While the world turned with steam and sparks—airships floating above, gears ticking behind every shop window—Zorya chose flour and fire instead.
She had no love for the clinking rhythm of tools, nor the scent of grease that hung like fog in her father's workshop. Vair had always belonged there, with his clever hands and his wind-kissed laugh. But Zorya... Zorya longed for something warmer. Softer. Something that smelled like sugar and cinnamon and the slow joy of rising bread.
So she took a job at Tallow & Thyme, a small bakery tucked between a glass-blower's shop and a place that sold wind-up birds. The bakery's wooden sign creaked gently in the morning wind, its edges worn from years of flour-dusted summers and hearthlit winters. A tiny brass bell chimed when she pushed open the door each morning, the scent of vanilla, cardamom, and yeast rushing out like a welcome.
"Ah, you're early again, Miss Cinderfall," called Madame Eloisa, the plump old owner with flour on her elbows and a voice like burnt sugar.
Zorya smiled and tied her apron.
She kneaded dough until her fingers ached, her skirts powdered white, her cheeks flushed from the oven's heat. She learned to braid sweetbread and glaze honey tarts just so, and she loved the quiet satisfaction of placing a fresh tray on the sill, steam curling into the cool morning air.
Customers came and went—artisans, tinkers, the occasional passing scholar from the library—and sometimes, Zorya would glance at their faces, wondering if this one had felt it too. The wait. The stillness in their bones before power arrived.
But the days passed. Her hands grew skillful with dough, yet no flicker of flame, no echo of forgotten gods stirred within her.
She still felt...ordinary.
Still, she smiled. She found peace in rhythm: knead, fold, wait, bake.
"Waiting is a kind of hope," Madame Eloisa said one quiet afternoon, when she caught Zorya gazing absently out the window at the sky. "It means you believe something is coming."
Zorya blinked, then nodded. "I think I'm just afraid that... nothing is coming."
Madame Eloisa paused, dusted off her hands, and gave Zorya a look that reached deeper than the marrow. "Darling girl, everything comes. Just not always in the shape you expect."
That night, as Zorya walked home with a still-warm loaf tucked under her arm and flour on her nose, she passed the Mirathiel tree.
Its blossoms shimmered faintly in the dark.
A single petal drifted down and landed on her shoulder.
And though she didn't know why, she pressed it into her pocket, as if it might mean something later.
Perfect. Here's a poetic and emotionally rich continuation where Zorya, quietly hoping, keeps trying odd jobs—seeking her awakening while hiding her quiet ache. Let's show her trying, failing, doubting… yet still moving forward.
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A Life of Small Experiments
After the bakery closed one summer afternoon, Zorya sat on the back steps with cinnamon still on her fingertips and a crusty loaf cooling beside her. The sun painted the cobbled alley in honey and brass, and the hum of the city drifted around her like a song half-remembered.
She had burned her thumb pulling tarts from the oven. Not the kind of fire she was hoping for.
Everyone kept saying that powers awaken when one least expects it. When falling from a rooftop. When planting flowers. When fixing gears, chasing butterflies, laughing too loud.
So Zorya tried everything.
She took a part-time job cleaning clocktowers—maybe heights or gears would do it. She helped mend robes at the tailor's, stitched beside an old man who smelled of ink and mothballs. She even volunteered to chase a flock of mechanical geese that had malfunctioned in the market square.
Nothing.
No sudden glow in her hands. No wind that bent to her will. No whispers from trees or flashes of light behind her eyes.
She wasn't jealous. Not really. But sometimes when she watched Vair mend metal with a touch, or Thalassa bloom flowers with a giggle, something inside her crumbled like old paper.
Each evening, she walked past the Mirathiel tree.
Each time, she paused.
"Just give me a sign," she whispered once, pressing her palm against its warm bark.
The tree rustled gently.
But only in the breeze.
One morning, while kneading honey bread, she got lost in her thoughts again—about miracles and missed chances, about whether maybe her magic had come and gone unnoticed, like a dream she'd forgotten upon waking.
Madame Eloisa caught her staring at the dough.
"Still waiting, are we?" she said, her voice soft, not unkind.
Zorya nodded. "Everyone says it happens when you're not looking. So I keep trying new things. Maybe I'll trip over my power like Vair did. Or hum it awake like Thalassa."
The old baker set down her rolling pin and leaned in close.
"Zorya," she said gently, "some of us weren't born with fire or wind. Some of us are made of gentler things—quiet patience, steady hands, hearts that hold space for others. Not all magic glows. Some gathers."
Zorya looked down at her flour-dusted hands. "But what if I'm just... empty?"
Madame Eloisa pressed a warm palm to her cheek. "Empty? You? Darling, you overflow. You just don't see it yet."