You might have noticed my recent silence here on the platform. I had to step away from my apartment in the Bronx and travel south to navigate a severe medical crisis involving my family.

Many of you subscribe to Find Your Colors to explore the mechanics of processing trauma. You show up here to learn how to build internal vibrancy and find healing from old wounds through spiritual effort. Over the past two weeks, I was forced to put those exact practices to the ultimate test in the face of the man who manufactured my oldest wounds.

The essay below is an unfiltered reflection on that journey…

One Final Goodbye

As I sit in my apartment in the Bronx writing this, I’m astonished that I’m actually home. It’s as if the events of the past two weeks never happened. My mind is dizzy from the whirlwind of emotions and shock. Yet here I am, stepping back into my regular life after spending two weeks in hell.

Back in November, we learned that my father had glioblastoma, a very severe brain tumor. He endured the surgery and they removed it all, but the aftermath of that type of surgery, especially at his age, was detrimental. Glioblastoma is an end-of-life diagnosis.

As he began to deteriorate, I received another call: his heart was failing. He needed open-heart surgery at 82 years old. The doctors informed me that he weighed 125 pounds. He was incoherent, non-responsive, and in a position where if he had gone under for surgery, he would not have come back.

It was then that myself, my mother, and my sister joined together on the phone. My mother and sister were focused on getting him to heal, getting him back to normal so he could just be the way he was.

It became my responsibility to inform them that that wasn’t possible. I had to be the one to break the news to my mother that Daddy wasn’t coming back. That he would never be the same. I gave them the information, of what the tumor, the brain surgery, and the stage 4 congestive heart failure all mean together. That’s when we shifted from talks of surgery and palliative care to talks of hospice.

The three of us made the decision together, and then we hung up. I created a group chat with my mom and my sister where I gave them some attempt at inspiration, just trying to lift them up and hold them together. My mom said she understood what I was saying. My sister said she just didn’t have any words. I told her not having words is fine and that we’d get through this together. She said she was going to go be with my mom. I didn’t hear back from her for a while.

About an hour later, I got a call from my mother. My sister had locked herself out of the house and gotten extremely stressed out. She called my aunt and started walking to the hospital, which isn’t far from where they live. She fell. She had a seizure. The EMTs came and she had another seizure. They airlifted her to the hospital in Asheville.

My sister was diagnosed with lung cancer three years ago, the same week I was diagnosed with leukemia. Her cancer had metastasized and moved to her brain. A distant metastasis of a recurring lung cancer. The prognosis for this is very small.

I asked my mother if she wanted me to come. She said yes. I bought a plane ticket immediately and flew to North Carolina.

For the first few days my sister wasn’t there. It was just me, my mom, my dad, and an older cousin. I had planned to only stay two weeks because I have an upcoming apartment move and my own chemotherapy treatments waiting for me back in New York. I packed my bags and went down to help my sister heal and get everyone ready as we dealt with the looming death of my father.

Once I arrived, I realized that despite the fact that everyone was sick, and some of them were dying, no one had any end-of-life paperwork done. No power of attorney. No living will. No DNR. None of it. I had started trying to get this work done way back in November. It took me the full two weeks before I was able to get papers signed, and only for my father. I was never able to get papers for my sister or my mother.

My sister’s case is severe. Her prognosis is not good in any capacity. When I tried to talk to her about the actual biology of her brain tumor, the fact that she’d had a quarter of her lungs removed after her lobectomy, and what that means for her body, she accused me of being negative. Literally discussing the definition of the diagnosis and what is happening. Not for the sake of being morbid, but for the sake of preparation. For ensuring that everyone is taken care of and that their wishes are respected.

I find it astonishing that I share DNA with people who demand total blindness in the name of comfort. That being practical and responsible and making adult decisions is somehow being negative.

As an adult, I have built my whole life around finding the light. I practice witchcraft. I study paganism. I write books about healing trauma through spiritual effort. I’m all about that woo-woo s**t. Manifestation, the power of positive thought, the law of attraction, all of it. These are valuable practices. But being realistic and being prepared is not negative.

Yet here I was, being told by the very people who manufactured every toxic emotion of my childhood that I needed to focus on positivity. That everything would just work out if I just believed it. As if my own personal life structure was being weaponized against me.

Yes, thoughts influence what happens. We can alter our situations through positivity and light. But we all die. We can’t stop that. We can be educated about it. We can be prepared for it. We can make sure that we’re not a burden on our family after we’re gone. We can make sure that our children are prepared instead of blindsided because we kept telling them everything was okay when it wasn’t.

They brought a hospital bed into my parents’ home and set it up in the living room. My father sat on that bed, his actual deathbed, and flat-out declared he was just going to ignore the diagnosis. He wasn’t going to think about it, and then it wouldn’t be real. He said he just wasn’t going to pay attention to the negative stuff. He told me there was nothing seriously wrong with him.

That’s when everything snapped into focus.

I had spent decades wondering how a father could just turn his back on his own son and throw him out like garbage. Never looking back. Now I finally knew. Acknowledging that he abandoned me would require looking at something ugly, so he just erased it from his mind.

You can destroy people for your entire life without any shame or effect on yourself personally, as long as you simply refuse to look at the wreckage.

It is the most dangerous kind of toxic positivity. It wipes away personal responsibility and leaves a trail of victims bleeding out in the background.

Being back in that house was a total mindfuck. It wasn’t the house I grew up in. It was a house my parents had lived in for fifteen years that I had never seen. My cousin who was there was surprised to learn I’d never even been. I hadn’t seen my father in twenty years. And although this wasn’t my childhood home, it held all of the same stifling energy. I am endlessly grateful that I put twenty years of distance between myself and that family. It took an ocean of therapy to survive them the first time. Walking through the door was like entering a time capsule of a life I spent decades dismantling.

On the first day, after about ten minutes, my cousin saw me suffocating and took me to get food just so I could breathe. We sat in the Sonic parking lot and I laughed as I stared off into the distance.

I told her, “The fact that they even asked me to come down here makes me want to scream about the laws of audacity.”

She simply smiled at me, because she knew it was true.

Then I said, “But how could I not have come? They needed me. Of course I would be here.”

I asked her if it made me pathetic. As if I’d waited decades for them to throw me a bone. She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

I spent thirty-four years in therapy unknotting the mess I survived as a kid. During that time, I used to wonder what it would be like to actually stand in front of my father again and say something. I never believed the universe would put me in that position.

I went down there ready to play the part of a normal family. But then I was angry, because I showed up and it was the same people. Then I found myself wondering. Is every family like this?

I think of that film August: Osage County, the whole family gathering as the father is dying. They fought. They fought hard. Is that just what families do?

When I was a kid, I used to watch Roseanne. Blue-collar family struggling to pay bills, working dead-end jobs just trying to make ends meet. They fought like a real family. They reminded me of mine, except at the end of thirty minutes, you knew they still loved each other. That was the fantasy. Because my family was just like theirs. Loud, obnoxious, large, and poor. But there wasn’t love. Not discernibly. Not from their end. If I’m being honest, that’s always made me angry. I’m still bitter about it.

I put aside my bitterness. I put aside my resentment and showed up ready to help. They wanted the idea of my help, but they hated the physical reality of me standing in their house.

My presence cost me a lot. I paused my own chemotherapy in New York to travel South. I put my survival on hold to manage the decline of a man who despised me. A man I felt the exact same about. They couldn’t even acknowledge the sacrifice. It’s not that I needed anyone to say thank you, or that I wanted praise for doing the right thing. But after changing my father’s diaper. Honestly, a thank you wouldn’t have hurt as much as an “I don’t need you.”

Everything revolved around his hospital bed. He was drowning in terminal delirium, his lungs filling with fluid, his brain falling in and out of coherent thought. But the muscle memory of his abuse still controlled that house. It was only the second day when he looked at me from his deathbed and demanded that I leave. He could barely remember the days of the week, but he could remember that kicking me out was the dynamic he and I shared. Every single day, even though he did not have the strength to stand, he demanded I get out of his house. And of course, like always, my mother and sister just nodded along. They bowed to a broken king who didn’t know his head from a hole in the ground.

I stood in that room day after day defending my right to be there.

I walked into a living room vibrating with Fox News blaring at volume level 247. My deaf mother sat right in the middle of that aggressive static, hearing absolutely none of it. The room was so loud you could not even hear yourself talk without yelling from your chest to be heard. And then, in all that swirling chaos, Greg Gutfeld already screaming at a bone-shattering volume, my deaf mother looked me in the eyes and told me that I was too loud.

I knew exactly what she meant. It wasn’t my volume that was too loud. It was that my existence took up too much space and ruined the delicate little illusion she needed to survive.

She tried to tell me she didn’t ask me to come. But that wasn’t true. I had stayed away from these people for twenty years. I’d never gone anywhere near that house, never even seen it, because I wasn’t invited. I never would have shown up had I not been told to come.

The moment I lost my compassionate concern was when my mother, for the first time in my life, looked at me and said I was too much.

This was the person who had always been my champion against that phrase. She always told me that everyone else wasn’t enough. But now she was saying the one thing that actually landed. It only landed because it came from her.

I tried to tell myself she was just upset. She was dealing with so much. She’d been with my father since she was fifteen, and she’s seventy-six. That’s an entire lifetime. Her whole world was falling apart. Of course she was being mean. Of course she was taking it out on me.

But then I told myself, and I told them, that my years of being the whipping boy in this family ended a long time ago. No matter what you’re going through, you don’t get to take it out on me. You don’t have the right and you don’t have the permission.

It all hit a boiling point when my father looked at me from those pillows and delivered the exact same threat he used twenty years ago. He told me I needed to find a place to go. That he’d put me out on the streets and have me thrown in jail. Such a tired, worn-out statement.

This from the man who got fined by the fire department for calling 911 too many times without an emergency, in his wild attempts to have me arrested for talking back or saying the word no.

Two decades ago, those words were a death sentence for a terrified boy. I’ve lost count of the number of times my father put me in jail, calling in favors with his judge friends so they could lock me up through family vacation. Threats of jail used to carry weight. They used to bring fear.

The man I am today just laughed.

That laugh broke the spell. I stood over him and told him I would love to see him try. I told him to go find his phone, figure out how to turn it on, and see if he could remember what he was doing long enough to dial the police. I reminded him he didn’t even know how to use the remote control anymore.

I told him I came there so I could help my family and witness as each member of my family dies right in front of me.

To that he said, “Poor you. How do you think we feel?”

I looked the man square in the eyes and said, “I think you’re upset, and you’re hurt, and you’re disappointed. Because it is upsetting, and it hurts, and it is disappointing. But just because you are those things doesn’t mean you have to be hateful. So stop being ungrateful that people actually care enough to help.”

I told him I was leaving. But not because he commanded it. I was leaving because I built a life that had absolutely nothing to do with him. That I would leave when it was time to leave, and until then, I was staying, and I was helping my family get through this. That there was nothing he could do about it, because he had no power.

Those words hung in the air right alongside the smell of chicken-fried steak and gravy. I stripped him of his illusion and handed him the cold reality. I had total agency. He was just drowning in his own failing biology.

Before I walked out, I had my final words with my father. I told him I have no idea what comes next. But I said if he gets a chance at a next life, he needs to try to be good. I told him he failed at being a good father and he failed at being a good man. And if he’s given the opportunity to choose, he needs to choose a life where he can be a good person, so that his soul can have that experience.

Then I packed up my survival and flew back to the Bronx. I left them to their stagnant obedience and the sounds of war and hatred on volume level 247.

See, people think we are required to give our forgiveness. We are told that if we don’t forgive, we can’t heal.

That’s a lie.

Not everyone deserves our forgiveness, and we are not required to give it. We get to decide where we go, who we see, and who we allow in our lives. We get to decide who we offer forgiveness to and why. If they don’t deserve it, they don’t deserve it.

Because as I just learned, even on his deathbed, he’s not sorry.

Forgiving someone for something they feel absolutely zero remorse for isn’t going to make anyone feel better. Being guilted into forgiving someone simply out of shame is far more dangerous and far more damaging than denying them the forgiveness they’re not seeking.

Forgiveness of the shameless, guilt-free abuser is just one more moment when the thing you survived gets to hurt. One more moment when the person who victimized you gets to be absolved. Gaslighting survivors into forgiving those who harmed them is just putting more abuse on top of us.

The societal demand for unconditional forgiveness functions as a mechanism of control. It shifts the moral burden from the abuser directly onto the survivor. Forcing a victim to absolve a remorseless perpetrator prioritizes the comfort of the collective over the actual healing of the individual.

I have spent years exploring how to process trauma through spiritual and practical effort. I stared directly into the eyes of a dying man who was the source of most of my trauma, and he refused to take responsibility. In that moment, I dismantled the myth that healing requires his absolution.

True liberation comes from reclaiming agency. Withholding forgiveness is not bitterness. It’s a boundary. He can go to his grave with his lack of remorse. It’s not he who has to live with himself anymore.

Within a few months, he’ll be nothing but dust in a jar. I’m going to have to live with myself for the rest of my life, and that would be a lot harder knowing I handed one more piece of my peace to a man who didn’t deserve it.

I didn’t get closure. I gave absolutely no forgiveness.

But I finally walked away free.

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Watch the Experience

I documented my experience in North Carolina as I navigated the complexities of hospice with a formerly estranged family. It is a raw and honest account of my experience from my perspective. If you're interested, check out UncleJeffIsHere on tiktok

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As always if you read this all the way to the end or if you listened to it all the way through then you're absolutely my hero. So I just want to thank you for allowing me the time out of your day and the space in your brain to share my story with the world.

Welcome to Find Your Colors the publication and podcast where we are discussing the Shards of Color Trilogy and more specifically the first book in that trilogy titled BLUSH BORN.

I am Jeff B. White and I am the writer and creator of this story. Find Your Colors allows me to share these stories with the world while also discussing the psychological concepts that are present within the narrative and breaking down exactly how I translated my own life experience into this dark fairy tale.

I would like to first take a moment to say thank you to all of the new subscribers who have come in in the past few weeks. While I normally make two posts a week where I share chapters, and often include random bonus content whenever it becomes available, I have been on a brief time out from writing, from Substack, and everything in general. But I've gained four subscribers during this time and that is highly meaningful to me.

