Part 1: Sun

Chapter 3

Elarion, core trembling

lay down on an icy night

and in the cold

pulled at her roots

challenging winter's deadly bite

- from Elarion's poem

Humans were magicless.

If they were to be compared to a tree, it would be one without fruit, without leaves. Stark white as winter.

Barren.

But such was their heritage. Such was the consequences of their lineage, their roots.

Rebelling against one's heritage was foolishness.

One year earlier

That year, winter came early and stayed late.

It was also the year of the famine.

The rains had stopped at the mountains before the village, bringing clouds empty of the water their crops so desperately needed, useless for anything except covering over and blocking out the sun.

The few crops that did grow against all odds had to be harvested quickly before the cold set in. And even then, with all the villagers who could working together, many of plants were killed by the chill, frostbitten, the ground frozen hard around the roots.

They had their stores, but it would not be enough. Perhaps the food would last for a month, maybe two. But not through the winter, which stretched it's way into spring.

The other villages and towns would have helped them, but they had the same trouble. And then, when the deep snow fell, and the ice froze the ground and made it slippery, the temperature outside plunging to each a cold only the oldest among them had ever seen, there would be no travel. If starvation wouldn't kill them, then the cold would.

Elarion shivered, wrapping her winter cloak around her. She could see her breath as she looked at the fields of ruined crops in front of her, the leaves curled and black underneath a layer of white ice and frost.

There was a sun spell that could grow crops without water or anything else. If only she still had that sun stone, she thought.

Her mom's voice called her from the village, carried out on the wind. With one more long look, Elarion turned and went home.

Turning the pages of her book did nothing. The fire in crackled in the fireplace beside her, Elarion laying on her stomach on the wooden floorboards. She shivered and pulled the blanket tighter around her.

"Why don't you read on the bed?" her mom asked from her place by the fire. She sat in the chair, sowing something. "It's warmer there."

"I'm fine here," Elarion answered. She didn't look up from the pages, turning another one.

There were all sorts of spells for growing plants and healing diseased ones and warming the land.

But she could use none of them. Elarion gripped the edge of the book briefly, the thought of slamming it closed in frustration crossing her mind. But she didn't want to damage the book. Her fingers relaxed, slightly running across the smooth cover. Then, with a huff, she brought her arm up to rest her chin on her fist.

She flared down with narrowed eyes at the text and diagrams in the books, as if they might give her answers, or just pop up out of the page and do the work themselves without needing magic from her to channel them.

"Ugh!"

"Come here," her mom said softly, putting down what she was working on and gesturing with her hand.

Leaving the book open on the floor, Elarion sat by her mother's feet, leaning against the woman's thigh.

Her mom ran a hand over Elarion's dark curls. "I know you're frustrated. But close those books for now."

"I just want to be able to do something!"

"I know. But don't you worry about it. We'll be alright."

Elarion knew her mother was only trying to reassure her. But she was almost fourteen, but four. Elarion wasn't clueless.

They still had enough food now. But how long would it last? They would not be "alright."

That night, Elarion curled up against her mother for warmth from snow storm that was raging outside.

Elarion nearly slipped on the ice when she stepped outside onto the dirt street.

"Whoa!"

She pinwheeled, her scarf flying and her bookbag slipping from her arm and dropping on the ground with a bounce and a thud.

"Got you!" Large arms wrapped around her under the armpits and pulled her upright. Once rightly on her feet, Elarion turned around to face her rescuer. Her cousin Eli stood behind her. "You alright?"

"Mmm," Elarion answered, picking up her bookbag from the ground. She straightened and rolled her shoulders, slinging the bookbag over one, to hide her embarrassment of nearly falling flat on her face. "Yeah. I'm fine. Thanks."

"You on your way to school?" he asked, looking at her bag. She nodded. "I'll walk you. And make sure you don't fall again." He said that last sentence close to her ear and in a teasing tone as they walked down the street. Elarion screwed up her face and lightly smacked him on the arm.

