The morning felt like a held breath. Servants moved with practiced quiet; guards walked a little closer to the gates; even the children in the lower quarters seemed to tuck their voices into their sleeves. Arav noticed it the way a child notices the hush before thunder—uneasy, electric, impossible to ignore.
He padded into the courtyard, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Aaryan and Sharanya were waiting near the training circle. They exchanged a look that had the soft edge of family and the sharp line of strategy.
"Someone's coming," Sharanya said, as if she could read the weather as well as anyone read a scroll. Her smile contained both welcome and warning.
Arav's stomach pinched. "Is it a scholar? A guard? A trader?"
Aaryan's mouth twitched. "A relative," he said. "Loud. Useful. Trouble."
Before Arav could ask what sort of trouble, the courtyard filled with wind and a presence like a bright color stepping into a gray painting. Meghala arrived as if she had been carrying a sun in her cloak—hair braided with a silver streak that caught the light, boots that never seemed to scuff the stone, and a grin wide enough to start a riot on dull days.
"Cousin!" she called, booming her voice in that theatrical way that had once gotten her chased out of half the assembly halls for offending their decorum. "Aaryan, you monstrous mountain—why did you not tell me you were fathering prodigies now?"
Sharanya laughed before she could stop herself. Aaryan folded his arms in that patient way he used when calming storms he had already learned to weather.
Meghala's eyes slid to Arav, sharp and amused. She crouched without ceremony until she was level with the boy, heat shimmering off her like a ripple.
"Well then," she said, voice all bright knives and silk, "are you the continent's alarm clock or a small bonfire with an identity crisis?"
Arav blinked. "I—uh—I'm Arav."
"That's a fine name," Meghala declared. "Short and loud. Perfect for someone who wakes the sky."
Sharanya reached out to smooth the hair at Arav's temple. "Meghala," she said. "We did not expect you so soon."
Meghala winked. "Expectation is for small folk and formal letters. I'm here because I heard an echo in the wind and couldn't resist. Also because Aaryan's cooking could always use the addition of chaos."
Aaryan's expression softened in spite of himself. Meghala always had that effect—some loud, unavoidable force that pulled the corners of their household tighter without breaking them.
"Show me," Meghala said suddenly, tapping her fingers together as if snapping the moment into a game.
Arav felt his chest tighten in the way it did before he performed a new trick for Isha. He held out his palms and focused. Warmth gathered. The flame rose, steady and obedient. He split it carefully into two small lights that hovered above his hands like twin fireflies caught in glass.
Meghala's eyes shone with something close to hunger. "Hmm," she purred. "Clean ignition. Division at Rank Two—impressive. Too impressive."
Arav flushed. "Is that bad?"
"No, little ember," Meghala said. "It's brilliant. Dangerous, but brilliant."
Aaryan stepped forward, jaw drawn. "He's not yours to critique."
Meghala bowed a mock-serious bow. "I critique only what I might steal. Consider this preliminary admiration."
Sharanya and Aaryan exchanged a look—equal parts relief and worry. Meghala's praise carried heat; it also carried the knowledge that whatever she took an interest in, she would shepherd fiercely and noisily.
She circled Arav once, watching the two flames as if reading their temperaments. "This isn't lightning," she said finally, voice lower. "Not thunder. It's fire—Ashvathar fire—pushed so fast it forgets itself and behaves like a storm. We have a name for that branch. Stormflame. A rare twist in our line."
Arav frowned. "So you're… fire? But you look like lightning."
Meghala laughed, a sound that felt like wind through a dry field. "I look like whatever I like. But listen—this is important. Blood remembers. The fire is still fire. It just learned to run. You, little ember, have a clean hand. That is the dangerous kind that grows without stumbling."
Arav's face went hot in a different way, the proud, foolish hot of a child who had been told he might be more than he imagined.
Meghala straightened and clapped once, hard enough that the sound made the training dummies shiver. "Good. I will stay. I will be loud. I will meddle. I will probably make your father groan. But I will teach you things ordinary lessons don't fit."
Aaryan's mouth twitched into something almost like a smile. "You will not be reckless around him."
Meghala raised a single eyebrow. "I will be reckless all the time. I reserve secrecy for when it gets useful."
Isha, who had been incomprehensibly invisible until that moment, leapt into the circle and presented Meghala with a soggy frog under the pretense of "Aunty gift."
Meghala's face lit up with a dramatized gasp. "A frog! For me? My heart is officially stolen." She scooped the creature up gently and pretended to examine it like a collector of rarities. "Excellent. Cadence. Charm. This child—" she indicated Arav with a flourish "—deserves teachers of the peculiar."
Arav could not help laughing. The tension wrenched a fraction looser from his shoulders. Meghala was like sunlight—shocking, certainly, but warm.
— POV: Meghala —
She watched the boy more closely once the laughter faded. There was a neatness to his aether-handling that pleased the inside of her head: economy of motion, an instinct for balance, a flame that listened when told. He had that clean core many wasted prodigies lacked—either from arrogance or fear. He would be useful in more ways than one. She pocketed that thought, curious about how it might be prodded into shape.
— end POV —
Back in the courtyard, Meghala turned to Aaryan with business softened by her grin. "Tomorrow, I'll show him a trick. Nothing dangerous—unless he asks for it." She winked at Arav. "And if he doesn't ask, I will demonstrate and he can be embarrassed later."
Sharanya reached for Meghala's hand, squeezing it, and the two women shared that private, complicated trust that runs through family lines. Aaryan folded his arms, but the sternness of his face had the shape of someone who would not have Meghala's optimism extinguished.
"Your fire is a tool," Meghala said, looking at Arav straight on. "Not a curse if you learn to hold it right. Not a toy if you forget its weight. I will teach you balance and mischief in equal measure."
Arav swallowed. He felt as though a window had been opened in a room that had only ever been a box. The world suddenly seemed larger and more interesting than frightening—because someone loud and fearless had chosen to stand beside him and call him by name.
Meghala swept a hand theatrically. "Tomorrow, little ember. Bring your courage and I will bring the thunder of theatrics."
Aaryan snorted. "Don't turn him into a showpiece."
Meghala's grin was blinding. "A showpiece who can survive the show—much better than anyone who crumbles under applause."
Sharanya laughed, and even Aaryan's lips twitched in a reluctant smile.
That evening, as the household cooled and lamps were lit, Arav lay beneath the eaves and thought of all the new things crowding the edges of his days: the careful attention of his parents, the hush of watchers outside the walls, the distant answer of thunder, and now Meghala's bright promise. For the first time since his awakening, the future felt like a place he might step into rather than be shoved through.
He closed his eyes and felt his small flame settle warm and familiar in his chest. The world would watch. The world would wait. He would learn—and perhaps, with loud teachers and quieter practice, he would meet whatever answered his call not as prey but as something to speak with.
Outside, beyond the estate walls, instruments that marked aether and rumor pulsed and ticked. Somewhere else, the thunder child's fingers twitched in a different room, lightning licking at his skin. Two pulses, two names, two roads bending toward a meeting none of them yet understood.
But at the center of the courtyard, a family laughed, a frog ribbited in approval, and a new mentor—The Silver Tempest—stamped her presence into the day with all the subtlety of a crackling bonfire.