Chapter 24: Claiming the Spark

“Before the words,” Thimble said. Her voice shifted; within seconds, she went from researcher, friend, and guide to a creature who’d waited sixteen years to pass on what she knew, finally allowed to begin. “Ground. Get yourself in the right headspace to feel the words. That’s more important than speaking them: the feeling, the intention.”

“Close your eyes, Allison. Feet flat on the floor. Back against the chair. Rest your hands on the armrests, but keep one near Felipe so he can touch you if you need him to. Good. Just like that.”

Allison closed her eyes, her breathing slowing as she sank into the old leather chair, warmed by the fire. She cradled Felipe’s small weight; his shell felt soothing under her fingertips. Sol’s presence, a steady, white-noise-like mechanical hum behind the chair, offered reassurance. Thimble's paw brushed her forearm, grounding her in a fragile calm.

“Now breathe,” Thimble said. “Not how you normally do. Not in the chest. Down into the belly. Breathe as the Heartwood breathes. Slow. Deep. Unhurried."

Allison inhaled. The breath caught in her chest, as it always did—an anxious, shallow habit built of existing despite trauma. She pushed it deeper, willing herself to find her peace. The air stretched her ribs, slid down her diaphragm, and settled deep in her belly. Relief flooded her body, seen first through her upper back and down into the shoulders; the tension continued to unspool like a satin ribbon fresh off the bobbin.

“Good. Again. Three of those. Just the breath. Nothing else.”

Three breaths. By the third, Allison’s heartbeat had slowed.

“Now. The grounding.” Thimble’s voice was low, rhythmic, almost singsong. “Visualize: you are sitting in a chair. Good. Beneath the chair is the floor. Under the floor is the Heartwood’s living wood. Beneath the wood are roots—great, gnarled, ancient roots that go down and down into the earth. Feel them. Feel the tree beneath you. Feel that the Heartwood can hold you and support you.”

Allison could feel its strength. The line between imagination and reality vanished as a shiver ran down her back—her body didn’t care. She sensed the massive hickory anchored deep beneath her, every inch of its bark and xylem thrumming with sap that held its life force and ancient, centuries-old memories. Her skin prickled as if she might root there, too.

“Now. From your feet, your tailbone, and the base of your spine, send down your own roots—slowly, like water trickling through sand. Let them go through the chair, the floor, into the Heartwood’s roots; they twine together. They weave. You are connected, Allison. To the Heartwood. To the magic that surrounds us. To something older than time itself. Feel that connection.”

As she did, as Thimble instructed, warmth bloomed at the base of her spine. It spread down her legs—her body shuddered gently, anticipation tingling in her limbs—as it moved into a proverbial root system that felt startlingly real. She could feel the Heartwood and its magic—a slow, deep, patient pulse that predated language. Her own spark responded, quickening; the warm living thing in her chest matched the Heartwood’s pulse with a grateful thrum.

“Now,” Thimble said. “In your chest. Where your spark lives. Where your heart is, I want you to see it. Picture it: your spark, real and present, as a golden light in your center. Bright. Warm.”

Allison reached inward, grasping after a vision. For a beat, just darkness—nothing. Then the faintest pulse—a gentle warmth, stealthy as hope. Something glimmered, a golden glow flickering under her sternum. She concentrated, pulse hammering, until the glow blazed brighter, pushing back the inner dark.

“That’s your light, Allison. It’s always been there—even when you couldn’t see it, even when the world denied it. It stayed. The Sparkkeeper in your blood permitted you to carry it and kept it safe. Now you hold it as you do now. Feel it. It is yours to hold and to own.”

She felt it. Hot tears pricked the corners of her eyes, sharp and dizzying beneath her closed lids—a trembling teetering on the edge of wonder, the barest flicker of what some might call grace. For the first time in a long time, she felt grace for herself and for all she had been through up to this point; grace for all she didn’t know; grace for all the beliefs she’d held about herself because others’ hatred had told her. Most importantly, she was giving herself grace to do this hard thing because it healed her, mattered, and was important.

“Good,” Thimble whispered. “Now. Open your eyes. Look at the words. And speak them. Don’t read them. Speak them. Say them to yourself — from the self that knows to the self that’s forgotten. Whether the rest of us hear them is irrelevant. It is between you and this realm. Begin.”

Allison opened her eyes.

The golden letters still hovered above the strangely shaped book, patient, waiting.

She took a breath. She began.

“Within me glows a sacred spark. Embers dancing in the dark. I am worthy, bright, and whole. The constellation of my soul.”

The words came out evenly—measured and rhythmic. She reached the end of the first stanza and waited. The card on the page remained as it was—filigree slowly healing; center still smeared. The glowing words on the facing page did not shift. The fireflies in the air continued their patient orbits. No rumble. No response. No magic.

