Welcome to Find Your Colors, the publication and podcast where we are discussing the Shards of Color Trilogy. Specifically, we are reading through the narrative of the first book in that series titled BLUSH BORN.

I am Jeff B. White, and I am the writer and creator of stories. Find Your Colors allows me to share these stories, while taking a moment to analyze the psychological concepts present throughout the narrative and showing how I translated my life experience into this dark fairy tale.

Recap

Last week we read Chapters 11 and 12 where we experienced Jethran encountering Nimrah Yaga to face a whirlwind of gaslighting and manipulation. After that, we were present for the moment he met Fable.

We are now entering Chapter 13, Storming Color, where Jethran meets another one of the fallen gods called the Seven Songs.

The Things We Keep

Chapter 13 Storming Color

The glade was silent, but the air hummed in the wake of Jethran’s fury. The light pulsing from his skin defied naming, glowing as the physical manifestation of a storm breaking within him.

It crackled around him while pressure built behind his eyes, warping the world around the edges. He felt the power as a rhythm in his bones, a vibration starting as a flicker before swelling into a hurricane around his heart.

He stood with clenched fists as he replayed the moment Fable fled. The Silvarii’s accusation echoed in his mind. He had laid his spirit bare, sharing his grief and the murder of his mother, only to have it waved away like a foul odor. It was the same dismissal he had felt his entire life.

Above it, he saw the Uncrowned One’s leering face on the throne room screens wearing a mask of benevolence to hide a murderer's spirit.

Liar. Murderer. Coward.

The thoughts became a maelstrom indistinguishable from the roaring in his blood. As if in answer, the sky churned. The gray of the world’s forgetting darkened, twisting into a mass that mimicked the turmoil in his gut. The wind tore through the forest, ripping at the leaves with violence.

With a final thought of the Uncrowned on his stolen throne, Jethran felt a surge of power threatening to tear him apart. A spear of rage ripped through the clouds with a deafening crack, striking a tree at the edge of the glade.

It exploded, showering the clearing in splinters and the stench of scorched wood. The blast sent a tremor through the dirt, making the trees at the edge of the woods shudder as their branches cracked under the assault of the wind. He witnessed the raw power.

He recognized the storm as the same tempest that drove him into the lion's den. It was him; he was causing this.

"How can this be possible?" Jethran asked. "How are my emotions creating a storm?"

He realized this was too much, knowing the glade served as his mother’s resting place, it would be torn apart by the storm he unleashed.

“How do I stop it?” he whispered.

He considered using the Mist of Muralis. It would be so easy to just exhale the mist and inhale it back in and forget. He could become exactly what the Gray Order wanted him to be by remaining silent and empty. However, he knew using that mist had allowed him to fall victim to Nimrah Yaga’s assault on his memories.

He remembered the dream he had in the dungeon regarding the hereman who planted his feet in the dirt as the Storm Eater. He heard the trees being ripped apart while the world itself seemed to be collapsing, demanding that he make it end.

“This is insane,” he muttered. “But I have to try.”

He stepped into the center of the clearing, throwing his head back and looking directly into the storm. As he opened his mouth, the wind moved towards him as if it were being called.

Jethran began to inhale, allowing the storm to enter him with the taste of raw fear. Within moments he was engulfed in the swirling gale as it threatened to overtake him. The pressure inside him was agonizing, and though he thought it would be too much, he dug his feet deeper into the lilac mud, refusing to be moved.

He continued to swallow the storm. He felt the righteous rage directed at the Uncrowned. It was a clean anger flooding into him, filling his belly and settling in his bones.

The other part of the storm was disgusting. It choked him when he tried to pull it in. A bitter taste filled his mouth. The wind howled, making him gag on its energy while a memory flashed.

He was six years old, hiding in the corner while Martier threatened to exterminate him. He saw his mother’s trembling hands and her helpless face. He felt her love alongside her deep fear, knowing that if Martier had found him that day he would have killed him while she remained powerless to stop it.

He felt a child’s bitter anger because she lacked the strength to make the monsters go away. If he had been born normal she would have been safe, making him the reason she lived in terror and the reason she died.