Honestly. She would have thought that twenty-something-year-old men (boys) would have grown out of teasing.

"How's Aunt Sabra?" she asked, changing the subject.

"My mom's doing fine. Her house needs some repair work because of the weather, but other than that."

"Don't tell her," Elarion said, dropping her voice to an almost-whisper, "but I think my mom's making something for her for Yuletide."

Assuming they would all make it to Yuletide. Elarion mentally shook those thoughts out of her head and tried to outpace them by skipping instead of walking.

Eli let out a soft chuckle. "Aunt Talia always makes her something for Yuletide. But she always appreciates it - Whoa, careful!"

Elarion made it three skip-steps before she slipped forward. Eli caught her with an arm around the collarbone and another hand around her bicep.

"Anyway," he continued when his little cousin had righted herself and stuck to just walking this time, "do you know what she's making?"

"No." Elarion shook her head. "I wasn't looking." She didn't often pay attention to what her mom was sewing, unless her mom was teaching her a new technique or sudden curiosity struck.

"I'm sure it'll be great, whatever it is."

"Yeah."

The school house was now right in front of them. Elarion waved goodbye to Eli, who nodded and waved back in turn, and went inside.

School was still going, despite the cold. Today -ironically after the snowstorm last night - the too-early winter (really, it should just be fall) freezing temperatures had let up a little. So, though still cold, not unbearably so.

Elarion sat at her desk, which was close to the middle of the room, and stared at the window. Her eyes traced the designs the frost made.

They looked like runes, Elarion thought. A flower, for a spell to grow daises. Then a long swirl, maybe for a spell that could draw sunlight down and channel it into the earth below, just that particular spot of dirt. And then that one could be -

"Elarion!"

Elarion snapped to attention and turned around to face the chalkboard. And the teacher that was giving her a knowing look.

"Pay attention, please. What is to the east of Mid Spring Valley?"

That what the valley their village was in. How ironic.

"Umm...," she thought for moment, but was able to give the answer.

Later during the school day, Elarion found herself in the library. Though it wasn't large, there were still plenty of books on various subjects, either bought by teachers themselves or donated by other settlements -usually the larger ones - or by travelling mages.

Elarion had pulled out several books about magic and about agriculture. They lay open on the table in front of her.

Flipping to a page in a book about magic history and lore, she went still, her eyes narrowing before widening again. Then, she sat down from where she was standing over the table, and took the book in her hands, sliding closer to her on the table.

Humans, it read, have often been thought to have been denied magic, and could only use it with the aid of a primal stone. However, while it is true that humans are born without an inherent connect to one of the primal sources, they are not barred from one.

A human may create their own connection to a primal source. Doing so requires a deep understanding of the primal source: where it is in relation to themselves and the world, and how it affects the world as a whole and those within the world. When this understanding is reached, a human will be connected to the primal source and will have their own inner arcanum from that source. As such, they will then be able to use primal magic without a primal stone.

Surprisingly, this created connection makes humans even more powerful than most elven mages, even archmages, as these humans would be able to use the primal source without it immediately present. A human sun mage would be able to conjure up a flame at night. A human sky mage may use a wind spell without there even being a slight breeze.

While not an incredibly common practice, many human mages have done so in centuries past. However, it has long been thought among elves and dragons that humans were not worthy of inner magic, and humans making themselves magical beings was turning against their roots. This practice angered the dragons. To avoid and turn away their wrath, human mages stopped teaching this way of using primal magic, and so the knowledge of this option was lost among the humans, as well as the elves.

Elarion stared. Was this true? Could she really...?

She turned to the cover and the front pages to see who the author was.

There was no name.

She blinked and cocked her head. Huh. That was weird.

If it were true, though, why would the dragons get so upset with humans connecting to magic? Why would they be considered unworthy, just because they weren't born with it? It would just mean that they were growing. Besides, it wasn't any of the dragons' business, anyway.

That part just confused Elarion.

