Once upon a time lived a beautiful and smart princess called Tess,
Who had what most from the outside would describe as a fulfilling life.
She seemed to have everything she ever wanted,
And all the time in the world to explore the activities that made her happy.
But some days more than others,
She felt something was off or missing.
She thought to go talk to the wizard of the castle,
But it would have been even more difficult to explain to him what that feeling was.
Some days it was just some unjustified sadness,
Others maybe emptiness,
And the worst days something close to loneliness.
At the beginning,
She just dismissed those feelings without giving them too much attention.
She kept telling herself that of all possible lives she could have had,
This one was certainly not the worst.
As a matter of fact,
She could think of many,
Many worse ones,
Concluding,
Really,
That this one was actually of the absolute best she could imagine.
Therefore,
She was just expecting those feelings to end in nothingness,
Since they just did not belong in her heart.
But the more she would dismiss them,
The more they would come back.
And come back even stronger.
Even worse,
Every time she was lingering in those sad thoughts,
The sunlight of her days seemed dimmed,
The colors less vibrant,
And all the activities she enjoyed the most were becoming less fun and enjoyable every day.
One day she was walking in the forest near the palace with Pekki,
Enjoying the light breeze.
The sun was occasionally touching her skin when the big trees were generously moving their leafy crowns to let some light pass down to the ground.
She was singing as usual,
And her joyful voice was catching the attention of some sweet animals,
Looking at her from the distance.
As if they were hypnotized by her light and balanced dancing movements.
She seemed happy from the outside,
But the bunny had the feeling she was not as carefree as she used to be.
As if it anticipated her thoughts,
Tess suddenly stopped dancing and singing and sat on a cold rock,
Looking at the ground,
Where soon some of her tears met the soil close to her feet.
Aki looked at her,
And as much as he was always able to understand how she felt,
He could not possibly find the cause of her sorrow.
He decided to give her space,
But on the way back to her apartment in the palace,
He grabbed her by the dress with his teeth and pulled her in the direction of the wizard lab.
She first opposed to it,
Pulling away,
But then she saw Pecky pointing at her reflection on a window close by.
Her bloodshot eyes convinced her that it was time to find some answers.
The wizard lab was always a weird place to visit.
Even a trained hunter-eye would struggle making sense of how anything could get done in that intricate labyrinth of tables,
Potions,
Magic books,
Alembics,
Pots,
Plants,
And any sort of bizarre,
In color and shape,
Object.
But that's just how creative minds work sometimes.
They move their attention from a problem to another until they solve it without ever going back to the prior step in the process until getting to the very solution.
And this could take minutes or months or years.
So that each corner of that lab was a time capsule of what the wizard had been working on since his last experiment.
As if his knowledge was scattered around it,
Together with the thrill,
Frustration,
Curiosity,
Anger,
And finally fulfillment that characterize every step of a worthwhile magic quest.
When the princess and the bunny entered his playground,
They remembered from their last visit how locating him was not an easy task.
They started to carefully wriggle around,
Piles of books and tools,
With their attention caught by colorful substances bubbling inside ampoules and vials.
The room was quite dark,
Other than an irregular light source coming from one of its further corners.
Following it,
They found him.
He was dangerously balancing on one foot on a tall structure made of a table,
Chairs and books arranged in a sort of uncentred pyramid.
It was likely quickly improvised to get him closer to a semi-spherical object that was fluctuating,
Suspended mid-air,
Between the two lighted-up wands,
Which he was carefully maneuvering in an effort to keep it still,
Despite its tendency to move randomly in all directions.
Every time the wands got closer to the object,
They would be repelled by it,
While their light briefly intensified.
The two unexpected guests stopped before entering his field of view.
Worried to interfere with whatever he was trying to do,
And not less scared that they would all get injured in the process,
Had they startled him.
A few minutes later,
They realized this was not going to be a short wait.
Looking at each other,
They quietly agreed to slowly move back in the direction they came from and wait in a safer place for him to be done.
On their way,
The princess's distinctive curiosity drove her to slow down and carefully examine the uncommon items on the tables and shelves that made up the labyrinth they were in.
She was fascinated by how entire sections were covered in a thick layer of dust,
Which made the titles of the books unreadable,
And the vials so opaque that their content could have been anything.
She instinctively brushed some of them with the tip of her fingers and the feeling made her immediately retract her hand.
Tess really disliked dust and made a mental note to ask the wizard if he ever needed someone to be sent there to help clean up.
She was sure it never even crossed his mind how easier it would have been to find things around there,
If one was simply able to see them.
As she was thinking of it,
Pecky jumped up on one of the piles of books close to her and seemed to be interested in the vials she just touched.
The dust removed by her fingers let some dim green light come through the glass,
Which seemed to be intensifying,
More and more,
A moment after another.
Pecky jumped closer to the vial,
And its fur removed the dust from a few others close by,
Which also showed bright lights of different colors.
Tess moved her hand in their direction to inspect them.
And as soon as she got close enough,
The light dimmed again,
As if it were a living animal retracting into its hideout.
She instinctively retracted her hand and,
As she did,
The light shined bright again.
She tried again several times and the behavior of the light was the same.
Not only of the green one,
But the blue,
Red and turquoise too.
She then tried to move the hand across them in a waving motion and the light closer to her hand would sequentially dim and come back to life as soon as it was moving away.
The thing that really looked odd to her was that without her hand there,
All the lights were bright,
Even if Pecky was very close to some of them.
And reading her mind,
The bunny moved slowly on the shelf,
Touching each of them briefly,
But no change was noticeable.
This sparked Tess' curiosity,
And she stepped back for a moment,
Trying to understand what that whole shelf was about.
And as she moved back from it,
The lights glowed even more through the dusty glass,
And a book which was lying close by became visible.
The golden characters on the dark background cover read the secret element.
Tess picked up the book and saw its cover had four colored circles positioned on each of the sides of the cover.
She noticed that they matched the colors of the lights.
And it was only then that she noticed the very weird big circle in the middle of them.
There was something inexplicable in how it looked.
It was as if the circle was a hole cut in the book,
Allowing one to see through.
But when she instinctively touched it,
Her finger could not go through.
And yet,
As she moved the book around,
She could see the rest of the room through the cover.
She was about to open the book.
To better understand how that would even be possible,
When,
Moving the book around,
She saw the wizard's face right in front of her.
She almost dropped the book.
What do you think you are doing?
Asked the wizard,
Taking the object from her hands and putting it back safely on the shelf.
And before she could answer,
His gaze started to bounce between her and the jars.
The lights were still dimmer on the side where the princess was standing and brighter on the one away from her.
The princess felt guilty for touching all those objects that were not hers and ended up standing in front of the wizard without saying a word,
Expecting to be scolded.
