My legs give out, and in that space within my father's mind, I fall to my knees. My hands clench in the snow. Something bites into my palm, but I don’t take time to look at it nor the growing blue of my fingers as I strain to see beyond the fog. Beyond the lies. I want to see!

And his eyes smile. My little cub, he mouths, warmth in his eyes despite the way his lips are a pale blue which match the gray sky. He pushes something at me, a bundle of a memory, which seeps into me.

I will not leave him here. If lies entangle him, then the truth will set him free.

What is the truth he needs to hear?

Remind him, daughter.

Remind him of what? more threads pulse against me, more threads leaking lies into my mind.

Unworthy.

Broken.

Unsalvagable.

Flawed.

Weak.

Insufficient.

Thoughts and feelings which whisper: All that comes, all the pain, will be because you were not enough to save your world, your people, and the worlds themselves.

And although I know they aren’t true, I flinch at each word. At how they speak with absolute certainty to my deepest weaknesses.

But I. Am. Done.

I walk forward, still flinching, but naming each truth for every lie. “I am worthy, a child of a the Most High King, hailed as his daughter, and bought with his pain. I am beautifully and wonderfully made, beloved by the creator of the universe.” My voice grows stronger, the threads growing weaker as I step toward my father, his eyes glassy but his lips twitching. It gives me hope that my father is somewhere beneath the shell of a man sitting on the ground. “I am not responsible for the worlds’ pain. I am only responsible for the choices I make today. For the steps along the way, and for doing better when I learn my error. The Four Worlds belong to The King, and the King alone. Their fate rests in his capable and loving hands, as I rest in his loving arms, where I belong. As his child, his beloved, his chosen.” The threads retreat, bristling against the light that begins to glow from me. “In the name of The Phoenix, I command you to set my father free!”

A wave of light sweeps from me, my Gift singing within as what I was meant to do, as my purpose, as what it was Given to me for—happens.

This! This is it! This is me!

I am made, created, and chosen to set others free. Not to kill, not to harm. No, no, and nope. Those things which I thought about myself were all wrong! I was flailing—and yes, even failing—because I was going about this all wrong. Instead, I need to rest in what my soul longs for. What I need. What I want.

I am a protector of freedom, a helper, a healer, a breaker of chains. My soul sings, my Gift humming with the trees and the grasses as my soul flourishes in finding it’s purpose. Not in the hurting, not in the killing, but in the healing.

A giddy welling swells within me until I can’t hold it in and I sing, a wordless song which I could not ever describe. It was broken, it was whole. It was the journey and it was the arrival. It was the beginning, and it was the end.

My legs long to dance, my soul long to shout, and my mind longs to sing.

I close my mouth, getting down on my knees before my father, smiling gently as I extend my hands. He watches me, his eyes nearly focusing on me before they glance over my shoulder once more. “Who… are… you?” he whispers through a voice so cracked it seems it’s been years since used.

“I am here to set you free. David Dragonheart, child of The King, and lover of all things good and pure—it’s time to come home.”

“Home?” he whispers, as if it were an abstract idea.

I nod, tears of joy and of sorrow in my eyes. “Home.”

“But… it has been so long. I am too old. Too broken,” his voice cracks as he covers his face. “Never would they accept what I’ve... become.” So much emotion, an expression of loathing, of pain, of exhaustion, of all that cannot be explained, within that word.

The tears break free of my eyes, streaming down my cheeks, my arm still outstretched.

I can offer him freedom of the lies, but he must accept it.

“What has been done is done. What is yet to be done remains to be seen. Your choice remains. Chains are easier. They bring a sense of belonging, a sense of security. But it is false. It is the security of a dragon in a cage. The king of the skies does not belong behind bars, and neither do you. Freedom is terrifying. It is unknown. It may scrape you raw, it may kill you, but would you rather be killed by freedom or alive in chains?”

He glances up, his eyes bloodshot and bone-weary. “So long I fought. So long I tried. Why did you not come sooner?” his whisper is hoarse, caustic.

The King’s pain comes into my breast, and I feel the words form in my mouth without my permission as His Voice once more speaks through me. “There is a time for all things. Forgive me, my son, but your time had not yet come. But it is yet here, if you are willing. If you are not, then you may come join me in paradise this day, as my brave and faithful servant.” A sob breaks past my chest as a light of hope forms in my father’s eyes.

How cruel, to know he lives and yet lose him again. But I see his pain, see the shell of who he once was, and know that, were it me, I’d take the offer of paradise quicker than you can say smarts.

“What of them?” Father asks, looking through and beyond me as if not even seeing me, asking of things I have no way of interpreting.

“Help will come in another way, should you choose a different path. I am the master of working around my children’s choices,” this said somewhat tongue-in-cheek and I nearly gasp. Was that a joke from The King? Heck, for being an all-powerful creator, he’s a willy old thing, ain’t he?

Father glances down again, kneading his blue fingers in the snowy tundra. I bite my tongue to keep from speaking my thoughts. I cannot beg him to stay. It wouldn’t be right. His pain far surpasses my own, and I am at least slightly unselfish enough to know that if he wants to be completely free of all this, I will not stop him.

Even if I want to beg it of him so badly it makes my chest ache.

Father nods, lifting his head.

“This is your choice?” The King asks through me, and I sense some sort of silent communication between the two, even though it’s my body the heckin’ King is using.

“Yes,” Father says.

“Then let it be done.”

Light bursts from me, extending to every nook and cranny, and the last thing I see before being shoved from his mind is my father slumping over, a sense of peace and near joy on his face, and my heart sinks even as it rejoices.

He’s gone home.