Currently, my father is on hospice and I have gone back home to North Carolina to be with my family and help them during this time. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to come home and face this experience with my family. I’m also grateful for the support that I’ve gotten from a few people here on Substack, and to my friends who have been there during this time. Finally, I’m extremely grateful for legalized marijuana on the state level because I forget that that exists and I would not have survived this situation without it.

Hospice care is a monster of a life event to live through. If you’re interested in following along on my hospice journey with dad, please allow me to invite you to check me out on tiktok at @UncleJeffIsHere where I am documenting my experience from my perspective. It’s something that’s not often talked about and it should be because it’s a major part of life that we all end up having to face.

Today is the first time in over a week that I’m able to sit down in privacy and peace to bring this latest episode. So let’s get back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Recap

Previously on Find Your Colors we read through Chapter 15 which was an antagonist chapter which served as a villain showcase. We were able to see the Uncrowned King as he demoted Martier to janitor and ordered Collis, the Big Aught Medic, to be held in the Underprison where he would be fed pebbles for the rest of his days.

While I absolutely adore my antagonist chapters and I do and I love writing them, this story is about Jethran. So let’s not waste any more time, as we begin...

Chapter 16 Seeing Colors.

Outside the Grotto of Trust the world was alive with the humming symphony of new color. The citrine leaves of the trees rustled with the quiet truth of the wind. A teal chested robin hunted a little lavender worm that wiggled on the lilac branches. A periwinkle fox ran with his azure vixen, playing in the light of the gray sun. Hummingbirds that seemed to shimmer like golden sprites fluttered back and forth between roses of amber and mauve.

Inside, a deeper quiet had settled between Jethran and Fable. The raw vulnerability of the night before, of shared grief and confessed fear, had forged something new, something stronger than anything Jethran had ever known. Jethran awoke to the soft crackle of the cerulean embers, feeling, for the first time in his life, truly seen and truly safe. He looked at Fable, still asleep on his bed of moss, his colorful wings a reassuring presence. They were not alone. Not anymore.

This newfound clarity brought with it a shared sense of purpose, a silent agreement that the world outside the Grotto, with its vibrant beauty, awaited them. Fable stirred, his eyes fluttering open to meet Jethran’s gaze.

“Well,” he boomed, his voice still a little raspy from sleep, “we can’t stay cooped up in here forever, can we!” He gestured vaguely towards the Grotto entrance, a small smile playing on his lips. “Not with all that... potential outside.”

“I wish all that... potential could tell us what the color means and why I have these powers,” Jethran answered.

“It means you’re special, dummy,” Fable said, rolling his eyes. “But we knew that. The question is, what do we do now? We need to find you a proper place, Jethran. Somewhere safe. Somewhere you can figure out what to do with it.”

He tapped a finger against Jethran’s cheek, where the colors now pulsed with a steady rhythm.

“A place where the King’s shadows can’t reach. I always heard tales, old silvarii stories, about a hidden sanctuary. A place where the colors never faded, even in the Grayest of Ages. Some Silvarii have always said that it’s just a myth. But the thing is, silvarii stories are all based in truth.” He shook his head, a mixture of awe and determination in his eyes.

“Well, after what I saw yesterday, I belieave that this is one of those stories that needs to be sought out,” Fable rose, stretching his long, awkward limbs. “Let’s go find your legacy, Jethran. The real one.”

Their journey to the sanctuary was a two-day trek that began under a sky still holding the memory of Jethran’s thunderous rage, a bruised-gray canvas slowly softening to a gentler hue. The air, scrubbed clean by the recent storm, tasted of wet ground and growing things. As they ventured deeper, the landscape unfolded like a forgotten dream.

The lilac trunks of the ancient trees now held canopies of impossibly vibrant citrine leaves, each one rustling with a dry whisper that was almost a song. Below, the grass, once a dull gray, shimmered with a citrine so profound it hurt Jethran’s eyes. It was a living carpet that stretched to the horizon. Never before heard melodies drifted from the branches above, causing Jethran to pause.

“Are those... birds?” Jethran whispered.

In the Gray, the only birds he’d ever known were the drab pigeons, their calls were guttural and mundane. These sounds were unfamiliar and intricate. They were full of surprising joy. Fable nodded, his own ears tilting to catch the new symphonies.

“They are indeed,” he murmured, a rare solemnity in his voice. “They say the birds remember the old songs.”

The wind carried the scent of blossoms, a heady perfume that mingled with the damp richness of the soil, invigorating Jethran’s senses in a way they never had been. As well, to Jethran’s surprise, Fable proved to be an entertaining travel companion. He delighted Jethran with exaggerated tales of his own clumsy escapades.

“So there I was,” Fable began, gesturing grandly with one hand while the other clutched his satchel strap, “trying to show a few of the little Silvarii sprittens how to properly catch the silvery sunlight on a dewdrop. It’s a very delicate art, you understand. I had the perfect leaf, the angle was magnificent, the dewdrop was practically singing with light. I’m telling you, Jethran... oh, sugar, it was poetry.” He took a dramatic step, reenacting the moment.

“And then I met Aggravus. That’s what I’ve named him. A particularly spiteful tree root who had made it his life’s mission to ambush me. Well, Aggravus introduced my foot to the concept of terminal velocity. One second, I’m a portrait of Silvarii grace; the next, I am a pinwheeling disaster of limbs and wings. I tumbled head-over-wings right into a patch of the most ridiculously shiny flowers you’ve ever seen, with petals like polished pewter. I went in with a certain silvery dignity and came out looking like a walking, talking, utterly humiliated bouquet. There were pewter blossoms clinging to every part of my wings, stuck in my hair, two on one eyebrow... I think I even had one in my ear.”

Jethran couldn’t help but chuckle, even managing an accidental snort. Although he tried to hide it, it was a rare and welcome sound that felt light in the moment.

That’s it! Fable thought, his heart giving a joyous lurch. That sound. That’s his true color. Not the Blush, not the magic. That right there.

A fiercely protective ache, for which Fable had no true name, spread through his chest. The world could have its gray, its kings, its wars. Fable knew, in that instant, that his only quest was to protect that fragile, precious sound. It was the only song that mattered. He puffed up his chest with pride, relishing the moment that he finally got to hear his new friend laugh for the first time.

“With all these new emotions flying about,” Fable confessed. “I think I understand joy.”

“What do you mean?” Jethran stopped, smiling at Fable.

“The first time you see someone smile,” Fable answered. “That’s... that’s when you understand joy.”

They both stood, smiling. Then Fable looked away. “That’s stupid,” he laughed. “Nevermind, nevermind”

Jethran stepped forward, his brow furrowing. “No!” He commanded. “You truly felt that… what you just said. And if you feel it, it can’t be stupid, Fable.”

“Besides, I’ve seen you smile,” Jethran continued. He reached up with his injured arm and pushed his hair back from his forehead. “I understand joy, Fabe.”

He then took the lead down the trail and Fable stood there watching him walk away. After a few hours, as the light faded, casting long gray shadows over the forest floor, Fable called out, “We should make camp here. The sanctuary can wait until morning.”

He found a sheltered hollow near a stream, its water flowing with a gentle sound. Soon, a small fire flickered to life between a circle of stones, casting cerulean flames. Fable produced a small fishing net, and with surprising agility, pulled out a few fish from the stream. Their scales sparkled with a pale almost translucence.

As they cooked the fish over the embers, the subtle scent filled the air. When Jethran took a bite, the pale blue flesh was surprisingly firm, with a clean taste. It was different from the fish that he had prepared after he left the Menders. He felt a pleasant warmth spread through him, a subtle vibrancy that was both unfamiliar and deeply satisfying.

“Not bad, eh?” Fable said, as he chewed thoughtfully. “A bit... bluer than I’m used to, but it is truly delicious.”

“Now, Jethran. You’ve spoken of meeting old gods. The Seven Songs. Have you... how many have you met... have you met any of the others?” Fable asked, his voice softer than usual.

Jethran nodded, and he began recounting his encounters, the stories flowing easily in the shared intimacy of the campfire.

“Crezwil,” Jethran said. “They taught me that a wound isn’t something to be ashamed of... but a story of survival that we should love and grow from.” As he said that he held out his hand, and from his palm an indigo light glowed, showing a flower blossoming in the air between them.

“And Muralis,” he continued, exhaling a faint, controlled wisp of cobalt mist. “She told me that the numbness can be a tool. A way to find a moment of quiet when the pain is overwhelming. That it’s a way to endure, not a surrender. It’s a tool, not a home.”

“And Rabb,” he explained. “He showed me there’s a difference between a storm that cleanses and a storm that just destroys.” A spark of aureolin light pulsed from his hand into a self-contained cloud above them.

“He helped me understand all that anger I told you about. At myself for my mother’s death, and even at her. He taught me that the hardest part isn’t just feeling the anger, it’s navigating it. Knowing which part is okay to feel, and which part needs to be transcended. It’s how I learned to swallow that storm.”

“Yeah, but... did you... really swallow it?” Fable whispered.

“Yeah, I did,” Jethran laughed. “I breathed it in and swallowed it down from the sky into my belly.”

“Jethran, that’s... that...” Fable stammered.

“I know!” Jethran replied with a tone that showed his own disbelief.

“But then there was Elba,” Jethran went on, as the red center of his Blush began to glow with crimson light. “She told me about my ancestry, about the power of my lineage and that my power was my own.”

As a crimson light showing the truth of Jethran’s lineage began to rise from his hand, Fable interrupted.

“What is your lineage though?” He asked, “Who do you come from?”

“I don’t know,” Jethran closed his hand and looked at Fable, the same questions burning within him. “I know my mother. That’s all.”

“But she didn’t tell you?” Fable pressed. “Elba. She told you that your power comes from your lineage but she didn’t tell you where your lineage comes from?”

“She said she forgot,” Jethran huffed. “She also said I forgot, but that I’m ‘the most beautiful song’ and that ‘no songs came before me’ whatever that even means.”

“That... sounds like she told you that you were the First Song,” Fable chuckled. “That would be the wackiest thing to ever be true. Here I am just eating fish with the First Song. The source of all Silvarii magic.”

“I don’t know,” Jethran sighed. “I don’t know what any of this means.”

“A wound as a story... I’d never considered that,” Fable mused, tracing a pattern in the dirt with a stick. “The King says a wound is a defect, a sign of weakness that must be hidden away.” His brow furrowed in thought. “And numbness... the King calls that weakness. A failure of order. He preaches that we must set aside personal pain for the sake of the Gray. That focusing on it is selfish, and numbness is just giving in to it.”

“But that’s just another way of being absent, Fable,” Jethran shook his head, his voice patient. “Muralis taught me that numbness can be a tool, a way to find a moment of peace when the pain is overwhelming. It’s not about avoiding the truth, it’s about surviving it. You can’t be paralyzed by the pain. It’s a way to endure, so you can come back... so you can actually be present in your own life.”

“But the King preaches balance through order,” Fable frowned, kicking at the dirt. “He says sorrow is just... a distraction. That balance comes from... sameness. From not feeling those extremes at all.”

“The Uncrowned says a lot of things,” Jethran felt a quiet sigh building in his chest. “He says a wound is a flaw, not a story. He says anger is destructive, not righteous. He says sameness is peace, when it’s really just silence.”

Jethran realized he was hitting against a wall of ingrained belief. Fable’s face, usually so open, had taken on a subtle, defensive rigidity. It was like trying to argue with the stone itself. There was no breaking through the layers of propaganda. He simply wasn’t ready to hear it. Jethran sighed, an indistinct sound that went unheard in the soft crackle of the embers.

“Look, Fable,” he said, deciding to shift tactics, “it’s getting late. We should get some rest if we want to reach the sanctuary tomorrow.”

Fable nodded, a hint of relief in his expression at the change of subject. Jethran settled into his bed of moss, the lingering frustration and the unsettling conversation swirling in his mind.

He eventually settled into a deep sleep, where he found himself dreaming. He stood among a large group of people all gathered around seeming to be waiting on something. He slowly realized they were all standing in line. He noticed the people standing nearby had begun humming. Finally the line meandered around the corner, and he noticed that they were all in line for mirrors. As far as the eye can see, a realm of mirrors.

It was at this moment that the hum raised, and all of the people from all around began to sing in a unified chorus.

Sung upon a once before...

Carved from twilight in the sky,

Mirrors wake the unlived day,

Hidden visions start to fly,

Watching chances slip away.

Digging past the shattered dream,

Shadows of another fate,

Unborn futures start to gleam.

Stepping to the fractured frame,

Witnessing the paths ignored,

Weeping for a different name,

Mourning what was unexplored.

Grieving versions left behind,

Standing at the mirrored gate,

Healing the divided mind.

Some will linger in the gaze,

Lost within the branching choice,

Fading in the mirrored maze,

Silencing the present voice.

Wisdom lets the phantom fade,

Turning from the unlived cost,

Stepping from the heavy shade.

Mourning mirror of Hun Gun,

Shows you how to love the one.

As he stepped up to the mirror, just before he was able to catch a glimpse of whatever the mirror offered, the vision was shattered by a nearby jaybird singing its morning song.

Jethran awoke with a jolt, the vivid images of the mirror still shimmering at the edge of his vision. Fable was already up, meticulously rolling his moss bed, humming a tuneless song as if nothing uncomfortable had transpired the night before. His face was a mask of serene normalcy, a deliberate avoidance of the sharp words exchanged.

Jethran felt a twinge of annoyance at Fable’s easy dismissal, but he let it go. There was no point in reopening a wound Fable clearly didn’t want to acknowledge. He simply rose, packed his meager belongings, and followed Fable out of the hollow.

After a few hours of quiet hiking, they stepped into a clearing where they caught a glimpse of Seven High Reach. Its peaks now held the undeniable vibrance of the world.

“Jethran, it's the same as your Blush,” Fable breathed.

Jethran looked down at the ground. “I don't want to change the world,” Jethran whispered. “I just wanted to be seen.”

“How could the world ever not see you?” Fable clarified. “Look at you. You are a sight to behold. Now more than ever. How could the world ever look away?”