The call came for another class to start, and Elarion closed the book.

They made it to Yuletide, and then Elarion's fourteenth birthday came and went. But with ration sizes getting smaller, celebrations were meager. School closed for the holidays, but then stayed closed.

Elarion went to bed hungry every night, and the winter had gotten colder, so much so that no one could stand outside for longer than a few minutes.

Aunt Sabra was not doing well. Even with the new winter cloak Mom had made her, she'd always been sensitive to the cold, and the lack of food certainly wasn't helping.

Their valley was called Mid Spring Valley for a reason. Spring usually came much earlier to this valley, by whatever reason of geography or magic.

But when that time was approaching, the ground was still covered in ice, the snow and sleet still fell, clouds blacked the sun, and the cold had not relented the slightest degree.

Aunt Sabra had gotten worse. Eli stayed by her bedside day and night, but there was little he, or anyone, could do, with no herbs left for medicine.

Many others were sick, including several of her classmates. Her mom had started to cough, too, though she insisted she was fine and Elarion had nothing to worry about.

Then the news came that their stores wouldn't last more than a week.

When she heard, she felt a hot flash of panic, and then tears pricked at her eyes.

No. This couldn't happen.

But then Elarion's mind went back to the book she'd read at the school library. It had said that humans could make their own connections to a primal source.

If she could connect to the sun...what did the book call it? Arcanum? If she could connect to the sun arcanum, if she could do sun magic, then she would be able to warm the ground, grow enough food to keep them all alive and healthy through the rest of this long winter, and then some.

But she'd also read that as a human, connecting to a primal source would anger the dragons. Would bring down their wrath.

Dragons were already not kind to humans.

But Elarion had to take that chance. She would pull at her "roots," as the book called them, to save her village, to save her aunt and her mom and her friends, from this winter.

That night, Elarion lay in bed beside her mother, her growling stomach long since quiet, giving up it's crying. The fire crackled in the fireplace, but Her mom was asleep. Elarion could hear her soft breathing, interrupted by the occasional wheeze and cough.

Okay. The book said she had to understand the primal sources relation and how it affected the world and all that was in it.

Elarion closed her eyes.

The sun is above the clouds, she thought. And it warms the earth. It makes the summer hot, and it rises and sets everyday. It lights up the day, and...

Elarion drifted off to sleep.

She woke in a grassy field. The sun shone overhead. The weather was warm, and the breeze was cool. Reveling in warmth and the breeze for a moment, so different from the icy winter, she looked up ahead to see the mountain range, just like the view from her village.

She looked to the side, down where the grass was being swayed by the breeze. A patch of grass was lit brightly in wide, yellow sunbeam. Then, before her eyes, green stems, different from the grass around them, shot upward.

First, they spouted leaves, then bulbs appeared on their tops. The bulbs opened and bloomed into petals, revealing flowers of pink and yellow and purple.

"Beautiful...," Elarion breathed, voice a whisper on the breeze.

Then the sunbeam widened and spread along the grassy field, and everywhere it touched, flowers grew and bloomed, until the field was full of colors.

Elarion nodded slowly, understanding what was happening.

The sun shines on the land, on plants and their seeds, and causes the plants, the flowers, to grow. It gives light and brightens the day.

She felt the heat on her skin. Lifting her head back, she closed her eyes and felt the sun on her face, and the light turning orange and red in patterns behind her eyelids.

It warms me, too. Warms my skin, and let's me see.

Maybe she was repeating things, but she had to make sure she understood everything. She had to connect to the sun.

Elarion brought her head back down and opened her eyes. Then she took a step forward.

And stepped into snow. Deep snow. She fell forward onto her hands and knees, the pure white coming up to her elbows and making a soft rustling sound and it shifted.

She was wearing her winter cloak now, she noticed. What had she been wearing before?

Not that it mattered.

The sky was deep blue with night, but clear, the numerous stars glittering brightly. Elarion could see her breath.

