Chapter 6

A young child reflects on their parents' restrictions against them bonding with a dragon, their frustration with having to wait until age eighteen, and their growing concern about their mother's emotional distress and the heavy black stone she wears.

The narrator, a child, expresses frustration that their parents Mahmi and Pahpi refuse to let them have a dragon, claiming wild Moonplumes are dangerous. The child dismisses these warnings as nonsense and resents the requirement to wait until eighteen and learn to hear and speak elemental songs before pursuing their own dragon. They note that Haedeon waited long and never heard the songs anyway. The child has been actively listening for elemental songs from snow, air, ground, and flames but hears nothing except their parents singing at bedtime. The narrator refuses to wear the ceremonial stone crown anyway, observing that Mahmi's black diadem appears to burden her—it looks heavy in a concerning way, unlike Pahpi's proud crown. The child witnesses disturbing episodes where Mahmi attempts to remove her stone while crying and screaming, curling up small in distress. During one recent night, the child found Mahmi outside crying in the snow and attempted to comfort her with a song, which only made her cry harder. Mahmi told the child she had lost something important but that their cuddles helped. Pahpi then found them, carried Mahmi inside, and tucked the child into bed with a cryptic statement that everything will make sense when they're older—a promise the narrator is uncertain they want fulfilled.