He staggered back while the wind refused to enter because he refused to own it. This was the poison.

A voice rumbled deeper than any thunder, seeming to rise from the dirt beneath his feet.

“There are storms that cleanse, and there are storms that only destroy. It is a fool who cannot see the difference.”

As Jethran spun around, the wind quieted into a sigh while the crackling energy reversed its course.

A figure stood before him, woven from the heart of a nebula. It possessed the broad shape of a man made from shifting starlight, giving a constellation form. Within its depths distant galaxies turned while stars were born and died in the space of a breath.

Each movement emitted a resonant crack like thunder rolling through a canyon. Its eyes were voids of energy holding the fury of the storm itself. The chaos of the wind drew inward, coalescing into this being.

Its voice echoed, rumbling like the cosmos. The being looked right through Jethran.

"You have touched the two faces of fury, young hereling. You must learn to separate them, or they will tear you apart from the inside out." The being gestured with an arm of stardust toward the sky. The being’s stellar form pulsed with a blinding heat.

"The anger at the demagogue of dust, that is the anger you must let out into the world," it commanded while its voice vibrated in Jethran's teeth. "That is the weapon you will wield. You must use it to defeat the king."

Jethran froze as the residual wind whipped his hair across his face. "Defeat the king? I am no one to defeat a king. I'm just Jethran."

The being stepped closer, the galaxies in its chest swirling with deliberate slowness. "That's all you'll ever need to be."

Jethran swallowed to clear his raw throat. "And the rest of it? The other storm?"

"The storm of a destructive rage floods the city," the being said while its voids locked onto him. "That's the anger you hold for yourself. It will destroy you and everyone around you."

“I’m not angry at myself,” Jethran lied.

"You despise the way you were born," the thunder claps within the being amplified. "You believe your existence is a curse."

"And you are angry at her, are you not?" the voice rumbled with relentless pressure.

“No!” Jethran shouted while the denial tore from him like a wound.

"Yes," the being insisted as its voice softened into a crushing truth. "You are angry that she failed to protect you more. Words remain wind, Jethran Frye, so let me show you what lies beneath your skin."

The cosmic entity raised a hand of stardust. A jagged shard of the scorched tree Jethran exploded earlier ripped itself from the dirt at the edge of the clearing. It hovered in the air for a fraction of a second before the being hurled it directly at Jethran’s chest with lethal speed.

A blinding panic seized Jethran, forcing him to throw his hand up for protection as a cry tore from his throat.

A bolt of lightning erupted from his extended palm. The lightning struck the flying timber, obliterating it into ash in mid-air.

The energy continued past the ash, slamming into the dirt just inches from the marker Jethran had placed for his mother. The ground scorched black while the concussive force knocked Jethran backward. His hand smoked as his veins throbbed with a sickening ache.

Jethran scrambled back in horror, staring at the smoking crater next to his mother's grave.

"Do you see?" Rabb's voice echoed like a distant bell. "That was the hatred you carry for your own Flaw."

Jethran stared at his hand. He knew the being was right because he blamed her and he loathed himself.

"You must keep it inside," the entity instructed. "You must swallow it and face it, managing it in the dark so it fails to consume the physical world. Regale Frye was a victim alongside you. Even Martier Rowe is a victim like every Here in Evenhere. The only way to stop being a victim is to continue. Once the Seven Songs are restored the world will be allowed to continue. You have found three of us, leaving only three remaining."

The world narrowed to the space between them. Every word the being spoke represented a shameful truth Jethran had never dared to admit. He always blamed his mother for her compliance and her inability to be the god he needed her to be.

He opened his mouth and swallowed the shameful anger, refusing to let it go. He refused to release it into the glade, choosing instead to face it and let it settle deep in his gut. It burned with a suffocating heat while he forced himself to hold it. It became a scar on his heart.

He looked back at the cosmic figure.

“You are Rabb,” he whispered. “The world has stopped believing in you.”

The being gave a slow nod. Its stellar form faded as he prepared to depart.

"The storms rage and the galaxies churn without regard to who believes in them," Rabb stated as a fading echo. "I exist no matter what Aught be said."

