I woke with the word already burning through my mind, bright and insistent as the dawn light filtering through the reed mats covering the window.
The Blooming Blessing.
I lay still for a moment, letting my body wake fully, feeling the familiar weight of pregnancy in my belly and the warmth of Caelion’s hand still resting on my hip from where he had fallen asleep guarding me. The previous day’s exhaustion had dissolved in the night, replaced by something else entirely. Anticipation. Hunger. The desperate need to understand what the voice had shown me.
I could barely sit still long enough to break my fast.
The morning routine passed in a blur. Veylan brought me dried mournbull meat, I smiled and I thanked him. Soryn coiled around the cubs in their corner, his serpent eyes watching me with knowing interest. He sensed my restlessness, my distraction, the way my fingers drummed against my thigh as I ate.
"You are going to try again," he observed, not a question.
"I have to," I said, setting down the half-eaten dried meat. "There are still three more gifts that I have not mastered yet, the voice did tell me to hone my healing gift first before tying to learn the other. I feel like I mastered the first one enough to try and learn the second one now."
Caelion emerged from the bathing area, his silver hair still damp, his fingers trailing water across the stone floor. "Is that wise? After yesterday? You emptied yourself."
"I rested," I insisted, though my hands trembled slightly as I pushed the wooden plate away. "I need to try. I want to hone all the powers I possess just in case Rina comes back and try to harm everyone again."
None of them argued further. They knew better by now.
As soon as the cubs had been fed and settled, their golden bodies curled into a pile of fur and contentment, I went to my room. I settled onto the thick furs spread across the floor and folded my legs beneath me, resting my hands loosely on my knees. The stone beneath the furs was cool and solid, grounding me, reminding me of the earth that waited to be touched.
I closed my eyes.
I breathed in slowly, filling my lungs until my ribs expanded and my belly rounded with air. Then out, releasing the breath in a steady stream that carried my tension with it.
Again.
The sounds around me gradually faded into the background. The distant crackle of the fire. The occasional voices drifting in from outside where villagers passed. The rustle of leaves beyond the doorway. Even the restless thoughts crowding my mind began to quiet, settling like sediment in still water.
I reached inward.
Or at least, I tried to.
Accessing the Healing Tide had become almost instinctive by now. When I searched for it, I knew exactly what I was looking for. I imagined cool water moving somewhere deep inside me, a gentle current flowing beneath my skin, patient and powerful. All I had to do was reach for that familiar coolness, and eventually it answered, rising to meet my call like a tide answering the moon.
The Blooming Blessing was different.
There was no familiar current waiting for me.
No coolness beneath my palms.
No clear sensation telling me, Here. This is where I am.
I frowned, my brow furrowing, and concentrated harder.
Blooming.
The word itself had to mean something.
I thought of flowers opening beneath warm sunlight, petals unfurling in slow motion. I thought of seeds breaking through dark soil, their shells cracking with the sound of new life. I thought of roots spreading beneath the earth, invisible but relentless, and new leaves unfurling after winter’s grip finally loosened.
Life.
Growth.
Creation from nothing.
I pictured a tiny seed resting in darkness, patient and potential.
For several breaths, nothing happened.
I imagined rain soaking into the soil above it. I imagined roots splitting from the shell, reaching downward. I imagined a fragile green shoot pushing upward, searching for warmth and sunlight, defying the weight of the earth.
Still nothing.
My jaw clenched.
"Come on," I whispered, the sound barely audible.
I tried again, more forcefully.
This time, I imagined the fields surrounding our village bursting into bloom. Tall grasses bending beneath the wind in golden waves. Wildflowers opening one after another in a riot of color. Trees stretching their branches toward a brilliant blue sky, heavy with fruit.
Nothing.
The silence inside me became almost insulting.
With the Healing Tide, I had eventually discovered that forcing it only made things harder, like trying to cup water in clenched fists. Apparently, I had learned absolutely nothing from that experience, because within minutes I was sitting there with my shoulders tense, my jaw locked, practically screaming at my own soul to produce flowers.
I exhaled sharply and opened my eyes.
"This is ridiculous," I muttered.
Of course, nothing answered. The stone walls remained stone. The furs remained fur. No miraculous garden had sprung up around me.
I closed my eyes again, my fingers pressing into my knees until my knuckles whitened.
Maybe I was approaching it wrong.
Healing had made sense to me because I understood what healing was. I had spent years caring for injured bodies, even before coming to this world. I understood wounds, pain, recovery, and the fragile line between helping someone and losing them. The Healing Tide had simply taken something already deeply rooted inside me and given it power, amplified what I already knew.
But blooming?
What did that truly mean?
Growing plants?
Making crops flourish?
Creating life from barrenness?
Or was it something else entirely?
The distinction suddenly seemed important, heavy with meaning I had not considered.
I relaxed my hands, letting the tension drain from my shoulders. I concentrated on the darkness behind my eyelids again, but this time I did not command. I did not demand.
This time, instead of imagining flowers, I thought about what it actually meant for something to bloom.
A seed did not bloom because someone ordered it to.
It needed warmth.
Water.
Soil.
Time.
It needed to be nurtured.
My breathing slowed, becoming deeper, more even.
Something shifted.
So faintly that at first I thought I had imagined it.
A tiny warmth appeared somewhere beneath my ribs, no larger than a spark.
My breath caught.
There.
I resisted the urge to grab at it, to clutch it tight. I remembered how the healing tide had slipped away when I grasped too hard.
