For days I sit on the bony shore before the shimmering pond of Moonhollow, eyes closed and legs crossed. I don't eat. Before leaving me, Cassian advised fasting as a way of facilitating a feeling of disconnect between my consciousness and my physical body. Normally, after years of living in the Wood, losing my grip on reality and my sense of self would seem an easy task. Now my mind can't seem to forget Korrigan's warning: By next moon she will perish. I can't still my thoughts, can't escape the feeling that I'm running out of time. My fear binds my attention to the passing of every moment. I didn't realize how much I miss her until I’d begun to think I'd never get to see her again. When I return, will she be the same as I remember? I am no longer her little bird; she'll look at me and see a stranger.
Your hunger is starting to aggravate me. How can you stand it? Balsevor says.
"I stopped noticing it ages ago. Please be quiet."
Impossible. It's a grumbling monster. I never thought I would crave your bland human sustenance. I live in this body too, you know, and it needs to eat or it will die!
"Only death truly frees any of us," I say.
Is that what this is? You wish to- Oh. He realizes I am using his own dramatic statements against him a moment too late. Just hurry up, will you? I'm not enjoying this foolish endeavor.
"It probably wouldn't take me so long if it wasn't for the grumbling monster that keeps distracting me." He starts to respond, but before he can form a word I add, "I'm not talking about my stomach."
For a while, the sun dragon is quiet. My thoughts drift. I try to conjure up the feeling of flying, floating up and out of my body as it remains heavy on the shore. As the inconvenient physical form I am tied to sits cross-legged below, I imagine my mind drifting across a horizon full of puffy purple clouds. Every time I think about my mother or Korrigan's prophecy, I start to sink back to earth. To combat this, I visualize the nagging thoughts personified. My mother is there, holding on to me with her soft hands, gravity tugging her downward and pulling me with her. Her billowing purple skirts match the color of the clouds, her blue eyes plead for me to save her. I wriggle free from her grasp. As she falls, I drift back up, weightless.
I realize that every time I see her this way, she is silent. She has no voice. She doesn't cry out as she falls from the sky, just stares up at me before she disappears from sight. What does her voice sound like? Her laugh? I can't remember. I feel a seed of panic growing in my empty stomach, and suddenly I am on the beach again. I don't hear my mother's laugh, just the lilting faerie music I've gotten so used to, a haunting melody for the Moonhollow spectres to dance their endless dance.
Hours or days later, Cassian interrupts my meditation with a light tap on the arm. It feels like a slap, snapping me back into my body all at once. My head swims and I feel a wave of nausea. I open my eyes to see him holding out a crystalline goblet, rimmed with sparkling gemstones. I eye its contents suspiciously. It's hard to focus on what I'm seeing. I try to blink away the fog.
Great, Balsevor says. He brought you a shiny cup. Why couldn't he have brought food?
"It's water. Just water. No enchantments or poison," Cassian says, rolling his eyes at my dazed expression. "You've been here seven days. I'm starting to believe you may not be as human as I thought."
"No…" The word comes out like a sigh, breathy and ethereal. I look down at the feathers fluttering along my arms, the ember-bright glow beneath my skin. "That's the problem, isn't it?" As I watch, the flickering fire inside of me begins to fade from view, the feathers shrinking into nothing. "I'm too human, but not human enough."