Jethran had heard this before, but now it landed differently. He stared at Fable as something within him healed. Before he could process fully, the landscape abruptly changed. They came upon a vast chasm that suddenly cleaved the ground before them. Its dark, rocky walls plunged into an abyss shrouded in swirling mist. Fable, who had been leading the way with determined steps, stopped dead at the edge, his colorful wings drooping. A low whine escaped him, not just of fear, but of a deep, visceral pain. He backed away, his large frame trembling.

“Oh, sugar,” he whimpered, his voice barely a whisper, eyes wide with a crushing despair. “A chasm. A deep chasm. I... I can’t. My wings, Jethran. The Wing FADES. It’s... I can’t fly like I used to. Not over something like that. It’s too wide. It’s too far.”

He hugged himself, his vibrant wings pulling in tightly, his usual boisterous confidence utterly shattered. Jethran saw the deep terror etched on Fable’s face, the raw vulnerability of being confronted with his greatest fear in front of another. It was more than just an inability; it was a profound, daily reminder of loss. Jethran felt a surge of quiet empathy, and a certainty born from his own journey of self-acceptance. His tone was gentle, but laced with an unshakeable resolve.

“Don’t worry about the Wing FADES, Fable,” Jethran said, his voice calm, but with a power that surprised even himself. “I am not a Silvarii.”

Fable blinked, momentarily forgetting his fear, his head cocked to the side.

“Then what are you?” he asked, a flicker of curiosity pushing through the haze of despair.

Then, for the first time in Fable’s presence, Jethran unfurled his wings. Not the wings he’d manifested in the King’s throne room, but magnificent, feathery wings of pure light. Each feather was a shifting tapestry of indigo, cobalt, crimson, and a vibrant aureolin. They beat slowly, powerfully, against the air, stirring a gentle breeze. He reached out a hand to Fable, a faint, confident smile gracing his lips.

“I’m beautiful,” Jethran replied, his voice quiet with no arrogance, no boast. His eyes, fixed on Fable, held a playful glint, daring him to counter.

Fable stared, jaw literally dropped, eyes wide with pure, unadulterated awe and shock. He looked from the resplendent wings to Jethran’s calm face, then back again. Jethran was right; he was beautiful.

“I... I see,” Fable stammered, a dry chuckle escaping him. “Humility. Is it... is it one of the colors of your plethora?” His expression was a perfect blend of genuine amazement and his usual sarcastic wit.

Jethran’s smile widened. “I am actually very humble,” he told Fable, in a mock-serious tone. “Which is surprising considering how amazing I am.”

Fable burst out laughing, a joyous, uncontrolled sound that echoed across the chasm, a clear, unrestrained sound of pure delight. Jethran gently took Fable’s arm, pulling him close to his chest. Fable stopped laughing as they stood face to face. Fable could feel Jethran’s warmth. He took note of the fact that he never felt someone as warm as Jethran.

“Hold on tight,” Jethran whispered. With a single, powerful beat of his new wings, a surge of power that felt both natural and immensely impressive, Jethran lifted them both into the air. They soared across the chasm, the wind whipping past them, a glorious testament to his newfound power and purpose. Fable clutched Jethran’s tunic, his laughter replaced by a whoop of exhilarating joy.

“Oh sugar, Jethran! You truly are amazing!” he shouted over the wind, his face alight with a sillie wonder that banished all traces of fear. “You’re like... a flying sunset! A really fast, incredibly confident, flying sunset!”

Jethran only grinned, enjoying the sensation of effortless flight, the sheer freedom of it. They landed safely on the other side, Fable still trembling slightly, but now from exhilaration. Then Fable noticed Jethran’s tunic had risen substantially, showing that he too was... exhilarated.

“Well,” Fable said quietly as he gestured with his eyes towards the rise in Jethran's tunic. “What’s more surprising than your humility is the length of your tunic considering how large you are.”

Jethran’s blush nearly became its own light source as it brightened so deeply at the realization.

“Oh!” Jethran immediately covered himself with his satchel. “I didn’t mean to... that’s so embarrassing.”

Fable smiled. He didn’t say anything, but he thought to himself that with the height that Jethran’s tunic had achieved, embarrassment was the last thing that boy should be feeling.

They hiked for another few hours as the world bloomed into an impossible, audacious spectrum. The lilac trees grew taller, their citrine leaves brighter, and the air grew warmer, scented with sweet perfumes.

Bright blue monarchs darted past crimson lavender and green daffodils, the very ground seeming alive. Patches of soft, citrine moss spread like carpets over the lilac ground, and robins with vivid teal chests darted between trees, guarding nests of peach eggs.

Overhead, the gray sky, though still ever-present, was thinning, allowing glimpses of something vast and deep beyond. Every step brought them closer to something wilder, something more vibrant, a world that was shedding its muted past.

Jethran realized Fable had been right, at least about the possibility of finding answers here. They came up over a small hill, and at the top, the entrance to the sanctuary spread before them. Fable gasped, his eyes wide.

“There it is,” he whispered, a reverent awe in his voice. “It’s real.”

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The Breakdown

This chapter stands as one of my personal favorites because Fable steps into a truly vital role. Fable isn’t his best friend and he’s not his sidekick. He’s just someone Jethran met along the way who decided to walk with him. He’s less of a ride or die at this point and more of a ride while you’re interesting.

Fable initiates the conversation about the gods Jethran encountered, and while he believes in these beings, the lessons they offer go against everything he has ever learned. Those new trains of thought are incredibly difficult for someone raised in this world to accept. That friction causes their argument to end without any real resolution.

This dynamic draws direct inspiration from the real life relationship that shaped these characters. Jullian and I disagree on many things, particularly deeply held convictions. Fable is clearly a victim of propaganda in this story, and I would argue that both Jullian and I are victims of propaganda in reality. We are probably both wrong. If he were standing in front of me today, I would confidently tell you Jullian is wrong. Obviously.

Mourning Mirror

Throughout BLUSH BORN we experience small chapters featuring travel breaks. Travel sections in fantasy can become monotonous and offer little to the overarching plot. I honestly hate them. So I focused heavily on using these moments to progress the personal connection between the characters while advancing the storyline.

Jethran requires dreams and visions to move the narrative forward, and those moments demand scenes where he can actually rest for the night. Jethran experiences a dream where he stands in line with unknown people singing a song about mirrors. Later in the story we will uncover the true meaning of that vision.

Flying Sunset

Following their little dust up the night before, the story required a moment to prove to Fable that Jethran’s powers are useful and entirely safe. Flight is a vital part of existence for a creature like Fable, and losing that ability left a profound mark on him. Exposing his vulnerability became a necessary beat in the narrative. He wears a cheerful mask and carries intense bravado, so we needed to see how deeply his trauma affects him beneath that polished surface.

Landing on the other side of the chasm and experiencing the tunic tent provided necessary levity for this chapter while highlighting their shifting dynamic. Fable decides he wants to protect Jethran’s laughter, and Jethran then has to use his satchel to hide his physical exhilaration. The attraction between them is becoming impossible to ignore.

One fun fact I must share is that I wrote this entire chapter before I knew these two characters were in love. I will point out the exact moment I finally realized it later on, but I discovered their connection very late in the writing process. When I went back to reread the manuscript to look for areas to add foreshadowing, I found that all of these moments already existed organically in the text.

I have said it before and I will always claim it. This story wrote itself. I laced bits of imagination into it and placed portions of reality within the narrative, yet there still remained parts of this story entirely outside of my control.

The romance between Fable and Jethran was never part of my plan. Looking back through the text after reading it as many times as I have, they were always meant to fall in love. Changing that trajectory would have made the story read as disingenuous. I may be biased, but it is my true belief that denying these two characters their romance would have robbed the world of something beautiful.

Let’s Discuss

Jethran shares the wisdom of the Seven Songs, yet Fable struggles to accept it due to the Uncrowned King’s teachings.

* Have you ever had to unlearn deeply ingrained beliefs like Fable is being challenged to do here?

We get a glimpse into Jethran’s subconscious with the dream of the Mourning Mirror.

* Have you ever faced moments when you mourned the lives you never lived?

The chasm scene brings Fable’s deep trauma to the surface, it also gives the two a moment for banter and levity which foreshadow the deeper bond that is growing between the two.

* Have you ever written something that advanced its own plot in ways that you never intended?

What’s Next?

On the next episode we will read Chapter 17 Whispered Color where our two travelers stumble into a village that is unlike anything either one of them has ever experienced, and meet a new character who will influence them and their family for decades to come.

Thanks

As always, if you read this all the way to the end or if you listened to it all the way through, then you are absolutely my hero. I want to thank you for giving me the time out of your day and the space in your brain to share my story and to introduce Jethran to the world.

Hang in There

I'm so grateful to be able to have brought this episode to you today. While I might not be able to keep up my same schedule as before of two posts per week I will soon return full-time to my Substack and my writing. So just hang in there with me and thanks for being here.

Welcome to Find Your Colors

The publication and podcast where we discuss the Shards of Color Trilogy, a dark fantasy of speculative fiction. 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 these stories. Find Your Colors allows me to share these stories with people who want to read them and to take a moment to analyze the psychological concepts present throughout the narrative while showing how I translated my own life experience into this dark fairy tale.

Recap

Last week, we read Chapter 13 where Jethran encountered Rabb. He learned the vital difference between a righteous storm of anger meant to fight injustice and a chaotic storm of shame destined to destroy his own sanctuary. By swallowing his destructive fury, he stabilized the world around him and awakened the potent yellow light of his birthright.

We are now entering Chapter 14, where Jethran discovers the profound weight of memory and the power of finding a safe harbor in the storm.

Chapter 14 Understood Color

The glade was quiet. The air scrubbed clean and smelling of rain and lightning. Jethran sat by the small mound of soil that marked his mother’s grave.

The steady weight of the yellow light in his core was an unfamiliar presence. The storm had passed, both outside and in. Rabb’s lesson had settled inside him as a new piece of his architecture. He could feel the two energies, distinct as two stones in a pouch: the vital hum of righteous anger in his chest, channeled and controlled; the cold stone of his shame, now dormant in his gut. He had swallowed the storm.

He reached up and gently traced the new colorful ring on his cheek. It felt no different from the rest of his skin, yet it pulsed with a patient energy. He considered the lesson of Rabb. That each color was a tool, its nature defined by its use. The blue of his survival, the purple of his scars… they were his to command. This yellow was his ability to rise. It was the color of the living world, and felt like the most potent of them all. It was a deep well of potential. He contemplated the red color and what it meant.

In the quiet, remembering his mother landed upon him in a sharper way. He had this immense power now, this channeled energy, but he hadn’t had just a few days ago. He couldn’t use it to save her. He could change the color of the leaves on the trees, but he couldn’t turn back time. The grief was so pure and sharp it stole his breath.

“Memory is where we keep ourselves, so we are never lost,” said a voice from behind him. “But it can also be a cage, holding us captive until we learn to trust the journey.”

He spun around to see a red lady, suspended from the purple moon. Swinging like a pendulum over Regale’s grave.

“You refused to allow your memories to be stolen,” she continued. “You know you alone possess your history. That is the knowledge that has been passed to you… but I can’t remember the source.”

The lady looked off into the distance as if she was trying to recall something. Jethran felt a moment of recognition, remembering the vision he had experienced before entering Yaga Village.

“You’re Elba,” he said. “I saw you in a vision. But people… they don’t believe in you anymore.”

“People believe a lot of things.” The giant lady smiled with a toothless grin. “And none of it is my business. I exist no matter what Aught be known.”

“But why do I know your name?” he asked her. “And Crezwil… and Muralis… Rabb… how do I know?”

She perked up as if suddenly her entire life had been handed back to her.

“You know Crezwil!?” Elba beamed. “Oh, aren’t they beautiful? You said you saw Rabb? I miss him so much. Where did he go?”

“I’m not sure,” Jethran replied. “Do you not know how to find him?”

“Find who, dear heart?” She stared off in the distance, looking for another person.

Jethran was struck that she called him by the same name his mother called him. He started to cry.

“Why are you crying?” she asked.

“My mother used to call me dear heart,” he said softly.

“Your mother loved you very much,” Elba replied. “More than any other mother ever loved any other child.”

Jethran wiped the tears from his eyes and looked at this being as she swung back and forth.

“You asked if I knew where Rabb went…” Jethran said tightly.

“Oh, I miss him,” Elba said quietly. “But I can never remember the way to where he is. Isn’t that silly?”

Jethran thought of how lost she must feel, knowing that her memories were gone. He knew that the only thing that was truly his were his memories. He knew that she had given up something so important so that she could remember everyone else.

“Yes,” he replied. “But how do I know all of you?”

“Well, I can’t remember right now,” she continued swinging again. “Do you know me? Do you know who I am?”

A deep sorrow fell over her face. An expression of longing for something that ran deep.

“Elba,” Jethran replied. “You are Elba.”

“Well, of course I am,” she laughed. “I sometimes forget who I am. Like you do.”

“I don’t forget who I am,” Jethran corrected. “I’m just Jethran.”

“Just?” Elba scoffed. “You’ve forgotten everything,” Elba spoke with deep understanding. “You will always find yourself again when you listen to the Songs.”

“The color you carry is the color of Memory,” she said. “It’s the color of your birthright. The lineage of your power.”

“Why do you say my lineage?” Jethran begged. “What does that mean, who am I? Who did I come from?”

“I don’t know,” Elba whispered. “Well, I used to know. I think I did. I can’t remember. Who are you?”

Jethran, recalling his vision, shared what he knew in the hopes that it would help her to help him.

“The song,” Jethran answered. “It said that you gave up your memories so that you could hold the memories of every person who’s ever lived and died.”

“I did that?” Elba balked, “Well, how altruistic I must have been. Which song told you this?”

“Your song,” Jethran demanded. “The words said…”

“Excuse me?” Elba clapped back with the note of finality. “You must have mistaken me for somebody else. My song has no words.”

Jethran stared at this ancient being. He simply blinked as he watched this all knowing entity seem to know nothing.

“Is that why you are humming?” Jethran asked, “Is it because you have forgotten the words?”

“Trying to tell me lyrics when I know there are none,” Elba stared at the boy. “Next, you’ll try to tell me that you were out eating storms with Rabb.”

Jethran could see how tired she was. He could see the years of being lost in her own mind had taken a toll on her. It all felt like a waste of time to him.