But the expression she found on the wizard's face was not of anger.
It was of concern.
With his big hands he grabs two of the jars closer to the princess and moved them away from her.
As soon as he did,
The lights inside the jars immediately intensified.
He reversed the movement and they dimmed.
That's when his lips pressed on each other in an expression of deeper concern.
He then picked up the book again,
And standing close to the princess,
He looked at the cover pointing at her,
And the cover revealed to be transparent again.
Then he angled it towards himself and they all could see his reflection in the circle on the cover as if in a mirror.
That's when Tess found again the courage to speak and start explaining why she was there.
But the wizard stopped her by slowly and solemnly raising his hand.
He said he unfortunately already knew why she was there.
He asked if she sometimes felt empty or lonely or if she felt some unjustified sadness.
The bunny looked at her with sad eyes as she lowered her gaze,
Nodding slowly.
I see what happened,
" said the wizard.
You have lost the secret element.
Tess frowned,
Waiting to learn more details.
The wizard went on explaining how everything around us is made up of four elements – fire,
Water,
Air,
And earth.
Elements are combined.
Nature around us is made by them,
Like the fire in the stars,
The water of the oceans,
The air in the wind,
And the earth we stand on.
And all these elements have an equilibrium that you can feel when you look at a clear sunrise,
A warm sunset.
A calm lake.
Or the solid mountains.
But there is a special element that only living things seem to have.
The secret element that makes us and all living things so special.
It's something hard to describe.
We know it's there.
We can feel it.
But we can't quite define it as simply.
And that element,
Too,
Has its own equilibrium.
We know when it's balanced because we feel great,
Full of life,
Happy and enthusiastic about what's next.
And we know it's not when we feel exhausted,
Rattled,
Stressed or sad.
The secret element has its own way to rebalance.
Every night,
As we sleep,
In the quietness of our stillness,
It finds its way to come.
As a soothing fluid,
It grounds and calms us,
Gently softens the edges of our negative thoughts and fills the temporary voids in our souls.
But if the balance is off for too long,
It spreads to the other elements.
And one by one they start depleting their energy.
The fire of our passion dims to a small,
Feeble flame.
The refreshing water starts looking opaque.
The air feels heavy and harsh,
And the soil is too hard or unstable.
Tess was shocked by how well that explanation represented how she felt.
And if on one side she felt scared,
On the other she felt relieved.
Because if the wizard knew about this,
He might also know how to fix it.
So she asked what she could do about it.
The wizard looked at her and solemnly stated that finding balance is a delicate endeavor and the path to it is not easy nor straightforward and not everyone is willing to walk the path.
Some never do.
Others get lost in it.
But a few succeed.
The princess thought for a moment about his words while the bunny looked at her,
Already knowing the answer and just waiting for her to find it and share it.
She thought that she might have had her difficulties and defects,
But that she never gave up on her quest to keep her health and well-being.
And she would certainly not start now,
When she needed it the most.
So she looked back at the wizard,
And with firm and resolute voice proclaimed she was ready.
I am ready to walk the path.
Whatever it takes me.
It's better than where I will end up if I don't do it.
With an almost imperceptible nod,
The wizard opened the book on its central page and turned it so she could see it.
The page was live,
Featuring moving images with bright colors that showcased four distinct scenes,
Each covering one of the book's four corners.
The details were so captivating that she got lost in observing the content of the book,
While the wizard's voice in the background guided her understanding.
The quest ahead of you will bring you to far,
Far lands.
Some that,
After thousands of years,
Were reached only by very few brave adventurers,
Who,
Like you,
Were looking for the secret element.
You can't see it.
It cannot be depicted.
Not in this book.
Nor in any form.
But you can replenish the energy from the other elements to re-establish its balance.
Those four elements you will be able to find in each of these four lands.
They are not only difficult to find and to reach,
But even when you do,
It will not be easy to bring them with you.
As his words were sinking in Tessie's imagination,
Her heart started to race.
Looking at the book and the incredibly dangerous scenes depicted in it,
She realized this adventure could be her last.
But her resolutions did not flinch.
What was the point of living an empty,
Unsatisfactory life?
It was way more worth it to venture far beyond the shores of what is easily in reach,
To fill it with meaning worth of that name.
The wizard continued,
The first element is a tear of passion.
She instinctively looked at the part of the book close to her hand where the scenery of red rock canyons and volcanoes were dominated by every tone of the red color.
And for the first time she realized that she could feel the heat spreading to her hand from that side of the book.
And the more she connected with the visuals,
The more the heat felt stronger and stronger.
She was about to ask how would she know what the tears of passion looked like,
And that is when the image changed,
As if it was following the words of the wizard.
The images moved as if they were a camera along the canyons and fields covered in lava,
And finally zoomed on a very peculiar rock formation in the middle of a lava lake.
There were a lot of small rocks,
So hot that their color was turning from red to bright white due to the light they were emitting.
They were weirdly shaped to be rocks.
They really looked more like drops.
They had to be the tears of passion.
The elements,
As well as this journey,
Are all about balance,
" said the wizard.
So once you have found the hottest element,
You will have to find the coldest next.
He was talking about the clear reflection.
Pecky and the princess fixed their eyes on the blue side of the book,
Opposite from where the fire images were,
As some condensation came out of it.
While the air around that part of the page became freezing cold,
The landscape depicted was dominated by white and blue reflections of mountain peaks covered in snow and frozen lakes right below them.
What apparently seemed a peaceful scenery from the distance,
Revealed to be quite hostile once the picture started to zoom in closer to the glaciers,
With their spiky icy formations,
As sharp as unforgiving blades.
The princess and the bunny were wondering what the clear reflection would look like.
And the answer came right away when the book showed a giant ice waterfall ending in a frozen lake.
Both ice surfaces were constellated by little slices of ice,
So clear that they reflected the image of the waterfall in the lake,
And vice versa,
In a deep endless kaleidoscope.
The wizard allowed them to absorb that image,
Before starting to describe the next element,
The Gale of Confidence.
The most unclear of all elements,
Was covered in uncertainty.
A dusty gorge could be seen on the book with a strong wind blowing in it.
So much so that it was very hard to even distinguish where the floor ended and where the walls of the rocky canyon started.
When the image started to get closer to the bottom of the gorge and progress against the wind,
It progressively became more and more blurry.
And when the two spectators looked at the wizard for reassurance,
Even he explained that he did not know where that wind was coming from.
Because as far as he knew,
Nobody was able to follow it upstream in the gorge to find its source.
If all they had seen so far was not enough,
This convinced them that this adventure was going to be the hardest they ever faced.
While the blur dissolved in a dusty color,
The other side of the image came alive with a rhythmic loud sound of rocks clashing into each other in the water.
