A Shard of Heaven

Airi pulled Nestor, who stood petrified with fright, behind a nearby boulder. Please don’t be a monster, she thought.

A moment later, it hit them: a summery wind that melted the frost right off the walls. It was so strong that, even behind the boulder, several pages of The Geography of the Star's End Plains tore away. As the wind traveled down the way they’d come, the whole passage rang out with a low wail.

Another sound followed the wail, like trees rustling in a storm, and a swarm of butterfly-winged creatures whisked by. Airi saw furry white bodies and diaphanous purple wings unfurled to catch the wind, like bats with butterfly wings.

“What are those?” she shouted over the roar of the wind.

“Sylphets!” Nestor shouted back. “I see them on the plains sometimes!” He took a deep breath, which was difficult in the wind, and said, “They must be going to Star’s End for the summer!”

When the whole swarm had blown by, Airi and Nestor got to their feet. The sight of the sylphets made Nestor even more talkative.

“I always wondered where they came from!”

As they walked on, they came across more sylphets. When they weren’t riding the wind, the little bat-like creatures latched onto the hanging purple flowers, blinking beady eyes at Airi and Nestor. One even landed on Nestor’s head for a rest, much to his delight.

The journey wasn’t all smooth sailing. The periodic winds loosened entrances to higher-up caves, dumping snow onto their heads. And when they were walking through a particularly large cavern, a black winged shape crashed through the ceiling, knocking down icicles. It fell onto the frozen lake in the center of the cavern with a sickening crack.

The creature wasn't moving. Airi glimpsed obsidian scales and leathery wings.

"I... I think it's dead," Nestor said, swallowing.

"What is it?" Airi asked.

“A dragon,” Nestor said. “One time, a dragon ate my mom’s favorite sheep.”

The dragon was smaller than Airi had expected. One of its wings was bent at an odd angle, and when she squinted, she saw something sparkling on it. That familiar blue light... her eyes widened.

“There’s something stuck on its wing,” she told Nestor.

“I’ll bet that’s why it fell out of the sky!” Nestor gasped. “But what is that? An icicle?”

“I... I think it’s a piece of the fallen star.” Airi thought back to the day she’d fallen from the sky. She couldn’t remember if the star had hit anything on its way down. Then again, she’d been busy trying to determine if she would splatter into a meat pancake on impact.

“Can we get it out?”

Airi was about to say no, but then she remembered what the geography book had said about stars. Weren’t they filled with mana?

"Stay here." She slipped the satchel over Nestor's head and began inching cautiously out over the ice. Please don't break. Please don't break.

Up close, she could see the crystal pierced through the dragon's wing. It was vaguely pen-shaped and wickedly sharp. The veins near the injury glowed blue as well, as if dyed by the star shard.

She reached out her hand. As soon as her hand grazed the crystal, the edges of her vision blurred black, and her chest hurt. There was a wrongness about the crystal that repelled her touch, similar to mana fever.

Wrapping her hand in her wool cloak, she tried again. The crystal was embedded firmly, like a tumor. "Nestor! Toss me the bread knife!"

The knife skidded across the ice towards Airi. She sawed into the leathery skin around the crystal, trying not to make the dragon slide around. Its neck was curved like a swan’s and its legs tucked beneath it like a cat’s—built for quick aerial maneuvers, not brute strength. Those claws and teeth looked wickedly sharp, though. Airi kept out of their way.

She looked down at the sliver of blue crystal in her hand. It was so thin that it could have passed for a ballpoint pen, yet it induced a faint headache.

They continued through the wind tunnels. Airi checked in the satchel. They only had half a loaf of bread left. They would have to find another food source soon.

They emerged from the wind tunnel into a cavern almost as big as the one with the frozen lake. This one was filled with lumpy mounds of snow. Airi brushed her hand across one and saw that it was really a stack of stones covered in snow.

She smiled at Nestor. “They look like snowmen, huh?"

“What’s a snowman?”

“You know, like—when you pile up snow to look like a person.” Airi was trying to explain what a snowman was when she saw one of the snowmen move out of the corner of her eye.