“This is so aggravating!” Jethran shouted suddenly. “I thought you were supposed to help me, but if you don’t know and you can’t remember, what is the point?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure what help you want from me. I’m not even sure who you are or why you’re even here. But you’re bothering me.”

“I was told to seek out the Seven Songs,” he said.

“Seven?” Elba stopped swinging, a memory snapping her back to reality. “That’s right. You are seven. Of course\! The Seven…” she paused as she tried to recall.

“The Seven Songs,” Jethran snapped. “This is so aggravating! You told me to remember who I am. Who am I? Am I a song?”

“Ooh! You are the most beautiful song,” she said softly. “No songs came before you. The most perfect Cadence. Your song is in you. Remember who you are.”

“Remember what?” Jethran pleaded.

Elba suddenly looked past Jethran with an ancient sense of knowing. The air grew warm again as the coolness of her red glow faded.

“Wait,” he begged. “Don’t leave, I need to know…”

“Trust yourself,” she echoed. “Trust yourself and trust the other one. He will show you.”

With that she was gone. His hand drifted to the small satchel at his side and his fingers brushed against the smooth, cool wax of the candle Fable had given him.

“Trust the other,” Jethran repeated. “She couldn’t mean him…”

He took out the candle and, with a spark of energy from his fingertip, lit the wick. A bright flame sprang to life. It was silver and it seemed to glitter in the same way that Fable himself did. It cast a pale, sparkling light against the glade’s shadows. Jethran kept his eyes on the flame. He spoke, saying only one thing, “Fable.”

A clumsy rustle of yellow leaves came from the edge of the clearing, followed by a frantic whisper.

“Oh, sugar!”

Fable emerged from behind a lilac tree trunk. His colorful wings drooped slightly with worry until he saw Jethran was safe. His face was a mixture of terror and immense relief. He gestured toward the small, silver flame of the candle still burning near Jethran’s knee.

“See?” Fable said, his voice breathless but managing a weak grin. “I told you what that candle was for. It’s for finding things that are lost … and so, your lost friend has returned.”

“You’re not going to yell at me again, are you?” Fable’s voice was small, tentative.

Jethran looked up. Fable stood at the edge of the glade, half-hidden behind a lilac tree. He looked scared. Jethran blew out the candle. He stood up slowly, keeping his hands open and visible.

“No,” Jethran said softly. “I’m not.”

Fable took a hesitant step forward. “That was... a lot of yellow, Jethran. Like, a scary amount of yellow.”

“I know,” Jethran said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I was... overwhelmed.”

Fable smiled softly, but his smile faded as he took in the scene properly, his gaze landing on the massive splintered oak.

“But oh, Sugar, Jethran\! What was that? The entire forest shook\! Looked like the sky itself was throwing a fit right on top of this glade. I saw the lightning. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was so bright … so loud. I thought… I didn’t know what to think. I was worried about you. Scared my friend would be washed away by that storm.”

Jethran looked at the terrified face of this Silvarii. While he was unsure at what point they became friends, he felt a crack in the wall of his isolation. He had never explained his power to anyone. He didn’t know how.

“It was me,” he said. He was quiet and hoarse. “But the storm is over. I swallowed it.”

“You swallowed it? That sounds like terrible digestion,” Fable tilted his head, his eyes narrowing slightly. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’m in control of it now. It’s not controlling me,” Jethran let out a small, genuine laugh.

Fable’s enormous eyes went wider. He opened his mouth, then closed it, his gaze darting from Jethran to the shattered oak and back again.

He’s lying, Fable’s first thought was a desperate denial. But it was followed immediately by the undeniable truth. The storm grew with his rage and had vanished with his sorrow. The air still tastes of his power. It tastes delicious.

Fable was filled with pure terror and awe. He knew this wasn’t Silvarii magic, but he also was aware this was something ancient and was something that the King himself would kill to control or annihilate.

Fable knew that a power like that is a beacon and that a beacon draws hunters. He suddenly realized that they were not safe. He clutched the strap of the satchel on his shoulder like an anchor.

“Right,” Fable said. His voice stayed firm despite the tremor in it. “Okay. We’ll … put a pin in that. The how’s and why’s of you being able to throw a little tantrum with the weather can wait.”

Jethran’s eyes crinkled slightly at the nonchalance of Fable’s demeanor. Fable took a deep breath, scanning the open glade and the still-bruised sky above them. After witnessing the storm that just passed through, he knew they needed safety, whether it truly was Jethran or not.

“What we can’t wait for is getting out of the open. This place is a bowl, Jethran. If another squall hits, we’re the targets. We need to find proper shelter. Something with a roof made of stone, not leaves.”

He patted his satchel. “I brought food, but we can eat when we’re somewhere safe,” he said.

Jethran, still reeling from his own emotional cataclysm, could only nod. The idea of moving, of having a purpose dictated by someone else, was a relief. He rose to his feet and picked up the small candle. Fable waved his hand and caused a brief breeze to extinguish the little silver flame. Jethran looked with awe at the elemental magic that came with such ease from his Silvarii friend. Then they began their search for shelter.

Fable took the lead with urgency. As they moved around the perimeter of the glade, Jethran walked as if in a dream. The world, once a symphony of grays, was now a cacophony of vibrant hues. The lilac trunks of the trees holding up a canopy of almost aggressively yellow leaves. Clusters of ripe purple fruit hung like strange jewels from the branches, and a creeping yellow vine with blue flowers wrapped itself around a fallen log. It reminded him of the wallpaper at his home. Even the ground, just as it was where he buried his mother, was the same lilac as the trees. It was a jarring beauty. He focused on the familiar gray of the path’s stones, the only things that hadn’t changed, just to keep his balance.

While Jethran was lost in his internal world, Fable was intensely focused on the external one. He moved with a woodsman’s purpose, his eyes scanning every rock outcropping and shadowed dell at the glade’s edge.

“No, too damp,” he muttered, poking a stick into a hollow log. He peered into a thicket of thorns and shook his head.

“No visibility. Anything could sneak up on us,” the Silvarii said.

He tested the stability of a rock overhang with a hefty shove, grunting with dissatisfaction when a cascade of pebbles proved it unsafe. His concern wasn’t just for the weather; it was for his friend, and finding a safe harbor was the only way he knew how to help. Finally, after circling nearly the entire clearing and exhausting all the unsuitable options, Fable let out a triumphant gasp.

“There,” he said, pointing.

Tucked behind a curtain of hanging yellow moss that draped over a rock face was a dark opening. It was a shallow cave, a natural grotto that was dry and defensible. From its entrance, Jethran could still see the small lilac mound that marked his mother’s grave.

“This will do nicely,” Fable said. His practical energy was a welcome shield for the tension between them. He pushed aside the mossy curtain and stepped inside, his voice echoing slightly. “The entrance is narrow, the stone is dry, and there’s a good cross-breeze.”

Fable scurried around, all business. He had Jethran gather dry kindling while Fable himself arranged six smooth stones in a small circle. Once Jethran returned with an armful of twigs, he knelt and stacked them inside the circle.

Jethran looked at Fable, then at the small pile of wood. With a simple flick of his finger, a single spark of yellow energy shot from his fingertip and landed on the kindling. It immediately sprouted into cerulean fire that gave off a steady, comforting warmth.

Fable, who had been watching with wide eyes, let out a slow breath. As a Silvarii, he contained the power of the elements. Conjuring fire was commonplace to him. Jethran wasn’t a Silvarii.

“Okay,” he said. His voice, a little shaky but attempting a casual tone. “So, we’re going to pick up that pin we put in the whole ‘you control the weather with feelings’ thing… and we’re going to carefully place this new development… this ‘lightning bolts from fingertips scandal’ right underneath it.”

“But if you’ll notice,” the Silvarii said, gesturing to the space below the imaginary pin. “There seems to be quite a lot of stuff under that pin, Jethran. I’m not sure how long it can hold the weight.”

Jethran chuckled softly, then nodded his head. Once the source of light and heat was established, Fable finally relaxed.

He sat down with a sigh and produced the loaf of dark bread and the waterskin. A quiet comfort settled between them as they shared the simple meal. Inside the Grotto, the world felt smaller, safer. For a long time, the only sounds were the soft crackle of the embers and the gentle rustle of the trees outside. Fable didn’t push, didn’t pry. He just sat with Jethran, a silent presence. Finally, emboldened by the Silvarii’s patience, Jethran spoke.

“I met some people,” he said. “The old gods. The ones from the ancient myths.”

Jethran’s voice sounded low, absorbed by the stone walls. Fable’s munching slowed.

“The Seven Songs?” Fable whispered. “But, Jethran…”

“I’ve met four of them. But one has me truly lost inside. Rabb,” Jethran said. “He … told me something. About my anger. But it’s just so difficult to accept what he said. I am angry. And a part of me doesn’t care if it’s not logical or justified.”

“Who is it? The person that you’re angry with?” Fable asked.

His voice was small and hesitant. The question hung in the air, simple and direct. The honesty of it broke something open in Jethran.

“Myself,” he said, the admission aching in his throat. “Because if I had never been born, or if I didn’t have this flaw, she wouldn’t have been executed. My mother would still be here. The world would be just a little bit more… perfect.”

Fable watched as Jethran spoke and could see that he truly believed what he was saying. It made an ache inside his chest to see such a beautiful person wish their own existence away. He saw the weight of pain that surrounded Jethran like a cloak.

Fable leaned closer, “Jethran, that’s not…”

“The only crime she ever committed was loving me, and now she’s gone forever because of it,” Jethran interrupted, his voice holding a pain that was sharper than anger.

“This entire world is cold. It’s cold in the daytime under the sun. It’s cold at night. It’s bitter.” He wrapped his arms around himself, a sudden chill running through him that had nothing to do with the wind.

“From the moment that I left home, I’ve been cold. Because she kept me warm. She made me safe. As safe as I could be. And I don’t think there are enough blue flames in the world to bring me the warmth I had when she was alive. Even before, when I wasn’t home but she was, just knowing that she would be there when I got back… that brought me warmth. But that’s gone now.”

He looked at Fable, his eyes blazing with a grief so profound it was indistinguishable from rage. The storm in the sky intensified, a low rumble of thunder echoing his words. The aureolin in Jethran’s Blush began to pulse, a bright, sickening rhythm that seemed to draw the lightning from the clouds. The wind tore at Fable’s hair, and the Silvarii scooted toward Jethran. His own fear was eclipsed by a sudden need to stop his friend from being consumed by the storm of his own making. He placed a hand on Jethran’s arm.

“I'm sorry,” Jethran whispered. “I shouldn't be taking about these things.”

Jethran felt a strange, contradictory wave of both relief and weight. The act of saying it aloud made it more real. Without understanding fully why, he was trusting someone. The realization was as strange and powerful as the new color on his skin.

“This is a safe space, Jethran,” Fable offered as he placed his arm around Jethran’s shoulders. “The Grotto of Trust. Here you’re allowed to talk about anything. Never apologize for letting out your pain. Not here. Never to me.”

A unique embrace of calm settled over Jethran, and he smiled, another genuine smile. Fable stopped and stared, then found himself entranced, smiling as well. He decided to offer something in return.

“My momra used to tell me a story,” Fable said, clearing his throat. “When the world felt too quiet, or too gray.” Fable leaned back against the warm stone wall of the cave and began, his voice now gentle and low.

-----

Deep within the Silvered Wood,

Where ancient trees in shadow stood,

Prince Spark took to the evening sky

To catch the glowing stars on high.

The Queen decreed he take a hand,

To wed a suitor from the land.

He vowed to wed the sky above,

And set a task to test their love.

“Bring the First Wind’s quiet grace,

The stillness of its resting place.”

A riddle born of moving air,

A tranquil breath suspended there.

A warrior brought a crystal sphere,

With captured gusts held severe.

The magic broke and fiercely tore,

A sudden blast across the floor.

“A scar remains,” the Prince replied.

“Your violent cage is cast aside.”

A trickster gave an empty dome,

To serve as a secluded home.

Prince Spark stepped into the space,

And found an isolated place.

“An empty shell is not still,

It begs for love itself to fill.”

A planter brought tradition’s thread,

A single dawn from years long dead.

The fragile strand began to fade,

And turned to dust within the glade.

“A memory rests in history,”

Prince Spark spoke low and tenderly.

A varii came no gift in view,

The painter of the morning dew.

He looked into the Prince’s eyes,

With no trick or hidden lies.

“The stillness lives within the pause,”

This painter spoke of nature’s laws.

“The stillness rests inside the seed,

A quiet promise guaranteed.

It breathes within the cresting wave,

A gentle peace the oceans save.

It settles in the fading wind,

When the gales are softly thinned.

It flickers in the brightest flame,

A silent spark without a name.

It echoes through the darkest void,

Where binding terrors are destroyed.

It slumbers deep within the self,

A treasure on a hidden shelf.

It forms a perfect harmony,

A boundless love for you and me.

Stillness resides at the in-between,

In the moments when you are seen.

So, Prince Spark, please trust in me

When I say, “It’s you I see.”

That’s when love found Prince Spark,

No more alone in the dark.

They joined in light, wed right there,

Shared trust took them into the air.

Over Silvarii they ruled as Kings,

That is why the loved heart sings.

-----

“That was a beautiful song, Fable,” Jethran said quietly. “I think I’ll carry that with me forever.”

Fable fell silent. The quiet intimacy of the moment seemed amplified by the enclosing rock. He worried at a loose thread on his tunic, his colorful wings drooping slightly.

“That story … it’s about trust,” Fable said, his voice barely a whisper. “About offering what’s real.”

He took a shaky breath and finally met Jethran’s gaze across the soft blue light of the glowing embers. His own eyes were full of a deep, ancient pain.

“I want to give you my trust, Jethran. I need to tell you the real reason I can’t fly properly,” Fable looked Jethran in the eyes.

Jethran could sense something he hadn’t noticed before. He realized that beneath Fable’s theatrical and boisterous exterior pulsed the heart of someone who was adrift emotionally.

Fable shifted, turning slightly to show the back of his wings. He pointed to a spot near the base of his left wing, where a delicate, branching vein looked brittle and thin, the surrounding membrane almost transparently frail.

“I have the Wing FADES,” he confessed. The words came out as if he were showing off a new tunic. “It’s… a malady. The Hollow Healers officially named it Wing Fall Allowed Disappointing Evenhere Syndrome.”

