The ache woke her—a deep, diffuse soreness in her long bones, as if her skeleton was remembering it was meant to be larger.
Astraea lay in bed, mapping the sensations. The discomfort was centered in her femurs and tibias—the major load-bearing bones. Not pain, but the feeling of structural reinforcement. Of expansion.
She rose, moving through her morning routine with heightened bodily awareness. The itch between her shoulder blades had intensified to a persistent heat, as if something was pressing insistently against the skin from within. Her wings, she realized. Not just the anchors, but the first ghostly impressions of the structures themselves, stirring in their four-century slumber.
At CYAP, she participated with mechanical precision while her consciousness remained turned inward. During "Guided Gleaming," she felt a distinct pop in her left knee—a growth plate activating. A tiny, internal event that nonetheless sent a thrill through her ancient nerves.
Movement, she thought. After so much stillness.
After the session, she asked Mrs. Evans if they could stop at the park. "I'd like to swing," she said, which was true. The pendulum motion appealed to her today—the rhythm of back and forth, the physics of potential and kinetic energy.
The park was quiet in the late afternoon light. Astraea sat on a swing, the chains cool and familiar in her hands. She pushed off gently, then began pumping her legs.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
With each forward arc, she felt a little taller. A little longer. It was psychosomatic—the growth was microscopic, cellular—but the sensation was undeniable. The potential was becoming kinetic.
She swung higher, the wind pulling at her hair. For a moment, she let her human-form eyes see as her dragon eyes did: the life-glow of the park. The green pulse of grass, the amber shimmer of insects, the bright, fleeting sparkles of birds. And beneath it all, the deep, slow hum of the ley line—a trickle compared to the rivers of power she remembered, but a trickle nonetheless.
And she saw her own glow. A contained, dense point of silver-blue light, wrapped in layers of camouflage. But at its core, it was beginning to spin, to churn with new energy. A tiny star waking.
She thought of the centuries spent in this park. The oak by the pond that had been a sapling when she first came here—now a gnarled giant scheduled for removal next month. I have outlived an oak while remaining a child.
But not anymore.
When she finally slowed to a stop, her legs felt different. Not longer, but more substantial. As if they remembered they were meant to carry the weight of mountains.
She walked to Mrs. Evans. "Ready to go home."
"Did you have a good swing, honey?"
"A very good swing," Astraea said, and meant it.
At home, she went through the ritual. The 1920s ruler. The wall. The pencil held level.
She made the mark.
Stepped away.
Measured.
The distance between today's mark and the first mark, made the day the gate pulsed, was 0.3 centimeters.
Three millimeters. The width of three sheets of paper. The thickness of a grain of rice.
To human perception: nothing. A measurement error. A change in posture.
To Astraea: a continent rising from the sea.
She stared at the two pencil marks, the small but undeniable gap between them. Four hundred years of stasis, broken. The biological clock, frozen since the age of sail and sword, was ticking once more.
The System erupted in celebratory blue glyphs.
[System notification!]
[Achievement unlocked: 'Growing up so fast!']
[Description: You've grown 0.3 cm! That's measurable progress on your wonderful journey!]
[Reward: +10 to Cuteness stat! 'Big kid' Title unlocked!]
Astraea looked at the notification. Growing up so fast. The System believed she was a human child hitting a growth spurt. It had no framework for understanding this was not growth, but repair. Not maturation, but the resumption of a process interrupted before her kind had discovered continents humans hadn't yet named.
She sat on her bed, the ruler in her hand. This mundane object—this human tool for measuring small distances—had just recorded a miracle. The end of four centuries of stillness.
Four hundred years, she thought. The weight of it settled over her not as a burden, but as a foundation. I have waited through plagues and renaissance. Through wars that reshaped maps and peace that forgot them. I have watched stars born and die.
I can wait a few more weeks for the next millimeter.
The patience was different now. Not the passive waiting of stasis, but the active, watchful patience of a gardener who has finally seen a seed sprout. You do not dig it up to check the roots. You water it. You protect it. You wait.
[Quest updated!]
[Main quest: 'The long wait - Commence thawing']
[Objective 2: Achieve 0.5 cm total height increase]
[Reward: 'On my way!' Title, Memory unlock: 'First flight (Age 12 dragon years)']
First flight. The memory was there, frozen like everything else. Waiting for the mana to thaw it. She could almost feel it—the memory of wind under wings, of lifting from solid ground into infinite sky.
She placed her Awakened ID card on her desk. LUMINOUS CHILD, TIER 0.
She looked at her reflection in the dark window. A small girl's face stared back, but the eyes held the steady, patient light of geological time.
"One millimeter at a time," she whispered to the night. "One sparkle at a time. One cookie at a time."
The great unstucking continued. And for the first time in four hundred years, Astraea went to sleep not just waiting, but anticipating.
Tomorrow: more kindergarten. The day after: more growth.
The thaw has begun. The wait continues.
But now, it is a wait with momentum.