The Wellspring sees me studded in blue lights. The lights aren’t actually embedded in me, but hang in strands, a little off my body, running from my head to the ground, a curtain of lights. They bump and rattle as I move.

I climb the hill to the cave of days. The weight of what I carry solidifies around me as I enter the cave, becomes part of the mountain, and stops, trapping me in the seal of its angles. For a heartbeat I am lost, then I sift out of the containment like dust through seams, I drop free.

I leave everything behind and walk away.

I step through into a great wind. Howling and blowing grit. I bend into it. It is impossible to tend to what needs tending while exposed to the force of the wind.

Princess Brainiac takes my hand, guides me behind a rock where it is sheltered and I can breathe again. There is a cave entrance there. I go into the small cave. It’s good there. I can do what I need to do, undisturbed by the gusting wind. I sit. I shell my peas. It is good.

Then, without warning, the rock collapses around me. I am trapped, buried in rubble, my peas scattered. I think for a moment that all is lost.

But all is not lost. Though I cannot move, I can see my right hand in the darkness before me. It emits a blue light. In the pool of my hand’s light I see a single pea. Nourished by the blue light, the pea roots and sprouts, growing swift and certain. The pea stalk twines through the rock and then lifts the rubble up with it as it grows, creating space around me and organizing the stone into new walls of protection, a living shelter.

I had no idea a pea could do all that.

OOO