Jethran recoiled at the name. His head tilted, he couldn’t sit quietly.

“So you’re facing this disease,” Jethran started, “and your healers decide to name it something that actually says that you’re a disappointment to the world?”

“Everyone simply calls it Wing FADES, or FADES,” Fable clarified. “It passes between Silvarii. It doesn’t kill you. It just… it makes your wings decay. Slowly. Until you can’t fly anymore. Eventually you’re forced to move out of the village. It’s permanent.” He looked towards the entry of the Grotto, unable to look at Jethran.

“My first love… his name was Arch. He was… charming, older. He said my wings were the most beautiful things he’d ever seen, that he wanted to fly with me forever. He made me feel like the sky was mine.”

Fable’s voice grew joyful, but was laced with remembered pain. Jethran could see the act, he could feel the betrayal in Fable’s words. Still Fable spoke as if describing a mild inconvenience.

“Arch knew he carried FADES,” Fable continued. “He knew and he said nothing. It wasn’t until after he was gone that I felt it. A weakness in my left wing. A flight that ended in a clumsy fall instead of a landing. I thought I was just tired. But then I saw it… the way the light passed through a spot that used to be opaque. The brittleness of a vein that used to be strong. He stole my sky from me, Jethran. He left me with this… this slow falling.”

Tears welled in Jethran’s eyes when he saw that there were no tears in Fable’s eyes. Then Fable’s voice deepened with the weighted force of a long-held decree. Fable looked Jethran square in the eye as he announced his position.

“The Uncrowned King says, ‘One who lives with illness and disease must be removed with ease. Those who remove the taint will forever be a saint.’ He says we are tainted. We are Flawed. Where there is a flaw there can be no love. We aren’t meant for love. We should be removed.”

“But, Fable,” Jethran tried. “That’s not...”

“It has been written,” Fable interrupted with a smile, despite the pain clearly consuming him. “Who am I to argue with that?”

Tainted. Flawed. It was said with such deeply held conviction that Jethran said nothing. He didn’t know what to say. He reached out, placing his hand gently on Fable’s shoulder in the soft blue light of the Grotto.

I will be the friend Fable needs and deserves, Jethran thought to himself. I will simply be genuine and true, even if it’s uncomfortable. He needs a person he can count on. Even if I’m the only one.

They sat in that shared silence as the blue embers burned low, the shadows dancing on the stone walls around them. Fable settled down for the night on his bed of soft moss, as Jethran stood at the stone table, both of them watching the woods from the mouth of the Grotto.

They saw a sudden flash of movement. It was a fox with a vibrantly blue coat. She paused at the edge of the trees, her gray eyes observing them with curiosity. Jethran reached under the table, retrieving a piece of dried blue fish that had been left over from their meal. He tossed it to the fox, and she carefully made her way to it. Then she darted away, back into the citrine undergrowth of the forest.

A moment later, a mother deer with a muted lilac coat emerged from a thicket with her fawn, its smaller form bearing the same hue. They moved gracefully through the forest, grazing from a patch of red violets. They were a striking display of the new colors of life within the world. Their quiet presence was a final, peaceful note.

The two companions realized in that moment, despite the terror in the Uncrowned Fortress, that even after the most violent storms, beauty, and life endured.

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The Breakdown

This chapter actually has a lot going on. Starting with the encounter with Elba. As I mentioned before, this particular character was based on my grandmother who suffered from Alzheimer’s. She would always tell us stories about her childhood and family. But then one day she left her body. And she was gone for a good few years before she died. It was so sad watching this woman fall away like this. So because of that struggle that she faced I decided to make her into a paragon of memory and history. But I also provided a sad twist in that in order for her to preserve the memories of everyone who’s lived and died she has to forget her own.

Elba is truly the most significant of the Seven Songs that he encounters. While they are all telling him the truth, the vision he has of her in an earlier chapter, combined with what she says in person, tells him his full life story. She gives him information that will not be fully realized for him until years down the line. It will be at the end of the second book before he realizes that she told him all of these things.

And while this absolutely works in the story because it provides necessary foreshadowing without giving anything away, it also speaks to the fact that so often in life we are in such a hurry and in such a rush that we just aren’t listening and paying attention to the signs. So many times we look back and we realize that we could have saved ourselves from something or we could have figured out something sooner. I’ve always had the biggest problem with listening to my own intuition.

But not long ago I started to actually listen to that little voice inside me, that little feeling in my gut about people, about places, about situations. And learning to actually get myself away from bad things when I have bad feelings because I'm actually not crazy, I'm just insightful.

The next aspect that comes about in this chapter is the return of Fable. We have some amazing establishing moments with this character where we really get to see who he is aside from the loud and boisterous explosivity.

This is a defining chapter for Fable and is largely and directly based on my interactions with the person who inspired it, a man named Jullian.

Jethran uses the summoning candle which is a direct call out to the moments in my life when I’ve actually lit candles and called out for Jullian to appear and he would arrive within 24 to 48 hours.

Fable shows up and addresses the situation with the storm. This is Jethran’s first opportunity to discuss his powers or his abilities with someone other than one of the Seven Songs. After being told by Elba to trust the other, he takes a leap of faith that she meant Fable.

After they search around a bit seeking shelter from the possibility of another storm, Jethran finally decides to open up completely and tells Fable what he’s experienced.

Jethran discusses the pain of the loss of his mother and how he blames himself for it. Fable wants to correct him but he just can’t. So instead he chooses to tell him a story. Except this isn’t just any regular story.

On the first night that I met Jullian, he was at my apartment and we were just sitting on my bed and he looked over and I had this vase filled with roses and they happened to be blue. He remarked on the fact that he had never seen blue roses before and so I decided to share with him a story that I had recently learned. The Princess and the Blue Rose. Click link to go read that.

I wanted to capture that moment between myself and Jullian because it was a really sweet moment when I was telling the story and can't believe that he listened to me for as long as he did. At the end of it what Jethran said, “That's such a beautiful story and I'm going to take that with me forever,” is what Jullian said to me.

So I completely rewrote that story from the ground up to make it fit into their world, to make it relevant. So I have Fable tell the story in a way that works in their world while also paying respect to the original. I even find a way to give a hint of foreshadowing into their future because it establishes a dual kingship of two husbands who ruled together long before these two become married.

What I find interesting is that this part was written before I even knew that these two were going to be married. While I was the one who told the story originally in real life it fit in this moment to have it be Fable. And that’s because of the moment that comes next.

When I met Jullian on our second encounter he came and sat down in my living room floor and told me the story of his ex. He said that his ex was positive and did not tell him and that this man also was giving him meth and not telling him what it was until it was a year into him doing it regularly. He felt betrayed and broken because he loved this person and that’s when he told me that he couldn’t be loved because he’s gay and because being gay is a sin. It’s almost a verbatim conversation that was had there.

There was something so simple, so pure and honestly so heartbreaking about what he was saying. I wished and I still wish that someday he could be able to find the love that he was looking for at one point in time.

Because no matter who he is as a person no matter who any of us are, we all deserve love. I found myself promising that I would be a consistent person in his life, no matter what.

The relationship between myself and this person is very different than the relationship these two share, but the foundation of being a safe space remains the same. Although at times it is very trying to do so.

It was very important to me to convey The narrative of being HIV positive into the story because it's a big part of my life. It's not something that we discuss it it's not something that's put into fantasy stories. It's not something that's put into media enough with enough proper representation. It still reads properly on the page, and when we dive into it in the later chapters you really get to see how the stigmatization plays out in their world. It's not that dissimilar in how it plays out in our world. Because despite the fact that we have our medications that we have our treatment so we have all that, it's still a painful disease to live with.

Society often uses illness or natural differences to label people as “Flawed” or “tainted” to justify marginalizing them. Fable believing he is unlovable because of a disease mirrors the exact trauma Jullian expressed. This trauma is common within the gay community, especially within the HIV community.

Even today, despite the fact that people say things are different, that we have better medications, that people can be undetectable now and live long, healthy lives, and that it is nothing like it was in the 80s... all of the things they love to say fail to change the fact that it happened. It is true the medicine may be good, but the medicine only treats the physical condition. The path of healing from it, and I mean being truly healed rather than simply cured, is something else entirely.

It is not a small thing how the Gray Order of Evenhere acts as a stand-in for the stigma of modern society.

It's this moment of sharing each other's pain and strength and honestly sharing their greatest fears that they find a level of intimacy that neither of them have experienced before. This sets the path and begins to forge an unbreakable bond. Because when we share our stories, we give space to commonality. It's true common ground that we find our people and that we stop being alone.

Let’s Discuss

Jethran receives life-altering information from Elba, but his grief and frustration make it difficult for him to fully process it in the moment. Then Fable steps in to provide a sanctuary when the storm threatens to return.

* Jethran struggles to trust his own intuition until Elba pushes him. How do you practice listening to your own intuition when the world feels loud?

* Fable uses a story to comfort Jethran when direct advice fails. Have you ever had a moment where art or a story provided the exact comfort you needed?

* Becoming a “safe space” for someone carrying heavy trauma is a profound responsibility. Who has been a safe space for you, or who do you strive to be a safe space for?

What’s Next?

Next time we will follow along as Fable takes Jethran to see out some answers. And the two companions grow closer along the journey. We will see how Fable is affected by his illness and whether the safety of the Grotto of Trust can hold up against the approaching dangers.

And as always, if you read this all the way through or listen to it all the way to the end, then you are absolutely my hero and I just want to thank you for giving me the time of your day and the space in your brain to hear my story and introduce Jethran to the world.

I still remember the day you sent me away.

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If you like what you've read here, please feel free to join as a free or paid subscriber. Any level of support you give is extremely appreciated, honored, and welcomed. Click the button below for a 25% off for your first year. Click the button below that to join as a free subscriber.

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Thanks for stopping by.

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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As always, if you read this all the way through or listened to it until the very end, you are absolutely my hero. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me the time in your day and the space in your brain to share my story and introduce Jethran to the world.

You can reject me. That's totally fine. You won't be bothered. Neither will I. You're not the first one who didn't recognize the story in their hands. You won't be the last. You think I'm not used to it. You're wrong. I've been rejected my entire life. I cut my teeth on rejection. My first rejection came shortly after I spoke my first words. Something about my voice was just wasn't a good fit.

You can reject me. That's totally fine. One day someone is going to see me. They're going to see that I'm a story that they can't put down. They will want to see what happens next. They will call me a page turner. They won't call me just when they're horny. They won't call me just when they’re feeling regrets. They won't call me just when they're drunk. They won't call me just when they're bored. They'll call me because they want to be a part of the story. They'll call me because they want to read more. They will want to sign with me. They will want to align with me.

You can reject me. That's totally fine. You don't have to reply. I'll figure it out in time. I would be lying if I said I appreciate the same rejection that you gave to everyone else. I understand you just don't have the time. One day someone will have the time. One day someone will take the time.

You can reject me. That's totally fine. One day someone will love my cover art. One day someone will want to open me and feel what's inside. One day someone will be enticed by my flaps. They’ll love what the see on the back. They're going to want to know where the story goes. They're going to see the work that I've put into my prose. They're going to love the structure of my sentences. One day someone's going to see that I'm timeless. One day they're going to think that I'm just so timely. One day someone is going to think that I am a great concept. They're going to appreciate my platform.

You can reject me. That's totally fine. You don't have to be the agent of my rise. One day someone's going to pick me up. One day someone's going to read me and never want to stop. One day someone's going to want to see how the story ends. One day someone is going to talk about me to their friends. One day someone is going to represent me.

Until then,

I'll keep representing myself.

Thank you for your consideration.

Welcome to Find Your Colors. Through this publication and podcast we are discussing the Shards of Color Trilogy and currently, we are working our way through the first book of that trilogy titled BLUSH BORN.

I am Jeff B. White and I'm the writer and creator of this trilogy. Find Your Colors allows me to present the fantasy story within Blush Born as well as its sequels A Faded Quest and Echoes of Foreshadow.

I am dissecting the psychological concepts that are present within the narrative as well as sharing how I have turned my own personal story of struggling and survival into this dark fairy tale.

Recap

On Monday we read through Chapter 11 Without Color, and we discussed the insidious nature of gaslighting and psychological manipulation. We saw enter into this village where he met an individual named Nimrah Yaga. We also discussed the lateral harm present within the gay community. Now we come to Chapter 12 Born with Color, where we see Jethran awaken in that same Village as a new person has arrived.

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This post is a paid member post and so while the chapter is available the breakdown is reserved for members who have chosen to become a paid subscriber. Paid subscriptions allow me to continue writing and sharing my work and my podcast. You can follow this link to support me and my work as I work to grow a community of people who are focused on healing and growth and enjoy getting there through fantasy. Simply click the button below and sign up today to receive 25% off for your first year!

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The Breakdown

Narratively, this chapter serves a few specific purposes. I could have concluded the village sequence right there where he got through that moment, ending it all in one succinct chapter. But I truly wanted to show how the effects of gaslighting and psychological manipulation last far longer than they ever should. Very often, we finally find our way out of a toxic situation long after we should have left, so I wanted his confusion to last an extra beat or two longer than comfortable.

The significance of the blue-haired woman showing up and him witnessing her manipulation is deeply rooted in reality.

So often we will be in the midst of something terrible happening to us and we are simply unable to look at our own lives or see how we are being victimized. But when we witness that exact same abuse happening to another person, it is almost instantaneous that we want to step in and do something, even when we refuse to do that for ourselves.

I am the absolute king of neglecting myself in certain areas, but when I see the exact same thing happening to someone else, I will immediately react and jump in to see that they are safe and taken care of. Yet I just do not do that for myself.

This is also the chapter where Jethran finally releases a new color, and the color red is intimately tied to his memory and the past. Having him come to this lesson and realize that his memories are the only things he truly owns is vital because they are the only things people cannot take away from him. When you are a victim of psychological manipulation and warfare and gaslighting, the main thing people try their absolute best to take from you is your memory and your own recollection of events. In essence, they are taking your own self away to replace your inner narrative with the fictional story they give you. In this way, him breaking through the damage he faced in that village through the realization of his own power was a vital portion of this chapter. It was very important to me to convey that thought clearly.