Allison’s jaw tightened, her face burning. Humiliation prickled up her neck—a hot, ridiculous blush. She swallowed and stared hard at the book, discouraged, willing herself to be invisible.

“I read it,” she said. “I know. I was… I was reading it.”

Thimble’s expression was gentle and patient, like a teacher who had expected this and had planned for it.

“That’s right,” Thimble said. “You were reading. You recited the words like a poem at a school assembly: clean, measured, performed. But Allison—these aren’t words to perform. There are words to claim. They have to come from you.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is belief.” Thimble sat up straighter on the armrest. “When you read aloud, you’re delivering someone else’s words. They pass through your mouth, but aren’t yours. When you speak, really speak, the words are yours. They carry your weight and spirit. They’re a claim, not just a recitation.”

Felipe, still in Allison’s lap, lifted his head. “It’s like the difference between reading a recipe and cooking,” he said, as someone who had very strong opinions about food. “Recipes tell you what to do. Cooking is doing and adding your own flair, flavor, and soul. Same words. Different action entirely. Recipes are instructions on a page. Cooking is in the heart. The kitchen has its own kind of magic.”

Sol spoke from behind the chair. “The power in these words requires the speaker to be their own source. You have to be the place from which the words are born, not just the channel through which they pass.”

Allison closed her eyes again. She tried to understand and feel the difference Thimble was describing.

“Breathe,” Thimble prompted. “Ground. Find your spark. Try again.”

Allison breathed. She reached back down to the roots, faster this time, to the spark in her chest. She knew what to do now. She opened her eyes.

This time, she tried to feel each word as she spoke it. To mean them. To own them. To know them.

“Within me glows a sacred spark...”

She believed that one. She could feel it — the warmth in her chest, the stubborn little light that had refused to die through it all. Sacred spark. Yes. Hers.

“Embers dancing in the dark...”

The spark was still with her. She could feel it within her. Then the fireflies, the real fireflies, faintly responded to her voice and drifted through the Heartwood’s air as her cadence steadied.

“I am worthy...”

The word tangled in her throat. She hit the forty-five-year-old barricade. A lifetime of you’re too much, not enough, weird, wrong, a problem, broken. The whole architecture of self-doubt rose in her body the moment she tried to claim worthiness. Her voice cracked on the word, wobbled, and lost its rhythm.

She pushed through. “...bright and whole. The constellation of my soul.”

But the damage was done. The conviction broke mid-stanza, and the words that followed sounded hollow again. The air didn’t respond. The card stayed as it was. The glowing letters didn’t shift.

Allison let out a sound that was half sigh, half growl, frustrated with herself. She dropped her head into her hands.

“I can’t say it,” she admitted, choking back tears. “I can’t say ‘I am worthy’ and mean it. I’ve said it, but never believed it. Not once. Not in all my years. I mean, maybe when I was younger, but not now. I’m trying to, but I just can’t.” Shame stung her skin, brittle and raw.

The study was quiet. The fire crackled. Felipe’s warm weight pressed into her stomach. He didn’t say anything. Sol’s hands on the chair back radiated a steady, unobtrusive presence. Thimble's paw stayed light on her arm.

Nobody rushed her. Nobody corrected her. They just waited and let the wave of emotion roll through.

After a long moment, Thimble spoke. Her voice was very soft.

“Allison. Can I try to help you reframe something?”

Allison nodded, head down, eyes closed, unable to find her voice.

“You keep saying you can’t claim worthiness. You can’t claim wholeness. I hear you — I know how deep that barrier goes. It was there to protect you. But I want to try something different.”

She shifted on the armrest to face Allison. “You’re not saying these things to convince the world, not for me, not for Sol, not for Felipe, not for the Dreamspace. We already know your worth; We wouldn’t exist, and you wouldn’t be here, if you weren’t worthy of this space. You’re saying them for yourself, from the part that knows the truth to the part that’s forgotten. They were never things to claim, because you already had them. Being worthy and whole is your birthright as a living being. They belong to you—always have, always will.”

Allison lifted her head, eyes glassy, rimmed red, and moist with tears. Her breathing hitched, hope flickering in the shadows of her exhaustion.

“There’s a voice in you,” Thimble said, “that has always known you’re worthy—even in your worst moments, even when you couldn’t hear it. That voice wrote in journals no one read. It kept you going through burnout. It survived your father’s death. It kept your hands writing when everything else was broken. That voice is the REAL you, Allison—the Sparkkeeper. The self that remembers.”

