She lived in the forest for four days.

The bond formed, like when two things had been moving toward each other for long enough that the actual moment of contact was less a beginning than a recognition.

One evening in the clearing, with the light going out of the sky and Sylph circling at her shoulder height, she felt something shift in her chest, in the channels she had not known she had until they opened, in the quality of the air between herself and the small light that had been her constant company since the first day.

It was not a formal contract. She had not known yet that formal contracts existed.

It was just Sylph and her and the forest and an agreement made without words.

She was still sitting in the clearing when she heard someone else in the forest.

Footsteps. Someone moving .

The figure that came through the tree line was an older woman, dressed plainly, carrying a staff that had seen considerable use. She stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked at Lina and at the dozens of lights moving around her and at Sylph circling at shoulder height.

She looked at all of it for a long moment.

Then she sat down on the other side.

"You did not summon them," she said. "They were already here."

"Yup,,"

"And you can see all of them."

"Yup,."

The woman looked at the lights for another moment.

"How long have you been living out here."

"Four days."

"Before that."

"An orphanage in Calder."

Lina looked at the lights.

"A village called Emara It does not exist anymore." she said quietly.

The woman was quiet for a moment.

"My name is Sera, I am a spirit researcher. I have been studying this forest for eleven years." She looked at Sylph. "In eleven years I have never seen a high-rank wind spirit bond with someone who had not undergone formal cultivation training."

Lina looked at Sylph.

"I did not know it was high-rank, I’m sorry if done something wrong."

"That is apparent, Which makes it considerably more interesting." She looked at Lina across the clearing. "I have a proposal. If you are willing to hear it."

Lina listened.

The proposal was training. Formal cultivation under Sera’s guidance, conducted in the forest where the spirit density was highest, focused on building the foundation that the bond with Sylph had formed without.

Learning what had already happened to her and why and what it meant for what she could eventually do.

In exchange, Sera wanted to study the bond. Not intrusively. Just to observe and document what she was documenting anyway, with Lina’s awareness and consent.

Lina said yes.

She said it simply, Sera nodded once and produced a small notebook from her coat and wrote something in it.

They sat in the clearing while the lights moved around them and the sky went fully dark above the tree cover.

"Why did you leave the orphanage,".

Lina thought about it.

"Because they were here,"

Sera wrote something else in the notebook.

"Well, that is a reasonable explanation for what happened to you."

They stayed in the clearing until the stars were out.

Sylph circled at Lina’s shoulder and the forest was full of light.

Lina had already moved on by herself in the only direction that had felt right since she was ten years old.

Forward.

Into the trees.

Into whatever the bond meant and where it was going to take her.

***

She did not know yet that it was going to take her to a forest where nothing lived voluntarily, through a contract too large for her to bear, one that would eventually tear itself apart around her.

Where a boy who would crouch down and hand her a healing potion in the most unreasonable way she had ever experienced.

***

She lived with Sera,

Three weeks into her time with Sera, on a morning when the training had finished early and Sera had gone back to the city for supplies, Lina had been sitting in the house doing the breathing exercises.

"If Sylph ever leads you somewhere unusual, come get me first ."

Sera always reminded Lina of that.

Sylph had drifted away from her shoulder unusually, because Sylph rarely moved far without reason and then drifted back and then away again in the direction of the older growth to the north.

She remembered Sera’s warning and ignored it anyway.

Lina followed.

The older growth was the part of the forest where the trees were wide. The light came through the canopy, the spirit density was higher than anywhere else she had found. She came here sometimes just to sit in it.

Sylph led her to a tree she had not noticed before.

It was not remarkable from the outside. But at the base of it, in the space where two roots had grown apart and left a hollow, large enough to put a hand into.

She reached in and took it out.

An envelope. Old paper the color had gone and the edges had softened, like it was damp for a long time. Sealed with something dark.

Sylph circled her hand once and held still.

She opened it.

The letter inside was written in a handwriting that was precise, The language was formal, it was like the formula she saw in Sera book.

She read while standing the spirits drifting around her and Sylph completely still at her shoulder.

The letter was damaged.

Whole sections were unreadable.

Only fragments remained.

The letter began: To whoever the forest has chosen to find this.

It described a contract. Not a standard spirit bond it was something that predated the formalization of spirit cultivation as a discipline. A high-rank wind spirit contract of a type that had not been written in several centuries, offered by a spirit.

The spirit chooses.

The cost is everything.

At the bottom of the letter, below the description of the cost, was written: If you are reading this, you have already been chosen. The contract will begin when you finish this sentence.

She finished the sentence.

The forest filled with light.

Ambient light coming from the ground beneath her feet, a circle of markings spreading outward from where she was standing lines and patterns she did not recognize moving across the forest floor.

Sylph made a sound she had never made before.

The light reached her.

And then there was nothing.

***

Present.