The rain had soaked the glade to its bones, turning moss into slick sorrow and tree bark into weeping skin. Grum'Bel sat with his knees drawn up beneath his mane of muted rainbows, hair that once caught sunlight now trailing in the mud like forgotten ribbons.
He wouldn’t look at Auroah. Not yet. Not even as she stepped lightly through the wet leaves, her cloak dragging tendrils of mist in her wake like a thought still forming.
“They’re moving the Grove Council,” Grum'Bel muttered, voice thick with disdain. “Closer to the cliffs. Where the fog never clears and the salt stings your eyes.”
Auroah said nothing, only sat beside him.
“I don’t belong anywhere else,” Grum'Bel went on, tugging at a violet curl. “This place fits me. I know its shadows. Its silences. If they take it away, I’ll… I’ll break. Like a branch that finally splinters.”
A long breath.
And then, softly:
“I once thought I’d lost everything too,” Auroah whispered.
That turned Grum'Bel’s head, if only slightly.
“It was years ago. I had just left the Circle of Winds. My title, my duties, gone. My name barely a whisper in the trees. I wandered, not knowing who I was without all that.”
Her eyes softened with memory.
“I sat under a silver birch one evening. Rainy, like now. Angry. Lost. I kept asking myself how I’d rebuild without what I thought made me... me.”
She turned to Grum'Bel.
“And then I saw a bird.”
“A bird,” Grum'Bel repeated flatly.
Auroah smiled. “Not just any bird. A tiny goldfinch. So delicate, I thought even a breeze could take her. But she sat on the thinnest branch of that tree. Swaying in the wind. Calm. Unbothered.”
Grum'Bel blinked.
“And that’s when it struck me,” Auroah said. “Birds aren’t afraid of the branch breaking. Because their trust isn’t in the branch. It’s in their wings.”
She let the words hang in the air, like fog curling around an idea.
“You have wings.”
Grum’Bel’s eyes shimmered. A single strand of his rainbow hair glowed faintly,an ember of belief reigniting. “I’ve just been sitting here... hoping the branch doesn’t snap.”
Auroah tilted her head, eyes catching the rain like light through a prism. “It might,” she said gently. “Branches do.”
A beat. Then she leaned in, voice like the hush before dawn.
“But you? You’ll fly.”
Grum'Bel gave a weak laugh. “Fly where?”
Auroah’s hand swept across the air between them, not to point, but to open possibilities.
“You could stay with the Grove Council on the cliffs and be their storm-breaker. They don’t know how to see through fog like you do. You see through moods, through messes. You could be the one who brings color where everything feels gray.”
She reached out and touched one of Grum'Bel’s rainbow strands, a soft reverence in her fingers.
“Or,” Auroah continued, “you could travel. Take your magic to the younger trolls teach them how to gather beauty and not hoard it. You know what it means to feel too much. That’s not a flaw. That’s a gift. They need that kind of guide.”
Grum'Bel stared at her, breathing slower now.
“Or maybe,” Auroah whispered, “you find a place entirely your own. Not because it’s assigned to you, but because it sings to your soul. And you fill it with gardens no one else could imagine. With laughter only you know how to make.”
She looked into Grum'Bel’s storm-gray eyes.
“All of those paths are right. None of them mean failure. The truth is... your wings don’t have to carry you in the ‘right’ direction. They just have to carry you.”
Grum'Bel let out a long breath. And this time, the streak of gold in his hair stayed.
Auroah stood, mist rising at her heels.
“You were never the branch,” she said softly. “You were the bird.”
“A bird sitting in a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking,
because their trust is in their wings.”
So... what if the thing you’re clinging to does break?
Good. Let it.
Then stretch your wings, grab your pencils, and fly right into this week’s Troalkind coloring page—featuring Aurorah and Grum’Bel in a moment of magical, muddy-feelings wisdom.
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