The moment I became excited, the warmth flickered, threatening to vanish.
"No, no, stay," I whispered.
I immediately regretted speaking.
The warmth vanished like a startled animal.
My eyes snapped open.
For a moment, I simply stared at the wall of our home, at the woven reeds and the clay that held them together. Frustration surged through me, hot and useless.
Then a grin slowly spread across my face.
I had felt it.
It had been barely anything, no larger than the warmth of a candle flame against my skin, but it had been there. Real. Not imagined.
I hurriedly closed my eyes again, my heart hammering against my ribs.
This time, I knew better than to chase it.
I breathed.
I waited.
I pictured no enormous field of flowers blooming in an instant, no miraculous forest springing from barren ground to impress the eye. There was no command in my thoughts, no desperate demand, no white-knuckled grasping for power.
Instead, I held only one seed in my mind. It was small enough to rest on the pad of my finger, fragile enough to crush with a careless breath, yet alive with possibility that hummed against my skin like a heartbeat. I imagined cradling it carefully between my palms, my hands cupped around it like a sanctuary built of flesh and bone, a fortress of warmth against the cold.
I did not command it to grow. I did not beg or bargain or threaten. I simply protected it. I held the space for it, kept the darkness at bay, and waited with the patience of stone and soil while it decided whether to trust me.
The warmth returned.
It came a little stronger this time, more confident, like a shy animal creeping from its burrow when it senses no danger.
It gathered beneath my ribs before slowly spreading outward, delicate threads of heat winding through me like roots searching through fertile soil. It moved differently than the Healing Tide. Where the Tide flowed like water, cool and rushing toward need, this moved like sunlight. Warm. Patient. Unhurried.
My fingers tingled.
I nearly broke concentration again, nearly gasped and ruined everything. The warmth was building now, spreading through my chest like honey, and I could feel something beginning to take shape in the darkness behind my eyes. A stirring. A reaching.
Then the door burst open.
"Mama!"
The shriek shattered my focus like a stone through glass. My eyes flew open, the warmth vanished instantly, and I was left gasping, empty, my hands clutching nothing but air.
Jasper stumbled toward me, his small face crumpled in misery, tears streaming down his cheeks. His golden fur was matted on one side, dust clinging to his back, and he was making that sound, that heartbreaking mewling that tore at my soul.
"Mama," he sobbed, throwing himself against my legs. "Mama, ow."
I gathered him up as best as I can, my youngest no longer small enough to lift so easily, but my body moved before my mind could catch up. "What happened? Jasper, what—"
"Ryder and Chase," Atlas announced from the doorway, his voice carrying that particular tone of older sibling tattling. "They were fighting. They fell on Jasper. He was sleeping."
"I was sleeping," Jasper confirmed against my neck, his tears hot and wet. "And then boom."
I looked up to see Ryder and Chase tumbling through the doorway after their brother, still wrestling, their golden bodies a tangle of limbs and tails and bared baby teeth. They crashed into the furs I had been sitting on, sending them sliding across the stone floor, and looked up at me with identical expressions of guilt and mischief.
"Chase started it," Ryder said immediately.
"Did not," Chase countered, though he had Ryder’s ear in his mouth.
"Enough," I said, my voice carrying the weight of maternal authority that I had not known I possessed until these four had come into my life. "Chase, release your brother’s ear. Now."
He did, with a wet pop, and both cubs sat back on their haunches, trying to look innocent and failing spectacularly.
I turned my attention back to Jasper, who had wrapped himself around my neck like a scarf, His growing body still trembled against me, little shivers running through him as the last of the fright worked its way out. "Are you hurt, my love? Let me see."
I checked him over, my healer’s hands moving automatically through his fur, feeling for injury, finding nothing but bruised pride and a disrupted nap. He would be fine. They were always fine. But the interruption had shattered something delicate, something that had been just beginning to form.
I looked down at the stone floor between my knees, where I had been so sure something would grow. Nothing. Just cold grey rock, unyielding as ever.
The Blooming Blessing would have to wait.
I stood, adjusting Jasper on my hip, feeling the weight of him, the warmth of his growing body against my pregnant belly. Ryder and Chase were already forgetting their mischief, distracted by a bug crawling across the floor. Atlas hovered near the doorway, watching me with those too-perceptive eyes, as if he knew I had been doing something important.
"Mama was working," he said quietly.
"I know, baby," I said, reaching out to ruffle his golden Mohawk. "But you are more important. You four are always more important."
And I meant it. The sprout could wait. The voice would still be there tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. But this moment, this small crisis of bumped heads and hurt feelings, this was now. This was real. This was mine.
I carried Jasper into the main room, settled onto the thick furs by the fire, and opened my arms to the other three as they crowded close. Soryn uncoiled from his corner and slithered near, his serpent eyes understanding, his presence a comfort. Caelion emerged from the bathing area, took one look at us, and smiled. Veylan brought water and cloths, his footsteps quiet against the stone.
The warmth in my chest was different now. Not the magical tide of creation, but something older, something stronger. The warmth of four growing bodies pressed against mine. The warmth of love that required no meditation to summon, no patience to nurture. It simply was. It simply grew, every day, without me even trying.
I pressed a kiss to Jasper’s head, smelled the dust and the tears and the sweet wild scent of him, and whispered, "Tomorrow, little one. Tomorrow Mama will try again."
But for now, I held my blessings in my arms, and they were enough.