The last element was the endless flow of commitment.
The image in the last corner of the book was showing a very large valley in the middle of two tall mountain chains.
A lot of movement was happening inside of it.
Big rocks would fall from the tallest side of the mountains and roll into a river,
Becoming smaller and smaller in the process.
At some point they would become dust,
Which mixed with the water from the river,
Made it become mud.
The flow of mud would continue its path downstream to reach the bottom of the valley,
Where the heat of the sun would quickly dry it and turn it again into solid rocks.
This movement would then push them further,
So that they would slowly be flowing uphill to the opposite side of the mountain's valley.
And once they were high enough,
They would start to spread and eventually fall again into the river,
Starting the cycle again.
Tess imagined that it was impossible to bring back one of those giant rocks.
But once they were powdered and turned into mud,
Maybe it was going to be easier.
But who knew what other perils would that place hide?
With this last image,
The wizard closed the book,
Which stopped the loud rocky sound,
And instantly dropped Tess into her silent decision process.
She was asking herself if she was ready for this.
The answer came from looking at the book cover,
Where she only could see Pecky's reflection,
But not hers.
She had no choice if she wanted to find her lost wholeness and start being herself again.
She encountered the serious look of the wizard and nodded to him.
So,
He turned the book and on the back of it there was what seemed a map that showed the direction towards the fiery place where they could look for the Tears of Passion.
Tess hugged the wizard,
Trying to ignore the concerned look on his face,
And left with the book under her arm,
To get ready for her journey.
Her loyal friend was jumping behind her,
Happy to see her finally take action towards a better future.
Though it came with heavy risks and no guarantees,
It was still better than the passive alternative.
Packing for a journey among volcanoes,
Snowy mountains,
Windy canyons and muddy valleys was not the easiest task.
But Tess was smart and adventurous and so she selected the best clothes from her prior trips and in less than a day she was ready to leave.
Tess was riding on the fastest magic horses in the palace,
While the bunny was secured in a custom-built compartment in the horse saddle.
Even for those horses that made the trees bend with their speed as they passed close to them,
The distance to cover was enormous.
And even when they got to the land of fire,
That territory was vast itself,
So once she entered it,
She had to stop several times to sleep.
Also,
Because the horses could not go as fast as they usually did,
Because of the excessive heat,
Sleeping was not as easy either.
The heat was making it difficult and the air filled with sulfur was harsh on the throat and made the poor Paki sneeze all the time.
Tess missed her cozy bed and the clean air back home at the palace.
But she was doing this for a good reason,
And that belief gave her the strength to continue.
She had to be able to sleep despite all that though.
So she decided to imagine that she was in a cold place and that all she would be desiring would be heat.
She considered the idea that heat and cold are so opposite,
And yet sometimes our body is able to confuse them so easily.
Like when we touch something really really cold,
And our mind tricks us into thinking it's hot instead.
While getting lost in these thoughts,
Pretending to be somewhere else,
The princess finally lost herself into sleep,
Until next morning.
This was going to be a special day.
They finally reached the mountain she had seen in the book.
It was an impressive volcano,
The biggest and tallest they have ever seen.
It was towering all the other ones close by,
Making them look so small at its comparison.
The hike up its harsh black rock walls was not going to be easy.
Tess decided to leave the horses at the bottom.
The risk of injuring them on those steep rocks was too high.
She could never sleep well again,
Knowing they got injured,
Or worse,
Only to help her in her quest.
So she and the bunny started their ascent towards the peak,
Where,
According to the book,
The Tears of Passion could be found in the middle of a lava lake inside the main crater.
They started the ascent at sunset,
Trying to take advantage of the almost unperceivable reduction in temperature.
The hike was even more difficult than expected.
The rock was very hard at the base of the volcano and it emitted so much heat that the feet of the two friends could not rest in place for more than a second or two before getting very uncomfortable.
As they were progressing,
The princess was thinking about the beautiful mountains close to home that she had hiked so many times.
And the bunnies seemed to be lost in the same thoughts,
Thinking of all the natural beauty they were used to,
As opposed to this harsh environment that left no space for any life forms.
The more they got higher and higher,
Closer to the rim of the volcano,
The more difficult it was to proceed.
The heat was almost unbearable,
The air too heavy.
And the hard rocks left placed to dust and ashes that would swallow their feet up to almost the ankles at every step.
All of a sudden,
The rocks and hot air they found at the beginning of their ascent did not seem as bad at all,
Compared to the extreme conditions close to the top.
Despite the difficulties,
They finally managed to cross the rim's wall.
As soon as they did,
They were hit by a gust of hot wind,
As the whole caldera became visible.
The lava lake was even bigger than it ever seemed in the images from the book.
It was not even dawn,
But the light coming out of the incandescent rocks was reflected by the heavy white vapor clouds,
Creating a very unique shade of red light that was permeating everything the eye could see.
As the eyes of the princess and the bunny were getting used to this new incredible sight,
Their look was attracted by the unmistakable sight of the scene in front of them.
As expected,
A big rock in the middle of the lava lake acted as a dangerous nest for the Tears of Passion.
That had to be the hottest place of the whole mountain.
That's probably why those rocks were so special.
The rocky island was fully surrounded by lava.
There was no natural or otherwise built bridge that would allow it to be safely reached without touching the incandescent lava.
This thought did not help the princess,
Who was already exhausted from the heat and the ascent.
But she had to think and do it fast,
Because the temperature up there was not one they could stay exposed to for too long.
Pecky was hoping she would come up with something quickly as well,
Because the air was becoming really unbreathable at this point.
The sight of the bunny suffering gave Tess the spark to action that she needed.
She pointed her eyes in the direction of the island and let her mind capture everything around it that could help her reach it.
She was almost hypnotized by the change in the light that was caused by the lava movement.
The lake was getting colored in shades of brighter and darker red.
But what caught the princess' attention were the patterns of color of the rocks that were slightly higher than the lava.
Some of them were appearing and disappearing under the level of the magma.
While others were always visible,
But their color would change smoothly,
In a continuum between black,
Red,
And bright,
Emitting white,
That change gave her an idea.
If only she could predict the change in temperature of the rocks,
She could jump only on the ones cold enough not to hurt her,
And eventually get to the island with the tears of passion.
This idea motivated her.
She only needed to find the pattern.
This was not an easy task for any normal person,
But Tess was not just any princess.
She was an incredible dancer,
And she was very experienced in memorizing complex sequences of movements for her dancing performances all over the reign.
She was also a very detail-oriented observer,
Who could easily pick up complex patterns of movements just because it came natural to her.
So,
After she found out what the correct pattern of hot and cold for the rocks was,
She figured out a possible way to the island.
Now all she needed was to memorize that path,
So she could follow it and get to the island safely.