She reached up with her paw and touched Allison’s chest, right over the spot where the spark lived. Allison’s breath shuddered as she tried to inhale.

“And there is another voice—the one that says you’re not enough. That voice is old and worn. It’s tired. A society that couldn’t see you installed it, a world without the language for who you are. That voice has forgotten. It needs to hear the truth.”

Thimble's dark eyes were bright.

“You’re not claiming worthiness for yourself. You’re reminding yourself of what you’ve always been. You’re telling your inner child, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ You’re the teacher telling the student they did it right. You’re the one who remembers, speaking to the one who forgot. Can you try it that way?”

Allison blinked. Her throat was tight as she swallowed.

That shift in thought—that was different. That, she could almost picture.

Not standing in front of a room full of strangers and claiming she was worthy. That was the thing she couldn’t do. But sitting beside a younger version of herself — the one who got bullied in school, the one who couldn’t understand why everyone else had a “How to Be a Person” instruction book that she hadn’t been given, the one who cried in the bathroom during lunch because she didn’t know how to make friends and keep them — and telling that kid she was worthy?

That she could do.

Her breath caught.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. Let me try again.”

Allison closed her eyes. Breathed—deep, slow, into the belly—and dropped her roots into the Heartwood. Found her spark.

And then, in her mind’s eye, she pictured someone else.

A little girl. She was seven, maybe eight. She sat on her bed with a crayon and a spiral notebook from the dollar store, drawing a teddy-bear-run carnival. Her dad was out back grilling, her mom was reading on the deck, and the little girl was alone in her room, alone with her imagination, building a world nobody else could see and writing stories only she understood.

The little girl looked up. She looked at her: the grown-up Allison, tear-streaked, in sensory-friendly clothes, hair tied up in a messy bun with a grey cloth scrunchie, a tome on her knee. The grown-up Allison spoke—not to the creatures in the room, not to Dreamspace, not to the ancient magic in the pages, but to that little girl. To the version of herself who had always known, before the world had time to tell her she didn’t.

“Within me glows a sacred spark.”

The words came out soft. Certain. No performance. No recitation. Just a simple statement of fact, meant for the version of herself who needed to hear it.

“Embers dancing in the dark.”

Above her, a firefly drifted down from the Heartwood’s ceiling. It hovered over the glowing page of the trapezoidal book. Brightened. Beside it, another firefly appeared—winking into existence from nowhere, joining the first. Then another. A small constellation gathering over the card.

“I am worthy...”

The word came out tentatively, but it held. The wall was still there—it probably always would be, in some capacity—but this time she pushed through it. She was claiming worthiness not just for herself, but for the little girl self, too. And that, she could mean.

“...bright and whole. The constellation of my soul.”

Something shifted.

The damaged card on the page pulsed once and then, with a soft, silent ripple of light, the filigree completed itself. The border’s swirls and curls knit back together in a wave of gold that ran around the card’s edge until the frame was whole. Unbroken. Restored.

The center of the card was still smeared, still unclear. But the frame had returned. Around her, the fireflies above the book brightened in response, their golden glow deepening. She heard Thimble let out a small, sharp breath.

Allison didn’t stop. She felt the momentum now—the difference between reading, speaking, and feeling. Between performing and claiming. Between giving words and meaning them. She moved into the second stanza.

“The light is mine and cannot dim.”

Her voice steadied. Strengthened.

“No doubt shall ever live within.”

This one was harder. Doubt lived within her constantly, but she wasn’t stating a current fact. She was setting an intention. A boundary. A declaration of what she was choosing now, from now on, in this moment, and after.

“I shine with purpose, real and free —”

Something warm spread through her chest as she felt the knots within loosen, some coming undone completely.

“The world has never seen authentic me.”

The glowing letters on the facing page shimmered. The text—which had been slowly translating word by word—suddenly finished. The entire page glowed, the golden letters settling into place, the incantation now fully written in English across both pages as if it had always been there.

More fireflies appeared—winking into existence above the book and popping into being. One here, one there, more and more, until a small swarm of them hovered in a loose constellation above the scene, their light warm and alive and multiplying.

Where were they coming from? Allison wondered.

Thimble's paw tightened on Allison’s arm, encouraging her. “Keep going.”

Allison took one more breath. She steadied herself again and launched into the final stanza.

“Like fireflies that know their way,”

Her voice was clearer than it had ever been.

“I trust myself, come night or day.”

She wasn’t sure she did trust herself—not fully, not just yet—but she was saying it because the trust had to start somewhere, and if she couldn’t believe it yet, she could at least promise herself she would get there.

“My confidence grows like a sunflower’s height.”

The fireflies above the book began to rotate slowly clockwise in unison. They weren’t orbiting the book anymore, and they were orbiting Allison. A living golden halo formed around her head, warm and bright, each small creature pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat.