So then we have him make his way back to the gravesite where he buried his mother. As he finally begins to mourn her and mourn all of the things that have happened to him, his raw emotions affect the weather yet again. It happens so suddenly that he never truly notices it. From sheer exhaustion, he simply passes out in the rain.

Enter Fable

That is when the story changes forever and we meet the character of Fable. Fable comes in with this loud trumpet blast of a voice, waking Jethran up and immediately trying to clean him up.

As I have explained before, Fable is directly based on a real person I know named Jullian. In my memoir, I describe him in a chapter titled Jullian and the Blue Rose as a six-foot-five whirlwind of energy who is theatrically absurd, a borderline narcissist Golden Retriever mix with a heart of gold, and the human embodiment of a glitter bomb exploding in a synagogue. He is a pain in the ass who stumbled into my life like a hurricane in a yarmulke, leaving a trail of sparkle and chaos in his wake. He has a tall, lanky frame topped with Disney prince eyes and a cartoonish smile, and he always seems perpetually on the verge of either a graceful pirouette or a clumsy pratfall.

In my memoir I describe him as a cleaning fairy who I summon with a candle. I literally have had more times than I can count… and I've tested it to see if it works and it does every time… I take a blue candle and I carve his name into it say a few words light it and then within 24 to 48 hours he has arrived with a pizza in his hand and ready to tackle whatever problem it is that I've called him for with a smile.

Yet we clash in quite a few ways. Spiritually, I am a witch and he is a devout Jew. He is also a gay person of color who happens to be a Trump-supporting Republican, and he uses far-right talking points as normal everyday banter. When I was writing my memoir, Shards of Hope A Tweaker Witch's Journey, he actually told me I might want to work on the title because the word witch could be off-putting or alienate some readers by activating people's sensitivities, but was unfazed by the rest of the title.

Yet despite how many times I have gotten rid of him in my life, he has always come back and he always comes bearing gifts. He has brought me flowers more than any other man ever has, and there is a form of true love there. It is in no way sexual or romantic. It’s almost like a little brother in the sense that the way I react to him is exactly how I imagine my older sister reacts to me. It is a very personal and profound ick.

But he is fiercely loyal and incredibly supportive, and he senses exactly when I need a shoulder or a distraction from the darkness. Despite our massive differences, we share a deep understanding of each other's pain. We are both survivors navigating addiction, trauma, and the struggle for acceptance in a world that often feels incredibly hostile. Jullian is also my first subscriber who is on the Prism Tier, which is what I named my Founding Member tier here on Substack.

In later chapters, more will be revealed about Fable and his inspiration. It was vital to me that I had someone who was a true foil for Jethran. I needed someone who did not automatically agree with him, someone who challenged him, and someone he could go back and forth with regarding this new belief structure he's forging in his life.

Fable parroting the Uncrowned King's propaganda perfectly shows how oppressive systems survive by convincing the oppressed to police themselves and attack their own kin. It so often happens in the real world where people of marginalized communities are conditioned to hate themselves and hate others, perpetuating the very systems that keep us in these situations.

Fable shuts down Jethran’s valid, righteous anger because, despite Jethran having every reason to be furious, it is viewed as presenting negativity. This is a perfect metaphor for how people often demand that victims suffer quietly and politely, because anything real makes them uncomfortable. This is also a direct manifestation of the real person Fable is based on. In moments when I have been rightfully angry at Jullian for something he did that he absolutely should not have, it is not out of character for him to suddenly throw back that I am being unnecessarily negative just for speaking up and setting boundaries.

As for some of the linguistic tics that Fable has, one of them is the phrase "Oh sugar." It took me multiple times reading this chapter out loud before I could record it without laughing because I had never heard myself say it in the exact same tone that both Fable and Jullian use. It is a direct quote straight out of Jullian's mouth that I thought fit this character so incredibly well. It actually becomes much more of a cultural thing later on as we meet other people of his race. Each Silvarii has their own version of this exclamation. One might say "Oh pencils" or "Oh snacks" or "Oh sparkles" when they are angry or startled.

The final word Fable says before he leaves is "Malan zat." This is again taken from real-life inspiration. When Jullian is confronted with something he said or did and a point of finality enters the situation, he very often replies by saying "Mazel tov." It is extremely annoying and it always ends the conversation. I gave that exact tactic to Fable to use whenever he wants to abruptly end a conversation.

While most of the characters in my book who are based on a real person have been given an anagram of their name, Fable's naming came about differently. Initially in my memoir, I was not going to use anyone else's real names, and for the portion Jullian was in, I had decided to give him the pseudonym Fabbian. I have since changed that, and people's real names are now in the book if they have signed off on it. But that initial pseudonym helped when I was creating the character of Fable. Since I described Jullian in my book as a fairy whom I summoned by lighting a candle, I thought how simple and easy it would be to just make him into a literal fairy since this is a fantasy world.

Of course, I later decided to rename the entire fairy race and call them the Silvarii. Doing so allowed me to utilize the word fairy as a pejorative within the story. This works so incredibly well because it is already a derogatory homophobic term in the real world, and getting to use it in that way for the narrative serves a huge purpose. If you think about it in the real world, using that term to insult someone is ridiculous because fairies are powerful, magical, beautiful creatures of light and joy. How is that even an insult? But it plays beautifully in the story because I get to use that term alongside the term Flaw in place of the actual f****t, which is a very necessary thing to ground the reality of their oppression.

As you will see if you keep reading along with me, Fable becomes an integral part of the story. He is quite simply a character the narrative could not exist without. He is the most important figure in this book outside of Jethran, and I am just so incredibly grateful that I discovered him. He has changed my life in ways that I cannot possibly convey and I truly cannot wait for the world to find him. So if you are listening right now, thanks again, Jullian.

Let's Discuss

This chapter explores the profound clarity that comes from stepping outside the fog of manipulation and the jarring reality of toxic positivity.

* Have you ever experienced a moment where witnessing someone else being mistreated finally opened your eyes to your own situation?

Fable is someone who will eventually grow into a person who seriously supports Jethran to their dying days, but it's through his need for connection after having lost the most important person that he decides to give Fable a chance.

* Do you have a Fable or a Jullian in your life?

* How do you navigate complicated relationships with people who relentlessly challenge your patience but also fiercely support you?

Feel free to answer these questions right here in the comment section, or you can simply take them with you as you go.

What's Next?

On Monday, we will dive into a complete read-through and discussion on Chapter 13 of BLUSH BORN, titled Storming Colors. We will see Jethran encounter another one of the Seven Songs and learn a valuable lesson on anger.

Paid Members

I want to express my sincerest gratitude to you for investing in my work. Your financial contribution gives me the time and the safety to keep writing, to keep podcasting, and to keep bringing these stories into the light.

And so as always, if you read this all the way through or if you listened to it all the way to the end, then you are absolutely my hero. I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me the time in your day and the space in your brain to share my story and to introduce Jethran to the world.

Welcome to Find Your Colors, the publication and podcast where I am breaking down the narrative of the Shards of Color Trilogy through an exploration into the psychological concepts within and real life inspiration behind the first book of that trilogy titled, BLUSH BORN.

I am Jeff B. White and today I'm going to be discussing something a little bit different from my normal writing. There will be no chapter, and today's breakdown already happened privately.

I started chemo today.

Four years ago, which blows my mind that it's been that long, I began my cancer experience. It was a terrifying moment in my life. I woke up one day with a softball-sized lump on my neck, and I actually hurt from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. I could barely move, but I got myself to the hospital. In an Uber, because I live in America, so I can't afford an ambulance. After they ran some tests, they came back and told me that I had a malignant tonsillar carcinoma.

They demanded that I do a biopsy right then and there on the spot. The doctors came at me with a gun-like needle device they were going to jam into the side of my neck to pull cells from the tumor. They told me to be still and quiet. I did not. One of the doctors held me against a wall as I screamed and begged for them to stop. He pressed my face and my body firmly against the wall while the other one stabbed me with this giant, silver gun thing.

Of course, they didn't get the cells that they needed. So they did it a second time. The doctor pinned me harder against the wall and clamped my mouth shut while the other stabbed me in the neck again. They did not get the cells that they needed the second time.

They actually attempted and tried to go in for a third attempt. I punched the doctor in the face. Afterward, a third doctor came in the room and sincerely apologized on behalf of Mount Sinai. I then left the hospital against medical advice and was told that I would not survive the weekend.

Yet, I continued on and I lived with this malignant tonsillar carcinoma for thirteen months. During that thirteen months, I was also diagnosed with perinasal sarcoma. The treatment for perinasal sarcoma is the removal of your nose, leaving you with a hole in the center of your face. I wrestled with this diagnosis quite heavily.

I couldn't imagine, as difficult as my life had been already, to consider living my life without a nose. I fully came to the determination that I was simply not going to seek treatment and would find a way out quicker.

To my surprise, at the end of that thirteen months, I was informed that I did not have malignant tonsillar carcinoma. I also did not have a perinasal sarcoma. Both of those were a misreading of my test results. Isn't that fantastic?

For thirteen months, I began to seriously and thoroughly plan my death to avoid life without a face. This is when they decided to inform me that I had the least cancer of all the cancers. The cancer that the cancer doctors don't treat as real cancer. The cancer that they sit and watch. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The cancer that you can live with for 30 years. Isn't that fantastic?

It was at this point that I began to face my own mortality.

Susan G. Komen

Back in 2015, there was this commercial that would come on late at night for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. It was a commercial with a name: Kathleen's Story.

Kathleen was a woman in her mid-to-late twenties. She shared about how she had just had a baby and she found out that she had breast cancer while she was pregnant. She wasn't sure if she was going to be around to watch her son grow up. When she said that because of the research of the Susan G. Komen Foundation there was a chance that she might, that's all I needed to hear. Kathleen's Story worked on me, because I signed up to give monthly donations, and I've given that $15 a month donation for years. I wanted to do my part to assist with breast cancer research. I wanted her to be able to see her son grow up.

She led me to think about all of the women in my life. I thought about how grateful I was, and still am, for my own mother. I thought of how grateful I was that, despite her health concerns over the years, she was able to watch me grow up.

And then, I thought about how grateful I am that I'm a man and that I would never have to deal with breast cancer myself. I wore the little pink ribbons from time to time to show support during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I proudly wore my Susan G. Komen t-shirt. I just thought I was being a good man; I thought I was being an ally.

F**k Cancer Entirely

A few years ago, after having received a leukemia diagnosis, I had just begun to learn the steps necessary for navigating that, when a new lump emerged beneath my right areola.

This resulted in a diagnosis of Paget's disease. Statistically, this disease makes up for 1 to 4% of all cancer cases. To add to that, only 0.01% of men will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Of breast cancer patients, only 1% of them will be men. The odds of this diagnosis being given to a man is 0.0025%. I am the noise after the decimal point. I am the cancer unicorn.

When my doctor made the order for me to have my first mammogram, I suddenly found myself in a crisis of my own manhood. The word breast was now being applied to my own body. I have no appreciation for that word in reference to myself. I have to admit that I still can't use the word when discussing my own body. And I can't bring myself to state that I have that specific type of cancer. I have Paget's disease.

It has been an assault against my masculinity that I had never prepared myself to face.

My relationship with masculinity and manhood has always been a war. Growing up in the South, I was never masculine enough. We are taught that masculinity is a strength that allows us to be pillars of male rigidity. We don't measure up to what we're told being a man is about if we show our emotions or wear the wrong thing. If we care about how we look or present ourselves, or apply self-care practices.

As the years stripped away the noise, I realized that the standard definition of manhood is a hollowed-out lie. It never applied to me anyway, because I'm not some weak little man who allows my masculinity to be defined or gauged from external sources. I'm a strong queer boy who navigates my own manhood and masculinity from within my own internalized barometer. There’s a big difference there.

The stoic man, terrified of his own reflection and unable to name his feelings, isn't strong. He is incomplete. A man whose identity is threatened by a hue or a gemstone is the most fragile little creature among us.

In truth, the concept of masculinity is nothing more than a fragile box. It is a structure that, for so many men, shatters the second it touches anything soft, vulnerable, or pink. In my case, I found myself facing the very real fear that my masculinity would reach its critical point of breakage the moment that it was placed between two cold panels of a machine.

The straight world loves to look down on gay men because they see us as overly feminine and place us in a category where they also place women. Within the gay community, we enforce this rigid hierarchy in the same ways for the same reasons. We look down on the bottom because we bought the lie that assuming the passive role sexually is an effeminate act, and they equate femininity with weakness.

Meanwhile, the tops would cry and beg for it to stop if they ever had to do what we do. Men would literally die if they had to do what women do.

Because men, even gay men, don't want to be seen as a woman. It’s absurd. I am not a woman, but if you refer to me as one out of your own weak masculinity, I take it as a compliment. Women possess a resilience that men are taught to fear. Women contain this raw, Earth-grounding power and strength. That truth leaves men feeling forced to define themselves as stronger simply because they aren't.

I carry no fear over a little lipstick, or some concealer, or even a cute little skirt, if it accentuates all the right parts. Because that's what's cool about a skirt. How I decorate my manhood and how I dress my manhood does nothing to diminish my masculinity. It enhances it. And if your manhood is so weak that it's easily deconstructed by things like this, then it defies the definition that you claim your manhood carries.

My masculinity isn't a porcelain vase. It doesn't break because I wear eyeliner or find power in the color pink. I stopped questioning my masculinity years ago. It was solid.

I thought that my sense of masculinity had passed every test. Then life gave me a pop quiz.

Hold Your Breath

Calling to set up the appointments for these mammograms was honestly the worst part, in hindsight. I could hear the receptionist’s smile through the phone. She had her polite, ready-made rejection of a confused man calling a women’s clinic prepared. She always had to put me on hold while she went to go check because she believed that the doctor must have made a mistake. But then she came back on the line, her voice dropped an octave into a solemn tone and I could hear the dead silence behind her words. That was the exact moment the screen told her that I wasn't lost. I was the patient.

I missed my first two appointments, because I just couldn't go. When I finally arrived, the clinic smelled of perfume and hand sanitizer. The walls were a sea of pink ribbons and non-threatening pastels. I felt like a trespasser in a quiet space that had been curated for female vulnerability.