After looking at it,
She would close her eyes and imagine herself dancing with an improvanced music rhythm,
Guiding her from rock to rock.
Then she would open her eyes again and continue doing the same with the next part of the path.
Tess was a natural at this,
So in no time she had put together a music composition that was playing in her mind,
So she could dance to it and safely reach the island.
She signaled Paki to stay there and wait for her,
And she approached the first rock.
The bunny was used to seeing her dancing,
But none of her performances had ever been so natural,
Flawless and full of passion as this one.
She seemed to be moved by an inner fire,
And yet her movements were delicate,
As she jumped from rock to rock,
Leaving them at exactly the right moment,
Towards a safer spot.
And so she did,
Over and over,
With smooth natural movements that seemed to defeat gravity and the peril underneath her.
Soon enough,
Her seamless dance moved her like a leaf in the light breeze to reach the island in the middle of the lake.
The island was a little patch of rock that was big enough to not get too hot or submerged by the lava.
A few steps towards its center,
The tears of passion were stocked in an unorganized but quite stable pile of incandescent light.
Their heat was so extreme that it made them glow in fast cycles in which their color would move from deep red to bright white.
As if the rhythm was not hypnotic enough,
Tess found herself staring at the rocks.
Feeling how the color change was matching the sensation of the heat they irradiated.
She could feel it as if it were delicately massaging her skin.
Aki made some noise that broke her out of the trance.
She needed to get the rock quickly.
She took one of the black coulder stones close to her feet and she threw it at the extremity of the Tears of Passion pile to isolate just one of them.
She managed to do so,
But now she had another problem.
How could she transport it?
Her small bag was never going to withstand that temperature and as soon as the rock would be placed in it,
It would just burn through the thin material and end up on the ground again.
She looked at Paki in the distance.
The heat emitted by the lake was distorting the view,
Like the mirage you can see in the desert during a long sunny day.
She needed to find a solution quickly or she would be too tired to dance her way back to shore.
Her mind seemed lost and far away from her.
But in that moment she could find a sparkle of lucidity.
Looking at the black rocks on the ground,
She recalled something she learned during her studies long time ago.
Hexagons.
A perfect shape representing equilibrium by its natural distribution of the forces across its sides,
Angles and corners.
She remembered that bees store wax in circles,
But the heat of their bodies keep the wax soft,
And the natural surface tension shapes them into hexagons.
A figure that wastes no space.
She could achieve that with the rocks,
To make a hexagonal prism.
She thought she remembered it was called a buckyball.
If she could make the external part with those black resistant rocks and place her tear of passion right in the middle,
She could use her bag to contain it and bring it back.
The idea was solid and she executed it in no time.
She grabbed some black rocks and shaped them into what she needed by exposing them to the lava lake that quickly melted parts of it.
Once she had enough rocks,
She carefully arranged them around the one tier of passion she was able to move away from the pile.
And by attentively pushing and pulling the rocks together,
She was able to enclose the tear in the middle of them.
So that its uncontainable heated up surface would touch only the black resistant rocks and nothing else.
Once she had this ball-like structure completed,
She put it in the bag and just as she hoped,
It was able to contain her first element.
With the excitement of her first achievement,
She used her passion for dancing,
Once again,
To jump back from stone to stone,
In a dangerous dance that ended close to where Pecky was anxiously waiting for her.
The bunny was so relieved when she got back safely.
The air around her still shimmered with the echo of the mountain's fire.
Her hands were scratched,
Her hair dusted with the fine ash that danced endlessly in the wind.
Every breath Tess took carried the taste of heat and stone,
And the sky above trembled,
Painted with orange dust that never seemed to settle.
Her steps were steady,
Deliberate,
Tracing their way down the steep,
Uneven ground.
Pecky followed close behind.
His soft fur flecked with ash,
Pausing now and then to look up at her face,
Searching for the thoughts she was too quiet to speak.
She was lost in them.
Still seeing in her mind the image of the fiery lake,
The waves of molten light folding and unfolding like breathing.
It felt almost impossible that she had crossed it,
That her body had known how to move where no path existed.
The memory of those leaps,
The precision,
The effortless rhythm,
They were not born from courage or reason,
But from something else.
Something she had once known well.
It was the same pulse that used to guide her when she danced.
When the world would vanish and she became only movement.
Only feeling.
Somewhere along the years,
That pulse had faded,
Buried under duties,
Expectations and quiet comforts.
Yet up there,
Surrounded by the fury of fire,
It had returned.
The mountain had demanded passion,
And she had found it again.
Not in her mind,
But in her being.
She placed a hand against the small pouch at her side.
Even from there,
The heat of the tear burned through the fabric,
Fierce and alive.
It was almost unbearable to keep it close,
Yet she could not part with it.
The air around it seemed to ripple faintly,
As if the flame trapped within still fought for freedom.
It was strange to think that such power could be held in something so small,
And stranger still to feel its warmth not destroy her but sustain her.
Perhaps it was because the fire it carried was no longer foreign.
It had become hers As they descended,
The air began to feel different.
Not cooler.
Not truly.
But compared to the heat of the summit,
It almost felt so.
The stones beneath her feet darkened.
The light softened.
And the smell of smoke gave way to the faint scent of iron and dust.
The volcano's voice was still there.
A deep,
Distant hum in the earth,
Like a memory of all the flames it had swallowed and released.
She walked quietly,
Letting that sound echo through her thoughts as slow and heavy as the mountain's breath.
When they reached the base,
The horses were waiting where she had left them.
Their sides glistened with sweat.
Their breathing labored.
The heat still pressing against them like an invisible hand.
Yet,
As she approached,
She noticed with quiet surprise that she no longer felt the same suffocating warmth.
It was as if the fire within her had become its own balance.
An inner flame that neither burned nor consumed.
Packy too seemed unbothered by the heat now.
His fur still soft despite the harsh air.
They shared a glance that said more than words could.
Both aware that something within them had changed.
Tess opened the book again,
And its pages slowly shifted until the image of the next element appeared.
The map showed a tall mountain of ice and the path leading to it was very long.
She traced it with her finger and understood right away that reaching it would take many days.
Still,
She knew there was no other way forward.
She closed the book gently and pointed the horses toward the north.
The journey changed little by little as they travelled.
The warm colors of the land behind them slowly disappeared,
Replaced by clearer skies and a dry cold that touched their skin even through their clothes.
Their breath became visible in the air as they got closer and soon snow patches appeared along the path.
When the ground began to freeze,
The horses started slipping,
Unable to hold their steps.
Tess stopped and used a small forge kit she had brought from home to add metal spikes under their shoes.
The sound of the hammer hitting the metal spread in the quiet air around them and then disappeared,
As if the cold absorbed it right away.