“But wait!” Jethran shouted as the being began to disappear. “The wings! Why do I have wings? What am I?”

"Because anger isn't something that can be lived in forever. At times you will have to fully release yourself from your anger, and above it all you will rise..."

The being dissolved. The points of starlight composing its body rose to merge with the sky, leaving only the scent of rain and a clarifying peace before he heard the voice one more time.

"You are Jethran Frye."

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The Breakdown

Finally, we have come to a point where Jethran encounters another one of the Seven Songs. The song is Rabb, who I named after my grandfather and modeled the character off of. I modeled this character after my grandfather because he embodied the opposite of an angry person. He was my grandmother's second husband and my mother's stepfather, willingly choosing to step in and become a second father to three children without hesitation. He eventually became a grandfather to six grandchildren alongside several great-grandchildren, and throughout all of those relationships, there is not a single one of us who can ever recall this man raising his voice at us or at my grandmother. He would always be the first to fight for us, and even during the times he became frustrated with one of us, he never laid a hand on us or said anything hurtful. By demonstrating such restraint, he showed us all what it meant to be a good man. Like anyone else, he must have felt anger. What made him extraordinary was what he refused to do with it. He taught us through restraint, through the things he chose to withhold rather than any lecture he could have given.

Rabb teaches Jethran about the differences between misplaced anger compared to justified rage. Anger is one of the most difficult emotions to face, especially in recovery and in trauma work. Finding, recognizing, and sitting with anger is difficult because we are taught to treat anger itself as wrong. I do not believe it is.

The Buddha taught that no emotion possesses an inherent positive or negative charge, as it is our reaction to those emotions that determines their true nature. Anger is a natural human emotion, meaning that denying yourself anger is denying yourself a fundamental part of the human experience. It is arguably more toxic to suppress anger entirely than it is to allow it to exist within your life.

Without the justified rage that arises when we face inequities, we remain unable to combat those injustices. You need that rage to drive you because it provides the passion and the fortitude required to stand up and fight back. You can channel it into campaigns or protests so that you can use it for a profound purpose. On the other hand, destructive rage serves no purpose other than burning down your own house.

In my life, I spent quite a bit of time angry at my mother because I blamed her for allowing certain things to happen to me. Specifically, I believed she permitted the abuse I endured in high school when a teacher forced me into extreme aversion therapy designed to make me straight. That anger was misplaced and destructive to our relationship, especially since I later learned she had no idea those things were even happening.

I was also angry with her because she never stood up to my father to defend me, though it took me years to realize that I was not the only victim of his abusive nature. She was surviving him too, which meant being angry at her served no purpose for me and only destroyed years we could have spent knowing each other and growing closer. There are lasting effects of that anger still in place today, and to be honest, I still carry parts of that anger with me right now.

This is where the concept of shadow work comes into play. In Jungian psychology, the shadow represents the unconscious part of the personality that our conscious ego refuses to identify with. It serves as the burial ground for the parts of ourselves we deem unacceptable, including our shame and our unresolved anger.

When we refuse to look at our shadow, that destructive anger operates in the dark and projects itself onto the wrong people, just like it did with my mother, because facing the true source of the pain feels entirely too terrifying. Integrating the shadow requires finally turning around and looking at that anger to accept that this rage exists within you. You face it so it becomes something you carry consciously rather than something that controls you from the dark.

Instead of taking that destructive anger and focusing it outward toward her, I have learned to swallow it and integrate it by channeling it into other things. I write about it, and I created an entire world to help myself refocus and recalibrate that anger. Jethran learning to swallow his chaotic storm and use his righteous lightning serves as my own shadow work playing out on the page.

Let's Discuss

Jethran possesses quite a bit to be angry about in his life, meaning he has a massive amount to learn regarding how to manage that anger so his power fails to destroy his world.

* What are some ways you have used to manage your own anger?

* Is there someone or something you remain angry towards that you need to find a way to swallow?

Feel free to answer these questions here in the comment section below or take them with you as you go.

What's Next?

On Wednesday in Chapter 14, Jethran will receive some vital information as Fable returns. Make sure you are here to see if he accepts the information and whether he and Fable can manage to get along.

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