Another rustling sound came from beside her. A small, white, fluffy rabbit popped up out of the snow.

Awwww! So cute!

The bunny twitched it's nose at her, before it hopped down into the snow. It popped back up, and where the rabbit had dived in, there was a round hole in the snow. Elarion looked in hole. In the circle of white, was green. Blades of green grass was growing beneath the snow. Even when the sun wasn't shining on it.

Elarion reached her hand in and touched the grass, touched the ground it was growing from. It was chilled, but it was…it was warm. She could sense a warmth from underneath the soil. A warmth that was always there, no matter the coldness around it. Allowing the grass to grow.

The sun warmed the ground, Elarion thought. Even if this place did not get much sunlight from above - something about the planet's tilt in certain regions? She knew she'd studied that at one point – the warmth spread into the earth from other places where the heat reached it most, until it touched everywhere, even here, in this wintery place. The earth soaked up the sun's warmth, and held its heat, and would hold its heat inside it, store it.

Elarion breathed, and the cold air filled her lungs. But it wasn't completely cold, she knew. Everything had a freezing point. The air stayed in a state so she could breathe it; even though it felt cold, the sun's warmth filled the air, allowing her to breathe.

She closed her eyes, and pressed her hand more firmly to the grass and ground beneath her palm, the warmth emanating from the ground and heating her skin. A rumbling, like the earth was growling, came from deep underneath where she was sitting on her knees. Her mind's eye filled with images of lava, of fire, flowing in rivers beneath the earth, within the earth, bright with red and orange glowing light. Just like the sun. The sun powered this, continued this. It powered everything the earth, and everything on it. Without the sun, the inside of the planet would freeze, the fire and light and glow extinguished, all the lava turned to hard rock.

And whenever she felt warmth against her skin, the thought came to her, spreading through her entire body, the warmth of the sun was inside her, too. Every time she held her hands close to a flame, every time she breathed in non-frozen, non-liquid air. And every time she could see anything, whether by sunlight or a flame, the light of the sun was inside her, entering into her eyes, bringing to her the shapes and colors of the world. Colors, too, all the colors, were made and brought to sight by the light of the sun: the green of the trees, the yellow, pink, violet, blue of flowers, the oranges and reds of the sunset, the blue of her winter cloak. All of it, everything, all the beauty she could see, the images her mind processed and stayed in her memories. The light stayed with her.

Elarion opened her eyes and sat back. She leaned on her hands. The sun was setting in front of her, sinking below the horizon in a painter's palette of pinks and oranges. And then it was gone. Taking it's light with it.

No, it was not gone. Elarion shook her head. The sun did not disappear; it never disappeared. Even when it was night here, it was day elsewhere. It was always daytime somewhere on the earth; somewhere, the earth was receiving it's light and it's brightness. When the sun was setting on her horizon, it was rising on someone else's, on another part of the planet.

It was always day, even at night.

The light shifted. Elarion looked up. Clouds filled the sky now. The sun was overhead, shining faintly in the winter, gray sky. But the clouds crowded and moved over it lazily, blocking out the sun's light.

Then, the clouds parted slightly, and the sun peaked through, showing itself briefly as the clouds slowly travelled across it. And then it was covered again.

And Elarion understood.

Even when the sky was gray and cloudy, the sun was still there, above the clouds. It was always there. No matter where it was or how it was there, it was always, always there.

Heat, warmth, light, color, shapes. Liquid, air. Growth. Fire. Life.

Outside of her. Within her. Within everything and everyone.

A part of her, of everything and everyone. It was all the things.

"Elarion. Elarion. You need to wake up, sweetheart." Her mother's voice reached her ears through her sleepy haze. She blinked her eyes open to her mom's face looking down at her with concerned eyes.

"Hmm…? Mom?"

"Are you alright, sweetheart? You were sweating in your sleep." Her mom's hand brushed over Elarion's sweaty forehead, gently pushing back stray curls. Oh, she was sweating. Ehy was she sweating? Her skin was damp, the material of her thick, winter night down sticking to her back. The cold air hit the droplets if moisture, and Elarion shivered.