They reached a small village at the base of the mountain.
Only a few wooden houses stood there,
Half covered in layers of old snow.
Tess showed the villagers the drawing of the clear reflection from the book,
Hoping for guidance.
But the villagers looked worried when they heard what she was asking.
They explained that many had tried to climb the ice mountain,
But nobody had returned.
The long slope on one side was the only part anyone could climb.
But once they reached the top,
They were too exhausted to go back down the same way,
Because it was too long of a hike.
The other side was too steep to climb down from,
And those who tried to descend it never made it.
Thanking them for their help,
Tess and Pecky moved on.
They decided to rest one last time before getting too close to the mountain.
As soon as they left the village,
The cold became so intense that Tess found herself missing the heat of the volcano land.
The only reason she and Paki were not freezing was because of the tear of passion she carried,
Which gave off enough warmth to melt a small wet bubble in the snow,
Where they could drink and warm their hands.
But the cold was too strong to let it hit a big area and even the air around them felt too thin and sharp to breathe.
Tess lay awake for a long time,
Trying to think of a solution.
The villager's warning repeated itself in her mind.
Everyone climbed the long side and failed on the way back.
She thought of something she had once read.
If you do what everyone else does,
You will have the problems everyone else has.
She kept turning that thought over and over in her mind.
If she climbed a shorter steep side instead,
She would arrive at the top with enough strength and time still with her.
The problem was how to climb something so icy and vertical.
If there were an easy answer,
Everyone else,
Or at least some of them,
Would have already found it.
So she switched her line of thought towards what was different from her and the others.
What was it that she was or had that nobody else was or owned?
She kept thinking until dawn.
Then the idea came.
She had something nobody else had ever carried up this mountain.
The tear of passion.
If she removed just one of the black stones protecting it and carefully pointed the opening toward the thick layer of ice,
The heat could melt her a narrow passage upward.
Not enough to make her fall through,
But enough to carve a small path she could climb.
And by intermittently opening and closing the black stone,
She could use the heat to carve a stair-like path.
And once done thinking about it,
She was almost immediately hit by another idea to be able to calm down too.
It was dangerous,
But they had no other choice other than desisting.
So,
In other words,
They had no other choice indeed.
When the first light of the day touched the snow,
They walked toward the mountain,
Ready to begin.
The steep side of the mountain was even more intimidating from up close.
The ice wall rose high above their heads,
Smooth and hard,
Like a giant piece of glass.
Tess held the tear carefully,
Uncovering only a tiny part of it.
The moment the heat touched the surface,
The ice began to melt in a thin line,
And she oriented it to go upward.
Steam rose around her face and drops of water froze again almost instantly,
As they would reach the boundary of the invisible heat bubble surrounding her.
She worked slowly,
Stopping whenever the air grew too heavy to breathe,
Then continuing,
Inch by inch,
Foot by foot.
Aki stayed close behind her,
Ready to alert her if the ice cracked too suddenly.
Bit by bit,
The steep route became climbable,
Every now and then,
The two looked far in the distance,
Realizing how much elevation they had gained.
It did not seem like magic,
In the sense that it was a very tedious,
Exhausting and hard work.
But the idea was magic indeed.
It allowed her to make progress in a new way,
Where everyone else had failed before.
And after hours of careful exhausting work,
They finally reached the top.
The cold silence there was different from any silence they had ever heard.
Everything was white,
Still and reflective.
The hardest part was not the cold,
But the endless reflections.
Every piece of ice showed a different angle of the sky,
The mountains,
Even their own shapes.
It was impossible to know where to look.
It was disorienting.
The more she tried,
The more she felt mentally exhausted and perceived more the warmth from her body being bitten away by the unforgiving lack of heat permeating everything in that place.
She remembered the image in the book,
The frozen waterfall and the lake beneath it,
And knew she needed to find something that matched that picture.
And she had to find it quickly,
Before the lack of energy was getting to her.
So she used the tear again,
Melting the thin and small reflective surfaces around her.
When the weaker ones broke and disappeared,
The space opened,
And after moving around and repeating the same process over and over,
She finally saw it.
The giant ice waterfall stood ahead,
Frozen in place,
As if time had stopped while it was still falling.
The lake below it reflected the waterfall perfectly,
But at a slight angle,
Creating so many layers of reflections that it was impossible to tell which was real and which was just an image.
Like when two mirrors face each other.
Tasks move toward it carefully.
The cold grew stronger with every step,
Biting at her hands and face.
She got close enough to see that the waterfall was filled with countless small crystals,
Each one reflecting everything around it.
She spotted one that seemed the clearest of all,
But it was trapped deep inside a block of ice.
She used the tear again,
Melting the ice slowly,
Doing her best to make sure she was not damaging the small crystal.
When it finally came loose,
It felt light in her hand.
Cold as a piece of metal forgotten outside all winter,
But smooth and perfectly clear.
She placed it into another pouch,
To keep it from melting or breaking,
Then covered the tear with the black stone again.
She was sure that if it were not for the tear of passion balancing the temperature with its heat,
She would not have even been able to withstand the cold of the clear reflection in her hand.
To return,
She gathered a patch of hard snow and used the tear to melt only the top layer.
When it froze again,
With the help of the clear reflection she carried,
It turned into a sheet of solid ice,
Strong enough to act as a sled.
She sat on it with Pecky,
And together they pushed themselves down the long slope on the other side of the mountain.
The one that would otherwise have been interminable to hike down.
But this way they were going so much faster.
At first the descent was calm,
But soon enough the speed increased and the perceived wind facing them became stronger and stronger,
And colder and colder.
She was using her body weight to control the speed.
Leaning forward made it faster,
Leaning backwards acted as a brake.
Another skill she had learned in one of the many activities she explored during the years with her prince.
The air was cold enough to sting her face.
Becky was in the back so she could shield him with her body.
And she had to find the right balance between going fast to leave the freezing summit behind and slowing down so the wind would not freeze them even more.
For a moment she thought about how much she had wished for cold when she was in the Fireland,
And how now she missed the warmth she had escaped back then.
It was clear to her that neither extreme was what she really wanted.
The sled kept sliding until the mountain became smaller behind them.
When they finally reached the bottom,
The wind calmed down Her cheeks were red and itchy.
Tess placed her hand on the pouch with the tear of passion and then on the pouch with the clear reflection.
Holding both of them,
The heat and the cold,
She started to understand a little more about what finding balance could mean for her.
It's a delicate endeavor where little movements make a big difference.
And big emotional swings will result in overcompensation.
The land of wind appeared flat from every angle.
From a distance,
It looked as if someone had taken all the mountains,
Trees,
Rocks and anything else that could break the horizon and simply removed them.