She took one last breath. She felt the spark in her chest, the roots beneath her, the fireflies above her, the paw on her arm, the armadillo in her lap, the android on her back. She felt it all converging into the final line.

“I am my own magnificent light.”

The Heartwood rumbled with a deep, resonant, preternatural vibration that started somewhere in the roots far below and traveled up through the trunk, the floor, the chair, Allison’s body, and the friends around her. The entire tree hummed like a struck tuning fork. The wall lanterns flared brighter. The fireflies above Allison pulsed in one bright, synchronous beat, then settled into a steady, warm glow around her head like a crown.

The damaged card in the green, leather-bound trapezoidal book pulsed as well. The smeared image at its center had begun to clear. Features were emerging from the chaos. A figure began to form and started to remember itself.

Allison exhaled. Her whole body was shaking with the strange, trembling release of having just done something enormous. Something she wasn’t sure she could do until she did.

“Oh, my cat,” she whispered. “Oh my god, I did it! I felt it. I felt every word.”

Thimble cried fat tears that rolled down her cheeks and whiskers. Felipe was splayed out in her lap, making a soft, happy sound—the armadillo equivalent of purring—as he nuzzled his face against the arms surrounding him. Sol’s hands had lifted from the chair back and settled, with surprising tenderness, on Allison’s shoulders.

“You did it,” Thimble whispered. “Allison, you did it. I knew you could! We all did.”

And then, from somewhere beyond the Heartwood’s sealed door—from outside, from the hub, from the direction of the portal—a sound split the air.

A scream that belonged to nothing natural—a high, keening squeal like white-hot metal dropped onto ice; an agony that scraped at this supernatural reality. Such a screech it was. Allison instinctively clapped her hands over her ears, her sensory defenses triggering despite everything. The sound lasted three seconds. Maybe four. Then it stopped, instantly.

The Heartwood’s rumble faded. The fireflies above Allison settled. The silence that followed was surreal.

“Ouch! Holy cat, did that come from outside?” Allison whispered, lowering her hands slowly. “What the...?”

Sol nodded, released Allison’s shoulders, stepped around the chair, and crossed to the hallway. “That came from the hub. From the ooze. I think it’s high time I go check.”

“Sol, please be careful,” Allison called back, concerned.

“I will. Stay here.” Their golden eyes flickered, a flicker that might have been a smile. “We just hurt it, Allison, and badly. I want to know exactly how much damage we just did.”

They moved down the hallway with swift, fluid motion—their servos whirring quietly as they accelerated into a fast, smooth gait. By the time they reached the front door, they were moving faster than Allison could ever run. The Heartwood’s door opened for them and closed behind them with a soft thunk.

Silence settled over the study where the three who remained sat very still, listening, waiting.

Thimble's ears rotated, alert. “Sol will be fine. They’re made of very stern stuff. Much tougher than our soft bodies.”

Felipe stretched up and licked Allison’s chin with his tiny warm tongue. “Mija, you know what you just did, yes?”

Allison laughed shakily. “Maybe. I think I don’t rightly know yet.”

“Sounds like you did quite a bit of damage, amiga,” Felipe said. “You’re starting to believe it. It was your words. You wounded the ooze with love, Allison, with your words and the love for yourself you’re starting to build. The Sparkkeeper writes the light. The Sparkkeeper speaks the light. And the darkness—it cannot stand the light you create.”

Before Allison could respond, a firefly appeared at the study’s entrance—darting in quickly, its glow pulsing in a specific, deliberate pattern. It flew straight to Thimble and landed on her outstretched paw. Thimble's eyes widened. She bent close to the firefly, listening—or reading, perhaps, the pattern of its pulses. Her whiskers twitched rapidly.

“It’s from Sol,” she paused. The firefly pulsed once more—a long, urgent burst—and Thimble translated. “They say: ‘You will never believe what’s happening out here.’”

The three of them in the study looked at one another.

Allison stood, Felipe sliding from her lap onto the chair cushion. Her legs were shaky—the aftereffects of the incantation still rippling through her body—but she was steady enough. The tome was in her arms before she’d consciously decided to pick it up. The Spark Quill in her pocket was humming against her thigh.

“I’m going out there,” she said.

Thimble didn’t argue. She hopped down from the armrest and padded toward the hallway. “Me too. Let’s go see what we did. Come on, Felipe”

Felipe scampered down from the chair and bounded ahead, tail held high. “Come on, amigas. I want to see the carnage.”

Allison followed, the tome clutched against her chest, her spark warm and bright—and, for the first time since this whole journey began, finally felt like her own.