Song: "One Feeling Too Far" from The Dragon Prince Season 3 OST

When I was seven years old, Father took my scraped hand and sat the three of us down in the kitchen. "Alura." His voice was stern. "What have we told you about hitting others?" I kept crying, tears streaking the dirt on my bare face. "Hitting others makes me just like them. I should wait for a trusted adult to defend me. And they will." But to this day, Father's words confuse me, because just as then, no one does.

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After the meeting, Light Spinner trudged home. Norwyn was going to get a piece of her mind after this meeting; she hadn't expected him to defend her from random strangers on the street, but a small part of her had longed for him to tell the other Guild members not to laugh at her. Not to use their Seraphite beliefs - of which he was a part - to discount her ideas.

Her biological father had studied the First Ones for his Emeth. Their spacecraft, their journeys, their tech. The modern Etherian knew so little about the First Ones that it was conceivable to Light Spinner that the average citizen might laugh at her, but she hadn't expected a team of trained scholars to do it.

She clenched her fists and pruned the rose bushes. Gardening was a useful outlet for her emotions, a place to hide and pretend they didn't exist. It was a place she could be angry without consequence.

Norwyn's voice came from behind her. "I sense you are displeased."

"Yes, with you letting them pile on me," she muttered before she could stop herself.

"Light Spinner, I apologize." He sat down on the stone bench. "But I agreed with the Guild. I don't think it is wise to send untrained sorcerers to a place where the explorers didn't return. We are simply not powerful enough."

Light Spinner snapped a dead branch off. "You don't trust me. I don't care whether you disagree with me on power or not - my ideas are just worth less to everyone because of who I am." Her voice wobbled on the last few words, and she coughed to disguise it.

Norwyn sighed. "I do trust you, Light Spinner. But the others - "

"Don't. We've run through this already," she said. "If you really trusted me, you would defend me when people say things like 'crazy powers', and when they use their stupid faith to pretend I'm not worth their time."

"Don't tell me you're offended over that. Festinia is rude to everyone, not just you. And not all Seraphites see you that way."

Light Spinner grunted. "But I have a bad feeling - if we ignore this problem of explorers not returning from the crashed ship, it could balloon and - ow!" She relaxed the pruning shears as they dug into her thumb, leaving a pair of deep crescent-shaped cuts that looked like two wicked smiles.

She scowled, wrapping her dress sleeve around it; she could wash the blood out later. Norwyn responded. "I don't think you're a Fulminate, child, and my decision is final. But we must wait until a larger threat chooses to reveal itself. It could be that said travelers aren't back yet."

Good to know I don't worship the darkest force known to the cosmos, according to you.  Light Spinner rolled her eyes and bit off the scathing reply. "But we must prepare at the very least. If we don't train - "

"What good is training without power?" Norwyn inquired. "You couldn't take on a whole army by yourself, Light Spinner. And the rest of us don't have your abilities."

"And your solution?"

"Let the princesses handle the problem. Five runestones against an army is enough."

But what if it isn't? Light Spinner worried. Her body grew cold. What if we don't have five runestones to fight with?

✧✧✧

After Norwyn left, Light Spinner wandered into her living room and sat in an antiquated red armchair. Taking an old, dusty picture frame from beside her, she gazed at it. Three pointy-eared Delvalians had been snapshotted. Lydia's dark blonde hair contrasted Ántonin's raven locks like day and night. They were happy. Complete.

And in the center was a little girl without a veil and enormous dimples, smiling with black lips and black hair and bright green eyes. Light Spinner's hand trembled on the frame, and before she could stop herself, a tear spilled down her cheek, dripping onto the picture and erasing the dust on the girl's face.

Light Spinner set the picture aside, took a tissue, and wiped away the tear. Her mind drifted back to the days before she was routinely humiliated by society, when she would lay in the arms of her parents and watch the flames dance. It always seemed as though they were dancing for her, not against her, as her light now did whenever she walked outdoors. She shut her eyes and controlled her shuddering breaths, so not even the walls of her house could hear her cry.

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Did you know...

● I predicted her having a garden before it was confirmed in Season 4. I outlined the book in October and then in November the show made a huge running joke about it that I quite enjoyed. The funniest part was the showrunner, Noelle Stevenson, hinted at it beforehand and no one in the fandom believed her.

Tell me what you think...

● Why do you think Light Spinner is afraid of being vulnerable?