Tess and Pecky kept riding forward,
But the more they advanced,
The less they felt they were getting anywhere.
Without any reference points to guide them,
It was impossible to understand if they were moving in a straight line,
Or if,
Without noticing,
They had already started going in circles.
The strong wind might be silently steering them off their path.
After a while,
It became clear they were in fact looping around the same invisible spots,
And Tess felt a strange nostalgia for the mountain of ice.
At least the mountain had been there,
Scary but visible and unmistakable.
You always knew if you were going toward it or away from it.
Here,
Instead,
Everything looked exactly the same,
No matter where she looked.
The only thing that convinced her they were not in the wrong place was the very thing that was annoying them the most.
The wind,
It was always blowing against them,
Gently at first,
Then more strongly,
As if insisting they were choosing the wrong direction.
The more she tried to steer away from it,
The more the wind pushed back.
Even the horses were becoming exhausted.
Their steps grew shorter and heavier.
The flat ground offering no shelter,
No shade,
Not even a single change in texture to break the monotony.
At some point,
Tess realized they were simply fighting against something far stronger than themselves,
Permeating every spot of that land.
So she made the horses stop,
Let them breathe,
And decided it was better to go with the flow of the wind for a while.
At least,
That would give them some time to rest.
The moment she stopped resisting and let the wind take them,
Things began to change.
They moved forward without effort,
And soon the ground seemed to dip slightly.
At first Tess thought it was a trick of the light,
But as they kept riding,
The deep grew deeper.
What she had mistaken for a hole in the ground slowly revealed itself to be far larger than she expected.
When they got close enough,
She finally understood why they had not seen it before.
It was a massive canyon,
Carved entirely below the surface level.
From the flat land above it was invisible.
The canyon had several branches on its sides,
But the main corridor in the center was enormous much wider and deeper than anything she had imagined.
And that was exactly where the strongest wind was coming from.
The pressure from the main channel was creating suction currents on the smaller branches.
That's why,
Going against the current,
She never found them before.
Now they had arrived there without knowing it,
Simply because the wind had pulled them toward the depression created by its intensity.
By following the wind,
Instead of trying to fight it or ignore it,
They had ended up exactly where they needed to be.
Now they could see clearly how the whole system worked and in which direction the source was likely located.
But reaching the canyon was only the beginning.
A new problem appeared right away.
Tracing the wind back to its source inside the canyon meant going against an airflow tens of times stronger than the one that had brought them here.
This airflow was far too strong.
Even the horses could not take a single step forward without being pushed back.
They had to stop and rest in one of the smaller branches of the canyon.
Unfortunately,
Resting was just a word.
In the land of wind,
There was not a single place where the air was still.
No walls,
No rocks,
No curve of land could shelter the travelers from it.
Every gust reached them anyway,
Squeezing into the narrow spaces and making even simple thoughts difficult to hold.
Tess tried positioning herself with the wind at her back,
Hoping that not seeing it would help.
But the pressure of it was even more distracting.
Paki stayed in front of her,
Facing her,
Shielded by her body,
But even then,
Some gusts were able to move the tips of his ears,
As if they were the loose ends of a cloth doll being shaken around.
The bunny did not seem terribly bothered though.
Certainly far less than she was.
After watching it for a while,
She finally decided to try something different.
She stood up,
Turned around and simply faced the wind in all its intensity.
Closing her eyes,
She let it move across her face.
She felt how the air pushed her hair back,
How it slid from the center of her forehead to both sides of her neck,
Splitting perfectly in half.
The perfect symmetry felt unexpected,
But also oddly reassuring.
She started to pay attention to that balance.
If the wind was parting itself equally around her body,
Then she must have been centered in some way without realizing it.
That simple thought brought a brief wave of calm to her mind.
It was not the wind that changed.
It was the way she chose to stand in front of it.
And the more she allowed that realization to sink in,
The more her mind helped her.
The heavy noise of the wind in her ears had been there for so long that,
Little by little,
It started to blend into the quiet background,
Melting in silence.
With that new sensation,
Tess finally found the space she needed inside herself to think.
Everything around her was exactly the same,
But she was not the same anymore.
That shift in perspective brought her the idea she had been looking for ever since she arrived there.
She did not know what the gale of confidence looked like,
And that did not trouble her.
She did not need to see the end to know the right direction.
Now that she had found her center again,
She finally felt confident enough to rest.
As long as her body cut the wind into two equal parts,
Letting it flow around her on both sides,
She could even lay down and sleep.
And she did.
When she woke up the next morning,
Despite being partially covered by the sand moved by the wind,
She felt refreshed,
Full of strength and ready to try something new.
She knew she could not change the huge wind current in the main canyon.
But she did not need to.
She only needed to change the small part that touched her and affected her path.
Just enough to allow her to walk forward.
Everything she had acquired or learned so far could help her here.
She did not need to rely only on what she knew before this journey,
Because every step forward had given her something new.
Things were adding up,
Building on each other.
So she thought of her recent conquests,
The two elements.
She began experimenting with the tear of passion and the clear reflection with curiosity to see if any new idea would come up.
Holding them at different distances and heights.
After many attempts,
She understood how they interacted.
The tear of passion,
When kept low,
Heated the air around it,
Creating an upward movement.
The clear reflection,
Held above it,
Cooled the air and brought it downward.
When they were perfectly aligned,
The two forces cancelled each other.
But when she moved the tear slightly to one side and the reflection slightly to the other,
The air started to swirl in a circular motion,
Creating a small vortex.
Once she learned this new trick,
That was only the beginning.
She spent a long time adjusting their positions before she found the right balance.
Finally,
She placed the tear of passion close to her ankle and the clear reflection on the opposite wrist,
Holding that arm up,
The vortex formed around her body,
Like a thin protective sphere.
It deflected the strongest gusts of the canyon's wind,
Allowing her to make slow but steady progress against it.
This worked,
But holding this position was not comfortable at all.
Her arm grew tired from staying raised for so long,
And her foot became warm enough to cause discomfort.
But she did not complain.
This idea had come from her,
And that made her proud.
That pride gave her the extra resistance and energy she needed to keep going.
They advanced deep into the canyon by walking,
Since the protective vortex sphere was too small to cover the big horses.
Pecky kept jumping in and out of the shield as they moved,
And every time he did so,
His fur and ears were pushed in different directions,
Depending on the angle of the wind.
His constant bouncing made Tess smile despite the effort she was making making her efforts a little more pleasant.
As they approached the deepest part of the canyon,
The wind grew louder and more rhythmic.
Soon they noticed that the canyon floor was covered by countless small plants.
Each plant had thin leaves that vibrated so fast that the air around them shimmered.
Alone,
Each plant produced only a very small breeze.