"I'm…I'm okay," she answered.

Then she gasped. Her dream came crashing back to her.

She sat up quickly. "Mom, I've got it! I think I got it!"

"Got what?"

"I connected to the sun arcanum! I understand it! I have to try - ! I need to try something! I'm gonna try something." Elarion threw off the blankets and damp sheets and leapt out of bed.

"Try what? Elarion, get back in bed. It's the middle of the night!" It was clear Elarion was talking to fast for her mom to understand her. But she didn't pause to explain.

"Just come, come with me!" Elarion pulled on her winter cloak over her night gown and shoved on her boots. Then she ran outside.

The ground was still frozen with ice, and she fought not to slip as she ran, to keep her feet sure. Night still covered the sky, but it would be dawn soon, in an hour or two. Not enough time to wait for it. She had to try now. She to see if her dream meant want she thought it was, to see if what the book said was true.

She ran out of the village, to the frozen fields. Elarion fell to her knees on the edge of one of them. The dead plants were iced over, the ground hard. The sun was still beyond the horizon, and thick, night-darkened clouds still choked out many of the stars.

But she knew where the sun was. It was just over the horizon. It was in the heat beneath the earth where she sat, beneath the fields. In the warmth of her body, and in the cool of the air as she breathed. In the dim light her eyes had to adjust to in order to make out the vague shapes she knew would be bursting with color come the sunlight.

Elarion pressed her hands to the frozen, barren ground, to where the dead roots lay. Dug her bare fingers into the icy soil the best she could.

Then she closed her eyes and felt.

Brought a hand to the air. Drew a rune with her fingertip. Then another.

"Calidum soli. Crescere ager adtulit."

The ice beneath her fingernails cracked.

Elarion gasped sharply, and her eyes flew open.

The soil warmed and became soft, and moist with the melting ice and snow. Her fingers sank into the soil.

Then, stems and stalks shot up from the ground. Green bloomed and grew tall, the crops becoming full and ripe before her eyes. Her intentions must have done something, carried more weight than she'd thought, because all around her, the snow began to melt, and very field - not just the one she kneeled by, her hands in the warm, soft dirt – began to yield its crop. A bloom of color rippling up like a wave across the valley around her, visible in the light of her magic.

Her magic. Elarion's magic.

Elarion stayed there kneeling, practically rooted to the spot, wide-eyed, her mouth spreading into a huge, beaming smile.

It worked. She had done it.

"I DID IT! WOOOO!" Elarion leaped up to her feet and pumped her arms into the air. She jumped up and down, even doing a little happy dance.

"I DID IT! IT WORKED!"

She sniffed, and her eyes were wet. Elarion brought the back of her hands, the part that didn't have soil on them, to her face. Was she crying?

She was. They were happy tears, joyful tears. Relieved tears.

She had done it. She had connected to sun magic, and she had saved her village.

Her family and friends, everyone she cared about, would live. They would have enough food. And from now on, they always would. For as long as she lived.

The villagers came out to see what the commotion was, and couldn't believe her eyes. When Elarion told them and her mom what had happened, they were equal parts shocked and overjoyed. Well, maybe more overjoyed.

Aunt Sabra got completely better, as well as everyone else, and her mom's coughing and wheezing stopped before it could ever progress into anything worse.

Yuletide was celebrated again, now that they could actually have a proper feast. And feast they did. Elarion was able to help the other villages and towns in the area, too, and she both helped them with their crops and helped her village share their own bounty.

Word spread about this miracle and who caused it, and whenever Elarion wasn't busy with school and chores and errands, she would often be practicing sun magic, giddy and excited to do all she could with it.

Little did she know, there were those watching her. Some with less than good intentions, and some with their eyes to the stars.

Author's note:

Thanks for reading! Questions and comments are always welcome!