Every time I sat in that waiting room, the other patients seemed to find their thoughts very difficult to mask. At first, there was an unmistakable recoil. I watched their lips tighten and their brows crease. They silently demanded to know what a man was doing in their sanctuary.

Then, a softening would wash over them. They realized we were standing on the same terrifying ground. Their eyes would offer a sudden embrace of deep understanding before they looked away. It was those moments of empathy that left me wanting to crawl into a hole and hide.

Another unforeseen moment that came from this was when I witnessed women who had just received the most terrible news of their lives. They were sitting in the waiting room looking as if they had been completely leveled. They would stare out the window with tears rolling down their faces. But then, something Divine happened. They would take a breath, ball up their fists, and suddenly be taller right where they were sitting.

I was being granted witness as they plated themselves with the armor of the Amazons. It felt like a sacred moment I wasn't supposed to see. Even still, it was a moment that I am very grateful to have been granted audience. It was the gift of being allowed to watch them as they moved into their strength, which allowed me to gain mine.

Then the nurse called my name. I walked into the back and put on the paper gown.

Step forward. Place your breast on the plate. Lower your shoulder.

I turned to look at the nurse because all I could think was: How? I don't have one.

Well, she found it. I still think it was witchcraft but, I stood there as she pressed my chest into the machine.

Turn your head to the side. Hold your breath.

Holding my breath was easy because I constantly had to remind myself to breathe during this time.

And this was the moment a new reality set in. Surviving this ordeal immediately stopped feeling like an emasculation. It became a transcendence. I viscerally understood something fundamental about women, about pain, and about endurance.

I thought of every woman I had ever known. I knew they had all stood exactly where I was standing. I thought of Kathleen. For the first time in years. I wondered if she got to see her son grow up. I realized that because of her, I had been donating to the very same research that would later save my own life.

I found the lineage of suffering, of survival, and of quiet grace in the face of the impossible. In a strange, beautiful way, I was allowed to touch it for just one second.

It was this realization that a man's strength is born not from stoic silence but from radical vulnerability that is the exact foundation upon which I built Jethran Frye, the hero of BLUSH BORN and the center of the Shards of Color Trilogy.

In his world, the oppressive Gray Order views emotion as a nasty disease. They want perfect, silent chords. They want compliance. When Jethran’s vibrant colors begin to bleed through the gray, they diagnose him with a chronic case of Attention Necessity. They demand he dull his shine.

But Jethran redefines power not just in his world, but in general. He is a male fantasy lead who cries because he is sad, screams because it hurts, and complains because it isn't fair. He doesn't use muscle or win with a sword. He refuses to stop feeling. His greatest magic manifests through his pink Blush. He proves that a man rooted in emotion isn't weak, but is a force because he is a danger to the status quo.

True strength isn't about dominating a room or fitting a mold or wearing earth tones. It is about taking the moments where you are terrified, shattered, and utterly out of place, and allowing them to transform you.

Let's Discuss

This post explores the profound clarity that comes from stepping outside of the fragile box of traditional masculinity and the jarring reality of facing your own mortality.

* Have you ever experienced a moment where witnessing someone else's quiet grace and survival finally opened your eyes to your own strength?

Jethran is someone who proves that a man rooted in emotion isn't weak, and it's through the lineage of suffering and resilience that I discovered the foundation of his radical vulnerability.

* Do you have a moment in your life where surviving a particular ordeal stopped feeling like a deconstruction of yourself and actually became a transcendence?

As a man, the parts of myself that the world tries to use to disembody me from my own masculinity are actually the parts of myself that define my masculinity.

* What parts of your own vulnerability are you hiding because the world called them flaws?

Men facing this illness are rare, if you or someone you know is a man facing this disease. Please reach out. I would love to chat with you.

Feel free to answer these questions in the comment section below or just take them with you as you go. My inbox is always open.

Donate to Breast Cancer Research

Over the past 15 years, an average of 74 cents of every dollar spent by Susan G. Komen have gone directly towards research, community-based health programs, education and advocacy programs to support its mission of saving lives and ending breast cancer.

To find out more about all the things they're doing to help those who are fighting and surviving breast cancer as well to find out all the ways that you can help please click the button below.

What's Next?

On Monday, we will dive into a complete read-through and discussion on Chapter 13 of Blush Born, titled "Storming Colors." We will see Jethran encounter another one of the Seven Songs and learn a very valuable lesson on anger.

Subscribe Today

I honestly want to express my sincerest gratitude to those of you who have invested in my work. I now have 11 paid subscribers out of 30 total. Two of them are Founding Tier. Each of you honor me with your presence. I can never fully express exactly how much it means to me to have your support. Your financial contributions give me the time and the safety to keep writing, to keep podcasting, and to keep bringing these stories into the light.

If you would like to subscribe, please follow the link below and consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

And so as always, if you read this all the way through or if you listened to it all the way to the end, then you are absolutely my hero. I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me the time in your day and the space in your brain to share my story and to introduce Jethran to the world.

Colorfully yours,

Jeff B. White

Content warning: Psychological manipulation, gaslighting, discussion on lateral violence

Welcome to Find Your Colors. Here we are discussing the narrative within the Shards of Color Trilogy and the first book in that trilogy, BLUSH BORN.

I am Jeff B. White, and I am the writer and creator of these stories. Through this publication and podcast, I am focusing on the emotional intelligence, radical vulnerability, and transformative growth found through exploring the psychological concepts and real-life story behind this dark fairy tale.

Recap

Last week we journeyed through Chapters 9 and 10 of Blush Born. We witnessed Jethran endure the execution of his mother, Regale. In the following chapter, we saw him bury her, say his final goodbyes, and breathe in the mist of Muralis to numb the unbearable pain of that moment. Adrift and wandering, he eventually stumbled upon another settlement. Now we come to Chapter 11, where Jethran walks into that village to discover exactly who lives beneath the heavy steam.

Let's Discuss

This chapter was stressful to write and is by design stressful to read. If anything in this Chapter 11 breakdown touched something inside you that left you feeling bothered or shaky, please take some time for yourself as soon as possible to just breathe and center. Practice some intentional self-care. Reach out to a loved one if you need to. I am also always available to chat.

* As a member of the gay community, have you ever faced this type of psychological lateral harm?

If so, please let me say how deeply sorry I am that you had to go through that.

* How did you navigate your way through it?

For anyone who has ever been a victim of gaslighting, you know it is an insidious tactic that can truly wreak havoc on your mind.

* What are some ways you have found yourself able to reclaim your reality and your peace after enduring those situations?

Feel free to answer these questions right here in the comment section, or you can simply take them with you as you go.

What's Next?

On Wednesday, we will do a complete read-through and a discussion on Chapter 12 of Blush Born. This chapter marks the pivotal moment Jethran finally leaves the village and introduces the character of Fable. This is going to completely change the trajectory of the story and alter Jethran's life forever.

Paid Members

This was my first paid post. Taking the leap to put this level of vulnerable truth behind a paywall was genuinely terrifying, but your support proves that these raw conversations are absolutely necessary. I want to express my sincerest gratitude to you for investing in my work. Your financial contribution gives me the time and the safety to keep writing, to keep podcasting, and to keep bringing these stories into the light.

Thanks!

And as always, if you read this all the way through or if you listened to it all the way to the end, then you are absolutely my hero. I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me the time in your day and the space in your brain to share my story and to introduce Jethran to the world.

Content Warning: Depictions of Addiction, Trauma, Loss of a Parent, Gravedigging.

Welcome to Find Your Colors. Here we are discussing the narrative within the Shards of Color Trilogy and the first book in that trilogy, BLUSH BORN.

I am Jeff B. White, and I am the writer and creator of these stories. Through this publication and podcast, I am focusing on the emotional intelligence, radical vulnerability, and transformative growth found through exploring the psychological concepts and real life story behind this dark fairy tale.

Recap

On Monday, we read through Chapter 9, Loss of Color, and witnessed the ultimate tragedy of the story as the Uncrowned King ordered the execution of Regale Frye. We watched Jethran experience the devastation of losing his mother, a profound grief that triggered a massive surge of aureolin energy. He found a significant upgrade in his overall powers as he forged wings made of pure light and leveled the throne room before fleeing into the sky.

We also saw some other major developments in his abilities. There is now an active physical force caused by his vibrancy. Before this moment, his power manifested through love and perception, yet now it has become highly intense. His blast took the lives of two men when the BAPs who were holding him were turned to ash. He will soon have to process the reality that he ended those lives, even though the act was completely unintentional.

Today we are going to look at the psychological aftermath of that event with the breakdown for Chapter 10.

Buried Hearts

Chapter 10 Colorless Parting

The wings of light that had carried him from Evenhere City beat against the air with frantic energy. They were a construct of pure feeling. They were born of the searing yellow rage that had answered his mother’s murder and the profound grief that was its echo.

The light was the same aureolin yellow that had obliterated the fortress wall, a color of untamed power. It was the color of a world ending, and it was now a part of him. Jethran could feel them shuddering with his heart, each downstroke a silent scream. The sound they made was a rending, the sound of light tearing fabric, a sustained thunderclap that vibrated in his bones. The force of it was agonizing, pulling at new muscles in his back that he didn't even know he had. A magnificent pain that was the only thing keeping the void at bay. He moved with jagged agony, a comet of betrayal streaming across the storm filled sky.

He flew, cradling his mother’s body. Her familiar weight was now an anchor, grounding him in the emotional storm. He stared forward. He couldn’t look back. To look back was to see the gray sprawl of the city, the hole he had torn in the wall, the throne room, the King’s smiling face, the snap of his fingers. To look back was to see her body fall, again, and again, for eternity. Looking back meant unraveling in mid-air, to let the wings dissolve and to follow her into the ultimate gray.

He pressed on through the torrential rain until the gray of Evenhere City was a distant, sickening memory, a smudge of ash on the horizon. He continued until the air tasted cleaner, until the deep lilac of ancient tree bark grew tall enough to grant him sanctuary, their massive trunks standing with a promise of a world older and deeper than the TriAught. The world below presented a complex pattern, a tapestry only now existed because of him and the effect that his Blush was creating. He saw fields of swaying citrine grass that should have been gray. He saw the leaves on the lilac trees, vibrant with citrine, aureolin, and gold. It was a world with color. The world his mother had whispered about in forbidden lullabies.

He had brought her to it, but only in death. That realization was a fresh blade in his gut, twisting with every beat of his terrible wings. He was looking for a place that held all the beauty this world had to offer, something fitting for her grace. He passed over a jagged cliff edge, but its violence felt like a mockery of the King’s. A streak of lightning shot across the sky.

He saw a cave consumed by silence, but it felt too much like a tomb, an extension of the gray. His search continued over an expanse of blooming flowers, but its bright beauty was an insult, a laugh in the face of his grief. He knew in his heart that no place was good enough, no place deserving enough to house her. Not in this world or any other.

He found a hidden glade where a circle of stones cloaked in ancient moss leaned together as if whispering secrets. The constant downpour that had followed him from the Fortress to the glade reduced, but still the rain persisted. Despite the rain, the air here held a stillness, thick with the scent of damp soil and blooming night-flowers. The light was different, softer, as if the trees themselves were protecting this one, sacred patch of ground. It was not enough. It would never be. But it was all he had.

He landed. As his feet settled on the ground, his wings blinked once, twice, and dissipated in a cloud of stardust. He stood there for a moment, his body trembling from the exertion, the sudden silence of the glade a deafening roar after the thunder of his flight. He gently laid her down on a bed of soft moss. Her face was peaceful. The lines of worry, etched there by his mere existence were gone. Her blue eyes, now forever closed, were at last free. The sight was a fresh scar laid upon his spirit, and he choked on the hollow sob that tore at his throat.

With no tools, only his one good hand, he dug. He plunged his fingers into the lilac mud. He clawed, tore, ripped at the ground. He attacked the world through the mud. His hand was a frantic tool. He was furious at his own body, at his weakness, at the Menders who had stolen his hand and left him unable to even dig a proper grave. He poured all his rage, all his grief, into that hole. Every handful of mud, every rock he tore loose, was a memory that assaulted him.

Her hands mending a tear in his gray tunic. The gray-on-gray thread, a tiny, invisible act of love. Her quiet humming the lullaby of the traveller and the flower. Her face, lit by a single candle, as she whispered, “See how beautiful you are?”

He screamed, a jagged scream that echoed off the ancient stones, and clawed at the ground, his nails splitting, his fingers bleeding. The sting was a distant, unimportant fact, a small pain against the gaping wound in his chest. He dug until his arm was a trembling limb. He dug until the hole was deep enough, a cradle, a sanctuary. He was digging a grave not just for her body, but for the only warmth he had ever known. When it was deep enough, deep enough to be safe, he stopped, panting, his body slick with sweat, his stump aching with a phantom, digging motion. He looked at his hand, caked in mud and his own blood.

He lined the grave. He gathered broad leaves, still shimmering with citrine light. He found petals of blue lilies and purple roses and sprigs of red lavender. These were colors she would never get to experience. They were now part of this beautiful world he was somehow recreating and would never be able to share with her. He laid them with a tenderness he didn’t know he still possessed, a final, soft bed for her.

He lifted her one last time. Her body was impossibly light, a mere shell of the Wem who had been his entire world, his shield, his creator. He laid her to rest. He kissed her cold forehead. As the storm began another pitch, he began the task of returning the ancient dirt, handful by handful. The first clump struck her gray tunic with a suffocating thud that stopped his heart. It was the most violent sound he had ever heard. Each handful was a betrayal. The cool dirt felt like the gray pills from the Medic, burying her, hiding her, erasing her.

“I’m so sorry, Mother,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “I’m sorry that I ruined your life. I’m sorry that I killed you.”

He worked until a small mound marked the place. He may as well have put his heart in the ground with her. Jethran knelt before it, his body hollowed out, shaking in the sudden chill of the forest. It wasn’t enough. The world would forget her. The TriAught had already erased her. He would not allow it.

He opened his satchel, pulling out the gray medic kit. His unfeeling fingers moved past the sterile bandages and salves until they found it: a simple, gray-metal dissection scalpel. The tool of the BigAught Medics. The tool of violation. He would take this tool of violation and turn it into an instrument of love. He had found a soft slab of slate by a small stream, and now he set to his work.

