August 15th, 2023
Schnell Estate, wilderness near Kazan, Russia

A crash of thunder in the distance shook Valentin from his reverie, laying in the open under what had been an empty sky before his nap alongside Starfall Lake. The estate staff knew not to follow when the seeker made his way out on the forested trail leading to where Val and his father had recovered a meteorite one magical night. Reaching back to scratch his unclothed shoulderblade, a stray leaf from his earlier dip in the lake came away in his hand with a crumble. The sun had since dried his ivory skin, but the air was once again thick with the looming summer storm.

Shifting uncomfortably off his wand, Val sat up and scratched the sandy grains from his eyes. The phantasmagorical remnants of his dream still ran hot in his veins, and the rumbling black clouds only served to intensify his sentimental mood. From a nearby rock, the boy picked up the hunk of space iron he’d reclaimed as the only surviving relic from the ashes of his father’s tower last December. A thin slice of it had been sheared off for embedding into an heirloom Firebolt, a fate Valentin chose with the childish concept that the shooting star it came from might fly again that way. Now, the lion’s share of the meteorite passed into his possession and felt heavy in his hands. With his father dead, Valentin’s boyhood seemed officially to have passed along with him. It was, in fact, a symbolic reclamation for Valentin to return to Starfall Lake today, spending the day diving and resurfacing unsupervised as many times as he wanted, before laying across the bare smooth rock of the shore to bask in the wispy cirrus of daydreaming himself to sleep. That he was doing nothing productive was entirely the point, for this was the way for him to do his most important work of all.

With one piece of the meteorite gone, hopefully immortalized in the flights of another, Valentin knew a fragment of his life had gone with it. He couldn’t help feeling that his own life was being whittled away just like it, a comet disintegrating in streams of light along its journey through the solar system. If he could not fulfill the pact of his ancestors in time, forming an infinite cycle, then surely one day he would perish. Looking down at the Lichtenberg figure scars traversing his body in splitting, argent arcs, Valentin recalled the day he’d died and been resurrected by his team mates. What had ever happened to Charles? Did his family ever come to accept him after he revealed his orientation? How was Valentin supposed to do anything for #3, let alone #4, if they were to all split into the different winds of life like lofty seeds? Gifting immortality to them in return for having saved him now seemed impossible since he couldn’t even offer them a shared dinner at this distance, living such independent lives. Considering how Yefim's departure prevented Mikael from getting along in life the way he used to, when the three were supposed to forever remain ringbrothers, the seeker knew he had to find another way to live.

Laying down onto his back with a sigh, Valentin looked into the tall swathes of dark cloud billowing over the perimeter of the lake. Plump droplets began to fall, shocking cold against his warm skin, but Valentin realized he did not feel alone in the rain after all. His dream had explained it to him. Even if the lightning should choose him again today, concluding his life with a third strike, he was happy that at least he’d gotten his heart’s desire for a moment in time. Of course he owed it to the universe and his loved ones and presumably himself to safeguard his health, but a curious sort of peace had been flickering to life in him since the day another began to dispel his pain. Light flashed in the sky, sending a tremulous thrill through Valentin’s bones as his mind wandered back through the events of his dream. Along came the rolling boom of thunder, and in moments everything slickened under the heavenly downpour.