But altogether,
Thousands upon thousands vibrating in sync were creating the powerful wind that had shaped the entire land.
Tess bent down and picked one of the plants.
Its leaves vibrated gently in her hand,
Almost too weak to feel.
Then she picked a second one.
The immediate change was surprising.
The intensity resulting from their combined vibration frequency became much stronger right away.
She realized that this was the gale of confidence.
A single plant could fail easily.
But having a second one right behind it,
Ready to catch her if the first one failed,
Changed everything.
Just as she had done,
Each time she changed approach,
To successfully solve every challenge she encountered in the land of wind.
That was the kind of confidence that came from knowing there was always another way.
She placed the two small plants in her pouch,
Taking care to have them face opposite directions,
To avoid their combined strength blowing up the pouch.
Even so,
She was feeling their steady hum vibration out of sync travel through her fingertips.
She finally had her third element.
It was time to move on again.
The land of Earth was not as far as the others.
In fact,
It was almost on the way back home.
After the long journeys through fire,
Ice and wind,
This felt unexpected.
It was also much easier to find.
From far away,
The landscape was already unmistakable.
Weirdly shaped,
Rocky formations were rising from the ground everywhere,
Tall and thin,
Looking like the stalagmites she had once seen inside caves,
Except these were standing under the open sky.
They were scattered across the land in irregular patterns.
Some close together.
Some isolated,
And their shapes alone were enough to recognize that this was the right place.
Even though finding the land was simple,
Understanding it was not.
The place felt monotonous,
Almost repetitive.
The formations created natural walls that formed a maze,
Making it difficult to move in a straight line.
Every time Tess tried to follow a direction,
She was forced into long curving detours.
As she moved closer to the rock formations,
They blocked her view completely,
Making it impossible to know what was behind them or how far the land extended.
On top of that,
The structure of the terrain caused sudden changes in temperature.
Some areas were burning hot under the sun,
Others freezing cold in the shade.
Air currents moved slowly in some corridors and violently in others.
All of this made Tess miss the land of wind.
At least there,
The wind had been the only problem.
Here,
Everything seemed to be working against clarity.
Instead of randomly wondering,
Tess decided to apply what she had learned so far.
She knew by now that acting without direction only wasted time and energy,
And that the effort would have to be made anyway,
Later on.
So she stopped and looked around carefully.
Identifying the tallest rock formation nearby,
She decided to climb it.
From up there,
She thought she might finally be able to understand what she was dealing with.
Climbing the rock was easier said than done.
The side in the shade was cold and windy,
While the side exposed to the sun was harsh and burning.
Going up on one was guaranteeing hypothermia.
On the other dehydration.
So Tess chose to follow a spiraling path around the formation,
Moving quickly so that the heat and the cold could balance each other out in her body,
Before becoming unbearable.
Step after step,
She adjusted her pace,
Switching sides whenever needed.
Eventually,
She reached the top with Pecky in her pouch.
From there,
The view finally opened up.
She was standing on one of the tallest spikes of rock in the land,
At least as far as she could see.
In the distance,
Something caught her attention immediately.
A massive group of formations stood together,
Arranged in a strange but organized shape.
It looked like an upside-down rainbow carved into the land.
On the inside of that arc,
Something was moving.
It was subtle but unmistakable.
The boundary of the mountain was shifting.
It was not clear if it was an optical illusion due to the heat and dust particles moved by the wind.
But the rocks on the first side of the arc seemed to be flowing down and rising on the other.
As she focused on it,
Tess felt something else.
A very faint vibration under her feet.
It was weak,
Barely noticeable,
But it matched exactly the movement she was seeing in the distance.
Packy felt it too and looked up at her.
It was interesting to realize that the vibration had been probably there all along.
But it had only become noticeable now,
Thanks to her site helping tune into it.
That realization was important.
Not only was the vibration real,
But it could guide them.
The closer they got,
The stronger it would become.
And now they knew how to recognize it.
Before climbing down,
Tess remembered what she had learned in the Land of Wind about always having an alternative plan.
So instead of descending right away,
She took a moment to draw a mental map of the path ahead.
She fixed landmarks in her mind and traced the direction she needed to follow.
She knew that once she was back down,
The perspective would change and everything would look different.
When she felt confident enough,
She started the descent.
Interestingly,
As soon as she reached the ground,
The vibration almost disappeared.
Being on top of the formation had amplified it,
Much like how wind or tremors are felt more strongly at the top of tall structures.
Still,
She was not worried.
She had prepared for this.
She felt proud.
Following the mental map she had created,
They moved on.
For the first time,
Tess paused to consider how much this journey had changed her way of thinking.
This was no longer just about overcoming isolated challenges.
It was about who she was becoming in the process.
But there was no time to celebrate.
Darkness was coming and the next element had to be found.
They jumped onto the horses and followed the memorized path.
After a while,
Paki started rhythmically tapping her with his paw.
Tess stopped,
Confused at first.
Then she felt it too.
The vibration was strong now.
When the horses stood still,
It became clear,
And together with it came the sound of rolling rocks echoing across the land.
Combining the vibration,
The sound,
And her memorized direction,
The princess knew exactly where to go.
She urged the horses forward at full speed.
When they crossed a narrow pass between steep formations,
The land opened up below them,
Revealing the inverted Rainbow Valley from up close.
It was even more impressive than she expected.
The continuous movement shaped the entire structure,
But it took a little more time to understand what was happening.
On the side exposed to the sun,
Large rocks were constantly breaking loose and slowly sliding down into the valley.
As they collided with the ground and with each other,
They shattered into smaller and smaller pieces.
By the time they reached the center of the ark,
Most of them were already reduced to little stones or powder.
That was where something unusual happened.
On the shaded side of the valley,
A semi-submerged river mixed its water with the broken sediments.
The pressure of the water pushed the resulting muddy flow uphill,
Along the opposite side of the arc.
When the mud reached the top,
It spilled over,
Dried under the sun and wind,
Turned into solid rock again.
And rolled back down,
Eventually climbing the first side of the arc once more.
It was an endless cycle.
A delicate and complex system with its own equilibrium.
The endless flow of commitment was the perfect name for it.
Nothing ever stopped.
Nothing ever rested.
The rocks rolled.
Broke,
Flowed.
Dried and rolled again,
Driven by the sun,
The water,
The wind,
And something deeper that felt like an unstoppable will to continue relentlessly.
Tess started thinking about when and how to collect the element.
Every option seemed dangerous.
The landslide side was unstable.
The muddy flow risked trapping anything that entered it.
Waiting for the rocks to reform carried the same risks as the landslide.
None of the paths felt right.
Remembering what she had learned so far,
Tess chose to sit down and think instead of acting on impulse.
She watched the cycle for a long time.
The more she observed it,
The more perspectives she tried.
