Page 276 of The Dryad Storm

“Rafe, he’s another Great Mage. Get rid of him.”

But the wolf woman and the wolf man calmly refute all of it.

Time passes, and Valen starts to remain calm around Diana, the wolf woman, only Diana able to approach him without provoking an attack. He bites or punches anyone else who tries to come near. Finds a multitude of sticks and sets a multitude of things on fire.

But Diana and Rafe refuse to give up on him.

More time passes, and new monsters come to visit, those who are completely immune to his fits of fire because they have so much fire of their own. Elloren, a Dryad Mage monster who has as much fire as he does. And the Icaral monster, Yvan, who offers to fly Valen into the sky when he’s ready.

But still, when he’s not careening into outright hostility, Valen turns increasingly despondent, lapsing into dull silence when he’s not lashing out.

Until Ariel comes.

Valen hisses at Ariel, and she hisses back. Then she gives him a wide smile, her fire eyes full of fierce understanding. Thrust into a whirlwind of confusion, Valen lashes out at her. Tries to set her wings on fire. But she meets it all with narrow-eyed calm.

And comes back every day.

Soon, out of sheer confusion, Valen stops trying to set fire to her wings. Stops trying to set fire to everything in sight.

And before long, he’s going off with Ariel. Then with the Wyvern Raz’zor. Up,up, up into the sky, the three of them throwing fire out at the heavens. Great lashes of it across the sky, turning the night gold and crimson.

Good, they say, Ariel and Raz’zor both.

Be angry, they say.

Set the damned sky on fire.

And so he does. Sensing that Ariel and Raz’zor need to do this, too, from time to time.

And, as more time passes and Valen is surrounded by so many who are so kind, who understand and accept him, somehow, his fear and rage begin to lessen.

Before long, step by step, little by little, so incrementally he almost doesn’t notice the changes happening, he’s letting Ariel and Raz’zor fly him up so high that he touches the clouds.

Letting Trystan and his mate, Vothendrile, teach him to hone his fire into lightning bolts so he can light up the heavens with forking electricity through the dark of night.

Then, as more time passes and he grows taller and taller, Valen lets spider-marked Wrenfir teach him to care for injured cats and use his fire power to speed Wrenfir’s apothecary spells as they work together to fabricate medicines for both people and Wrenfir’s rescued felines, Wrenfir gifting him with a purple kitten of his own.

Interests build and build, and before long, Valen’s love of cats branches into a love of horses, and he’s letting Andras teach him how to treat injured equines. Letting Ariel teach him how to set a bird’s broken wing. Letting Wynter teach him how to sculpt a small statue of the bird he and Ariel just healed and released back into the wilds.

The Great, Blessed Forest.

More time passes, and before long, twelve-year-old Valen is letting patient Or’myr teach him how to throw power through crystals and charge them to heat a home, to power a ship. Then how to grow mushrooms and brew them into tea. How to play the violin.

And letting Elloren, Yvan, Oaklyyn, and Yulan show him the meaning of the Balance, and the Nature-balancing magic of the Zhilaan Forest.

Year upon year passes, with so much love and attention enfolding Valen, his heart has trouble holding it all sometimes. It’s so gradual that it’s impossible to pinpoint the day it fully and irrevocably happens—the day he fully lays down his Mage defenses. The day the desire to draw a branch, rage out a spell, and set someone on fire truly abates.

The day he heals enough to stop fighting and lets in their collective love.

Thirteen years later...

For All of Us

Valen Ulrich

Lupine Territory, Northern Vo Forest

Xishlon night

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