Above and below, within and without, the resurgence of the Symbias trees in the care of both Aquarii and Vedani burgeoned. In the nurturing process, the rapidly maturing growth realized its innate interconnection. This inevitable, yet still surprising awakening came in an energy rush of interplanetary vitality.
The effort of growth saw fulfillment: the joy of being heard, recognized, and understood; a pride of belonging to each other and to others; and the surge in shared power. There was that sense of the same tree body becoming a new body, and the same world being a new world.
Symbias have a special gift for simultaneity, and they spontaneously celebrated themselves in such a manner. They linked, not just in consciousness, but in their existence – awareness in the trees’ breath. In taking a breath together, something happened all at once throughout a broad universe – as it sometimes does, unpredictably and remarkably.
The Symbias sang, they who could hear each other. Such song had nurtured peoples, bridged planets and stars, and filled space with life. So they were doing, again, as they had before. Life, though never the same, sometimes does the same things – a Symbias kind of humor. Here they are again, with grand delight in pure presence.
It was felt, it was real, in a shared instant with all their relations, individual and dimensional. Change came with the simplicity of growth, touching all that it could reach. Ah, youth! The aetheric Symbias also burst into brilliance in the Vedani aetherscape. The wave effect of this energetic light met the doubled Spheraeonic tympanum field, with phenomenal result.
–
Soleil, Magus gritting her teeth against the forces in conflict, she held Dusk-Arrow with its tooth in Grant Vario’s back as Raev Sturlusson gripped him in embrace. The three still hovered, twisting in midair. In the instantaneous throes of surge after eldritch surge, the inner core of the phronium ingot, pinned between the hearts of enemies, turned molten.
Soleil felt a powerful tug of energetic current fix her and her weapon into the directional asterisk of velocities. Bolts of rainbow white light exploded, crackling and glowing into a static formation around their convergence. A blinding plane expanded, shattered, collapsed, and enfolded in dimensional directionalities. The three of them flickered, everything flickered, and it ended. Soleil and Dusk-Arrow fell to the parquet, alone under the gaze of the Dragon. A drop of blood remained on the sword. The signed scroll lay where it had been placed.
With due reverence, Acamar kept silent while Soleil regained her bearings and collected her wits. ‘E looked at er coils, where someone had just been telling his legendary account. Thereupon lay a scale newly edged with silver. Soleil was bringing herself back to standing, still gripping the hilt. Stabilized, she looked up and through the open windows, at Acamar, and the revelation in the morning sky beyond. Meeting eyes with the Dragon, she began to speak in a voice that came from someplace far away.