She thought about the materials,
The colors,
The sounds,
The textures,
The speed.
The weight,
And the direction of the movement.
Time passed without her noticing.
The place itself seemed to encourage focus.
Pecky watched her quietly,
Impressed by how deeply she was immersed in the problem.
Eventually,
Something suddenly shifted.
A thought told her to go back to the basics.
She looked at the forces at play.
The pressure of the fall the water on the cold side,
The heat and wind drying the mud.
And suddenly it felt obvious.
She already had all of that with her.
The elements she had already collected so far during her adventure were enough At the same time,
Paki had the same realization.
They were standing far from the valley.
But what if the soil around them was made of the same material?
Tess looked down and picked up a few rocks.
They felt lighter than expected.
She scratched them and saw them quickly turn into powder.
Taking out the clear reflection,
She let cold water condense on its surface and mixed it with the powder,
Creating a muddy fluid.
Then she let the fluid flow from her hand to the ground,
While exposing it to the tear of passion and the gale of confidence.
Before it hit the ground,
The fluid turned into stone pieces.
They both laughed,
Realizing how close they had been to putting themselves in danger,
When everything they needed had been right there at their feet.
All discovered by quiet and still reflection.
Tess now had it.
She had created the endless flow of commitment.
Overcome with joy,
She started jumping and dancing in circles with Pecky.
The long journey was finally complete.
She had gathered all four elements.
She had made it.
She felt so happy.
The adventure,
The risks of the last few weeks were paying back.
All of a sudden,
Everything seemed to be coming together again,
Towards the solution she had been yearning for this whole time.
Haki's ears did not last up in a joyful position for long though.
As they were celebrating,
The bunny noticed the element book's cover,
Peeking from one of the horse's sacks,
Was reflecting its image as usual,
But still not the one of the princess.
Tess intercepted his look and checked the book.
A void opened in her stomach.
She thought it was over.
She had done all she was supposed to,
To recover the four elements.
She risked her life.
She learned so much in the intent.
And yet,
Was it all this for nothing?
Thinking back at the wizard's words,
She realized what he said about the secret element.
It was never clear how it would be replenished.
It only said it needed at least the other four elements to be in equilibrium.
But he never said that it was enough to replenish it.
She thought it was going to be like so,
Because it was what she heard.
But she heard that simply because it was what she wanted to hear.
Hoping that getting the other four elements was a guarantee of fixing everything.
For a moment she felt something that she had not been feeling ever since she started this adventure.
That shade of sadness.
Emptiness.
And something close to loneliness that spawned this quest.
But this time she could push it back almost instantly.
She felt so surprised by that.
A big sense of empowerment pervaded every cell of her body.
When she realized the shift,
The void was still trying to claim her soul,
But she was not helpless anymore.
Darkness came and Tess was exhausted.
They stopped to sleep for the night and left the decision of where to go next for the next day.
As she laid down to fall asleep,
She found herself in that soft place between consciousness and dreams.
That interreality that lets our mind loose enough to come up with its own wild thoughts.
And yet our consciousness still grab details of them and interpret them somehow into a dreamy storytelling.
Tess felt the heat of the dancing on the rocks of the volcano,
With the tears of passion.
This time,
She felt the heat was not coming from the lava lake,
Though.
It came from her heart,
Filled with her passion for dancing.
It was not hurtful,
It was cozy and tender.
The light dream transitioned into the cold silence,
Close to the waterfall with the clear reflection.
That silence was not coming from the environment shielding noises anymore.
It was her mind filtering out all the unwanted ones.
And what felt like void silence before was now a sensation of creating space for herself to expand her mind and thoughts in all directions of freedom she would ever need.
A gentle movement of her hair,
Making it brush her face,
Brought her to the harsh wind in the corridor,
Leading to the gale of confidence.
But it did not feel that harsh anymore.
Actually,
Its friction felt now like a powerful force,
Exfoliating all weakness of her body,
As she stood facing the wind deliberately.
And as the noise in her ears was reminding her of the rocks rolling down the mountain of the endless flow of commitment,
Her mind recalled the recent adventure of the day.
And she realized how the boredom coming from the tireless observation of the valley ended up in a safe solution once she committed to finding it no matter what.
As this last thought came to her mind,
It felt like the earth below her just disappeared.
She felt heavy and weightless at the same time.
She felt new.
Renewed.
And when she instinctively opened her eyes,
She saw a glowy figure in the forest nearby.
Tess did not know if she was still dreaming.
She fixed her eyes on the presence close to her and soon recognized her as a faint glowy image of herself.
That must have been a dream then.
The princess rose on her feet and stepped into the direction of the presence.
And as she did,
She noticed it moved away from her by about a step.
She looked around herself,
Searching for an explanation.
Pacquiao was sleeping.
The only other source of light was coming from the book cover close to her.
When she looked at the cover,
She saw that the glowy presence in the forest was being reflected by the book,
Just like Pecky was.
She looked at the glowy projection in the forest and back at the book.
She knew what to do now.
But her heart felt the heaviest it had ever been.
She stood there in the darkness for a moment that felt more than a lifetime.
And then she made her choice.
She softly kissed Packy's head,
Being careful not to wake him up.
His ears resting on his eyes made her job easier.
With tears in her eyes,
She looked at the projection of herself that was looking back at her from a distance,
Glowing faintly in the opening in the forest.
As if she was giving her the time to say goodbye,
But sustaining eye contact,
So she did not forget the sense of urgency.
She looked at Pecky one last time,
In this very moment that would define her future forever.
Then she silently collected her things,
The book,
And slowly walked towards the projection,
Which started to fade away and reappeared further down the forest,
To signal her the path.
Tess did not know where that path was leading.
Or if it was the right one.
All she knew was that,
As hurtful as it was,
She needed to follow it.
To see if she could find her lost soul.
The secret element.
She took one last peek at the Book of the Elements cover and her reflection was still not there.
The projection still was.
And behind her back,
In the distance,
Pecky's loyal silhouette was there.
It was there as it was always been by her side for all those years.
She could not see it in detail due to the darkness and her moving away,
But tears were flowing from under his furry ears.
When she was far enough,
One ear raised quietly.
Sadly.
And resigned.
Than the other.
Hoping that looking at her with both eyes would help him understand or make sense of what was happening.
But for the first time,
Ever since he had been reading her mind when he met her,
He did not.
That's when her loyal furry friend,
After all the years and adventures lived together,
Could find comfort in only one thought.
This is what loving someone might come down to one day.
Recognizing that their path is theirs.
And theirs only.
And they need to walk it alone to find the secret element and final peace.
And you need to put those needs over your own,
Just to give them a chance to happiness,
Even if it means to give up yours for now.
By losing them forever.
