of her bed. Throwing the wooden trunk open, she rummaged through the collection of odds and ends she'd stored there since the party. Near the bottom, under toys and randomly collected rocks and twigs and other things, she found three small potion bottles: a pale purple one that was almost white in the moonlight, a completely clear one with just the hint of pearlescent shimmers within, and a black one, swirling like a gaseous vapor inside the glass. It was this last one that caught her attention. It looked almost identical to the miasma created by the [umbral fur] in sunlight, only bottled and intended to be consumed. She left the other two potions in the trunk and the pile of odds and ends where she had strewn them around her on the floor. Her focused narrowed in on the bottle of swirling, black vapor. She carefully pushed out the cork stopper with a small pop, and quaffed the contents in one swallow. The lingering flavor in her mouth was like the smell of dew in the early morning, earthy, cold, and just a little bit floral.

The magic in the potion had faded some in the six months it had been stored in her trunk, and it wasn't nearly as strong as it would have been on the winter solstice. Still, she payed close attention to the sensations within her as the shadowy potion took effect. The physical effect of the potion was relatively simple, if a bit sinister: her own shadow had taken on the same quality of writhing miasma as the potion's contents and a hood made of the same murky shadow with pointed vaporous ears grew up over her head. She imagined she must look either quite silly or quite ferocious, like a miniature villain from one of her mother's stories. Yet, she could feel the magic of the potion affecting her on some deep incorporeal level. Once again, she had that sensation of prodding an appendage that had been asleep, but this time it was almost tingly, like it was closer to being fully functional than it had been before. Excitement and curiosity gripped her like a vice, compelling her back to the [umbral fur] laid out on her bed. She just knew that she'd be able to do magic tonight.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Not even waiting to get settled, she grabbed the fistful of fur as she squirmed and scooched her way back into a comfortable position. The fur felt different! It felt different! It felt... more solid? Between the incredibly soft, crimpy fibers, she felt something else. No, not between—within. Within each fiber, she felt something else. The something was as ephemeral as the inky shadows that rolled off the fur, but was also strangely solid, and seemed to stretch far longer than the length of the fur on both ends of the fiber, so far in fact, that it seemed to stretch through the bed and the walls. If she moved the fur around, it was like it was sliding along whatever that substance was, but not actually moving the substance. She did not understand.

After playing with the strange sensation for a good ten minutes, she realized that she was only sensing it with that subtly different part of her that was beginning to tingle quite fiercely as if it was no longer numb at all, but beginning to come into full sensation in the most uncomfortable manner possible. Lissa began to squirm, and she cried out loudly as the discomfort seemed to fill the entirety of her body. Even her eyes and ears and taste buds seemed to prick and sting with pins and needles.

A knock came at the door, and her father's deep voice asked as he began to open the door, "Lissa, what's the matter, sweetling?"

Lissa cried. She wasn't exactly in pain, but it was extremely uncomfortable, and she held out her hands to her father as he entered the room. Drust gasped, having entered the room and spotted his daughter covered in writhing shadows. He ran across the room and scooped her into his arms. The pressure of his body against her raw nerves was like a cool balm, and she began to weep outright, fully overwhelmed by the bodily experience. He carried her from her bedroom, as she continued to slough shadows, though the potion's effect was finally beginning to fade.

"Tecka!" Drust called as he walked through the living room, lit only by the light of the moon. "Tecka, could you come help me please."

Her mother emerged from her parents' bedroom shortly, holding a burning oil lamp and dressed only in her night shift. She had already fallen asleep for the night and had barely roused when Drust went to check on Lissa. She spotted the crying girl in Drust's arms, with hits of shadowy miasma still pouring off her head and shoulders where the magical hood had formed. Drust's expression was creased deeply with concern in the candlelight.

Lissa clung tightly to her father, pressing her face into his shoulder. The pins and needles were beginning to subside, but they were giving way to a whole host of sensations that she had never experienced before and the onslaught overwhelmed her young mind. Her father, despite the warmth of his body, felt like a literal mountain spring, cool and peaceful and quieting. She held on tightly to the island of peace he provided, suddenly overly sensitive to everything else.

She began to quiet when the tingling fully subsided, and then went rigid in her father's arms when a cacophony of voices spoke in her mind. If she had been able to hear the words that Falton had heard at his coming-of-magic, she would have known that while the voices were the same, they were not speaking in the same manner. The multitude she heard did not speak as one, but echoed each other over and over in a thousand different voices.

"Impatient one. Ambitious one. We have watched you seek and struggle. Yes, early you have sought the gift we bestow. We have answered. Choose your path wisely."

When the last echoes of the multitude faded, a single female voice spoke quietly, "Take care and take heart, young Brightglenn; I am watching over you."

Her father had noticed the sudden change, and pulled her far enough away from his shoulder to look in her wide, frightened eyes. Her lips quivered, but before she could begin to sob again, he pressed a scratchy bearded kiss to her forehead. Her father's peaceful presence of safety washed over her, slightly muting the incredible influx of sensation that still pressed in on her.

Tecka had drawn close to them by then, having set the lamp down on the kitchen counter. She wrapped her arms around her small family, enveloping Lissa between her and Drust in a tight hug. Her mother's presence was like lying in their meadow under the summer sun, earthy and safe with just a hint of a fresh breeze. Her breathing finally began to slow as her parents held her between them. Tecka eventually withdrew, taking that sense of the solid earth with her.

"I'll heat up some milk," she said to the two of them, and began rousing the embers of the cooking fire in the hearth.

Drust carried Lissa to the low couch close to the fire and carefully sat down with her still clinging to him. He asked her what happened as he stroked her hair, and she slowly began to explain. It took a good deal of back and forth before the entirety of the situation was plain enough for Drust and Tecka to understand. At some point after their discussion began, Tecka brought over the warmed milk with just a bit of honey added into it. They finally put together that Lissa had continued to try to connect with the magic in the umbral fur, and tonight she'd added a leftover shadow-based potion into the mix. Finally, she'd apparently been spoken to by the gods in a similar—but not identical—manner to they way they spoke during an ordinary coming-of-magic. And in the meantime, she was now receiving an incredible amount of sensory input that she'd never experienced before from senses she hadn't even known she had. She even explained that her father felt like a mountain stream and her mother like a meadow. They exchanged a look, realizing that her descriptions matched their personal fundaments quite closely.

Not wanting to overwhelm his daughter any further, Drust didn't offer to cast identify on her that night. As it was, they decided that she could sleep with them, and they would attempt to sort things out in the morning. When she was finally groggy and settled enough to be silly again, the three retired to her parents' bedroom, settled Lissa in between them, and attempted to get some sleep. Surprisingly, Lissa fell asleep almost immediately, and Tecka not longer after her, but Drust stared at the ceiling for at least another hour.

He ignored his own frequent advice to his wife to worry about problems the next day. His thoughts drifted to his parents and four siblings, all dead; in his embittered recollection, they were lost to their ambition and over-confidence in the gods. He'd given up his life of adventuring after they'd died in a dungeon right in front of him. It hadn't been his failure to heal them quickly enough, he'd decided. It had been the gods' faults for making the accursed places. If the gods were so good and powerful, then why were their gifts so dangerous, so costly!? And here, his only precious little lamb, Lissa, had somehow forcibly come into her magic early. What ever would he do to keep her safe without breaking her spirit, which wouldn't be keeping her safe at all?

He tossed and turned, thankful to have his wife and daughter close. After hours of worry, in the early, early morning, sleep eventually overtook him.