When the light faded, I was on the forest floor.
Not because I fell. Because Jasper's lap was forest floor now, he had sat down without deciding to sit, which was how Jasper when something cost more than expected.
His arms around my wet face. He never cried. He was crying, quietly, with complete composure, which was how he did everything that mattered.
The old oak was still there. Three green shoots now where two were yesterday. The third had come through during the gold explosion, thin, pale, determined. For the first time in two hundred years, silvered bark had green coming from it without permission.
My hands were gold.
Not silver-white that flickered when I healed, not silver that answered Seren's palm. Fully gold. Steady, warm, color grandmother's notes described as when every f