He placed it at the head of the grave. The first cut was hesitant, a shallow scratch on the stone’s dark face. He leaned into it, his shoulders bunching with effort, his one good hand gripping the scalpel with intensity. As the sky flashed with lightning, he began to carve her name.

R

The work was slow. Painstaking. The world faded. There was only the scrape, scrape, scrape of steel on stone. It was the only sound in the universe. He traced the letter again and again, the line growing deeper, truer. The muscles in his arm and back began to ache, to seize. The tip of the first scalpel blade dulled, the metal groaning. He paused, his breath coming in ragged gasps, and carefully, with trembling fingers, replaced it.

E

As he worked, he saw his mother’s warm smile. He heard her voice, a lifeline, whispering, “See how beautiful you are?” He carved the stone as if he could carve that memory into the world itself, make it permanent, make it real in a way that her death was not.

G

He poured all of his grief, his love, and his impotent rage into the task. Each scratch was a tear he couldn’t shed, a final conversation he would never have. He was taking their clinical tool of dissection and using it to assert her existence, to write her name into the ground that they had stolen her from.

A

Hours passed. The sun began to dip, painting the glade in shades of gray. His hand was a claw, cramping so badly he had to stop and pry his fingers open. His arm trembled with exhaustion, but he did not stop. A second blade chipped. A third. He worked until the last letter was finished, until her name was a permanent, undeniable truth.

L

He finally sat back on his heels, his body aching, the last scalpel blade broken. He ran his battered fingers over the freshly carved letters.

E

REGALE FRYE

He had done it. He had taken their instrument of dissection and used it to create a monument of devotion. It was done.

He then stood over the mound of lilac dirt and flowers, and he spoke. He recited the traditional words of parting of the Here. They were words she had taught him. Though he never imagined he would have to say them for her.

Part now, Here of Evenhere

Enter now into the Afterhere,

Go forward in your death,

Guide me through each breath.

You’re in my heart and forever will

With me be held ever still

And with that final, finished act, the fortress he had built inside himself crumbled. The meticulous focus, the rage that had fueled the digging, the spite that had guided the carving, it all vanished. The void rushed in.

He collapsed beside the fresh grave, his body convulsing with silent, dry sobs. He was alone. Utterly. Irrevocably. He was an island, a mistake, a plague. His mother was dead because of him. The pain became a vacuum, a cold star, a negative space in his chest that was heavier than any mountain. It sucked his lungs, his heart, his bones into a pinpoint of impossible density. He couldn’t breathe. He was going to die here, and he deserved to.

He reached for the gift of Muralis. He took a slow, deep breath, and as he exhaled, a calming plume of cobalt-blue smoke emanated from his lips. The Mist of Muralis.

He hesitated. He looked at the grave, at her name. To breathe it in was to lessen the pain of her loss. It was to let her go. It was to betray this monument he had just built. She deserved to be mourned. The pain spiked. A memory, unbidden, flashed behind his eyes: the snap of the King’s fingers, a sound so small, so casual, that had ended his world. The sound of her body hitting the stone floor. It was too much. It was unbearable. No one should have to feel this.

He gasped, a desperate, broken sound, and inhaled the mist, pulling it deep, deep into his lungs. It was instantaneous. It was cold. It was a profound numbness. The vacuum in his chest was filled with a cool, blue stillness.

He had become a hollow statue of grief. He stood to his feet, his movements now fluid and empty. He shouldered his satchel. He gave the grave one last, empty look. Then he turned and began walking.

He wandered aimlessly as he simply wanted to put as much distance between himself and the place where he left his warmth. He wandered through the forest in a constant downpour of rain. He was a shell of his former self. The Mist of Muralis was a fickle, demanding friend. It was a mask, and it required constant maintenance.

Then, the mist would begin to thin. A fragment of memory would break through. The smell of the wax from the King’s throne room. The creak of the leather on Martier’s boots. The color of his own aureolin wings. Each time the feelings and emotions would begin to rise, a jolt of uncut agony would electrify his system. His knees would buckle. A scream would build in his throat. And he would panic.

He then would exhale, hard, conjuring a blue cloud, and he’d breathe it in. He became desperate and greedy. He would inhale until the memory shattered, until the feeling was gone, until the world was flat and silent and safe again. For two days, without stopping to sleep, without stopping to eat, he meandered through the Western Wilds. For two days, he held the Mist of Muralis at nearly each breath. Refusing to allow himself to feel.

On the third day, his body began to fail. The numbness could not mask starvation. The hunger was a grinding pain that the mist couldn’t touch. The pain of his arm was a searing screaming monster that nothing could subdue. The cold was seeping into his bones, and the warmth of the numbness could not stave it off.

Then he remembered the BAPs. The two hereman who escorted him from the dungeon into the throne room. The ones who held him whenever he tried to run towards his mother. They had turned it to ash when his body detonated. They were killed. He killed them. He didn’t mean to do it. It was just his raw power.

He stumbled, falling to his knees. The jolt of these thoughts was enough to crack the blue shell. He was too tired to summon the mist, too weak to fight. Jethran thought he deserved to feel the weight of the lives he had taken. He just lay there, weeping, until he had no tears left.

Then as the last ounce of strength left his body, he was stricken with a searing vision. This was similar to the ones that he had experienced before, but there were no misty woods and there was no storm.

There was only a graveyard, and a swoosh sound. He looked up to see there was a giant red lady swinging from the purple crescent moon. The swoosh of her swinging began to take on a rhythmic effect, forming itself into beat. Then he heard the lady humming. Soon the air filled with song.

Upon a once before…

Swinging from the crescent moon,

Graves below in lilac dirt.

The crimson lady keeps time.

As she holds an ancient hurt,

Her voice, it rings like a chime,

She hums a forgotten tune.

Her left hand shows you the past,

Heavy songs across the space.

Humming with the bitter tears,

Watching the forgotten place.

Holding secrets from the years.

The other a future cast.

Forgetting everything,

Given for the trust compelled.

For if the past was to fade,

As the memories she held,

She gave her past unafraid,

Beauty futures will not bring.

Trust will make the vision clear,

Remember for Evenhere.

Jethran watched as the lady hummed, holding out her hand. From that hand grew a bright light that separated into six smaller lights. Each a different color. Crimson, Indigo, Cobalt, Vermillion, Celadon, and Aureolin. The tiny lights swirled around each other until a new light was formed. Pink.

Suddenly, a darkness came and the world turned gray, then to dust. Then the seven lights bound together and shot across the sky. Flying directly into the sun. From her other hand, a world arose. Vibrant with all colors.

Jethran thought it must be her showing the past and future of Evenhere. He couldn’t think of any other explanation as to what those moments she portrayed in her hands could have possibly meant.

Then the being stopped and looked directly at him across the distance. She spoke into his very essence…

Remember who you are.

The vision ended. He was dizzy. He hoped this was from the lack of food and sleep. He sat for a while thinking about these things. Just trying to figure out what it meant.

“I’m just... Jethran,” he sighed.

Finally, he stood and began walking forward. Eventually his path led him to a village nestled in a small, damp valley. It was a collection of low, gray cottages that were half-hidden in the steam that rose from vents in the ground. The steam swirled through the air in heavy clouds. It clung to everything, muffling the sounds of the world, making the entire village look like a watercolor left out in the rain.

Although it did smell of herbs, it smelled sweet and inviting, not at all like the antiseptic scent he found in the Mender Village. At first he told himself not to go. His good hand instinctively flew to his stump. After what he survived in the Menders Village, he did not want to face anything similar. He crouched at the edge of the ridge, watching.

The hunger was a grinding pain. The cold was real. The ache of his arm almost too much. They might have medicine. Eventually, his mind settled on the fact that it wouldn’t be possible for something like that to happen again. The Menders must be a unique group of people.

He resolved not to trust and not to be a victim again. Jethran exhaled the Mist of Muralis, despite having declared himself finished with it. He took a slow inhale to steady his perception. Then he began the careful descent into the village, noticing it almost seemed to be lit by the steam itself.

The Breakdown

Reclaiming the Blade

Chapter 10 deals entirely with the immediate shockwave of profound grief as Jethran lands in the Western Wilds and faces the physical reality of burying his mother. He digs a grave using only his one remaining hand, allowing the intense physical exertion to become a channel for his rage.

The most important psychological shift happens when the burial is complete and Jethran needs a way to mark the grave. He reaches into the stolen medical kit and pulls out a Big Aught scalpel.

The scalpel is a tool of the oppressor representing the clinical compliance of the King’s regime. Jethran takes the exact instrument used for dissection and forces it to create a monument of devotion. By carving her name into the stone, he asserts her existence against a system that tried to erase her.

In recovery, we often have to take the systems or the experiences that broke us and repurpose them. We take the pain and use it as the mortar for our new foundation. Jethran reclaims his agency by turning a weapon of the gray into an anchor for his love.

The Afterhere

Chapter 10 introduces the concept of the Afterhere, serving as this world’s answer to the afterlife and establishing the three distinct planes of existence held within the kingdom’s belief structure. Evenhere acts as the living world where everyone currently resides; the Afterhere is treated as a beautiful, heavenly afterlife; and the Underhere exists as a tangible plane considered to be the physical source of all darkness.

We also experience the Song of Parting for the very first time. Later in the story, we discover that each culture has its own unique version of this parting song, and we eventually learn how they all seamlessly fit together.

Because this is our initial introduction to the song and Jethran is singing it for Regale, I embedded a hidden tribute by making the first letters of every line spell out the name of my own mother. The character of Regale is deeply based on her in countless ways. The name Regale is actually an anagram created using the letters of my mother’s full name, just as Jethran Frye is an anagram of my own full name. I simply gave his mother the same last name I created for him.

Interestingly, the name Jethran Frye translates to “generous ruler who brings freedom and abundance,” while the name Regale Frye means “she who provides unconditional love without cost.” Those definitions perfectly capture the essence of the characters wearing these names.

This naming convention happens frequently throughout the early parts of the story, as seen later with Winley Knowles who was created using my friend William’s full name. Also, Martier’s name was built as an anagram from my father’s full name.

A true testament to the living, breathing nature of this story is how the worldbuilding eventually evolved beyond my initial blueprints. I started by crafting names using the names of people close to me, crafting these deeply personal anagrams early in the drafting process.

As the lore expanded, the fictional cultures of Evenhere took root and began generating their own unique linguistic rules. Characters started emerging organically with names dictated entirely by the history and language of their specific societies. The foundational rules I set for this world, this itself, Evenhere essentially gained a mind of their own, creating culturally significant traditions that now actively steer the narrative into entirely unexpected directions.

The Mist of Dissociation

Once the carving is finished and the adrenaline fades, the void of grief rushes in to make the pain entirely unsurvivable. Jethran uses the Mist of Muralis again, despite having said that he would never use it again.

The mist gives him Stillness. In psychological terms, Jethran intentionally triggers dissociation.

In my memoir, Shards of Hope: A Tweaker Witch’s Journey, I talk openly about using substances to numb the noise of my own trauma. When the reality of life feels like a crushing weight, finding a way to simply turn off the feeling becomes an act of desperate survival. The mist gives Jethran a profound numbness and fills the vacuum in his chest with a quiet stillness.

Every time a memory breaks through, Jethran experiences a jolt of pure agony that causes him to panic and inhale more mist. He chooses the quiet of the mist over the screaming reality of his grief.

The Burden of the Blast

Beyond the grief of losing his mother, Jethran carries a new internal conflict because his powers evolved from perception into destruction. The aureolin energy turned two BAPs into ash. The act lacked intentional malice, yet the consequence remains absolute.

Processing that guilt of even unintentional harm adds a true cost of his power. This moment is going to affect him for a very long time.

The Demand of Memory

Jethran starves his body and exhausts his mind trying to outrun the pain until his physical form finally fails and the mist cracks.

In that moment of vulnerability, he receives a chilling vision of the Crimson Lady swinging from the crescent moon. She hums her song of hallowed land and bitter tears, showing him the creation of the colors and a vibrant world rising from the dust. Then she speaks a direct command into his very essence, telling him to remember who he is.

Healing demands that we look at our history so we can understand the shape of what remains, to find the beauty that awaits in the future. The vision forces Jethran to stop running and start walking forward, even if he still only sees himself as “just Jethran.”

In truth, the moments this vision shows actually foreshadow events from the following two books. Events that will not be clear or understood by Jethran until he is in his 40’s.

Bargaining with Trauma

At the end of the chapter, Jethran finds a new village, and his immediate reaction is absolute terror. His hand flies to his stump because the last time he trusted healers, they mutilated him.

This is a textbook trauma response where the brain projects a past betrayal onto a future opportunity. The body registers a threat before the mind can even process the environment. Jethran has to engage in a mental bargain to step forward, rationalizing that lightning rarely strikes the same place twice.

However, acknowledging the logic does not instantly erase the fear. He pushes past his panic to seek food and warmth, but he still has to exhale and inhale the Mist of Muralis one more time before descending into the steam. Healing is a slow process, and sometimes taking the next brave step requires leaning on the exact coping mechanism you are trying to outgrow.

Let’s Discuss

This chapter forces us to look at how we survive the unsurvivable moments of our lives.

* Have you ever had to take a painful experience and repurpose it to build something beautiful?

* Have you ever found yourself relying on a coping mechanism to numb a pain you were unprepared to face?

* How do you convince yourself to keep moving forward when your past experiences demand you hide?

Feel free to answer these questions in the comments below or just take them with you as you go.

What’s Next?

On Monday, we will do a readthrough of Chapter 11. We will follow Jethran into this new village and see exactly what kind of people live hidden in the steam.

En Español

Recently, a friend told me that they had tried to listen to this on Spotify but they just weren't able to keep up because English isn't their first language, and they still struggle sometimes. So that prompted me to begin using Google translate and 11 Labs voice cloning to record my previous posts in Spanish using my actual voice. I'm actually quite impressed with how these things have turned out. So I'm currently in the process of translating the previous posts that have been shared on here as well as my novel itself. That second part takes a little bit more work than I initially realize but might actually be worth doing. So stay tuned for updates on that because it's turning out to be an interesting part of this journey.

Join the Conversation

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Thanks!

If you read this all the way to the end or listened to it all the way through, you are absolutely my hero. I want to thank you for allowing me the time out of your day and the space in your brain to share my story and to introduce Jethran to the world.