Rudolph: The Roots of Becoming

Episode 3.

By sixteen, Rudolph could make things no one else could even imagine. His hands were stained with sawdust and the scent of cedar, and his heart well, which belonged to Sunny.

She wasn’t like the others in town. Sunny walked like she was moving through her kind of music, always humming something soft, something ancient. Her braids shimmered like threads of sunlight, and her laughter cracked open clouds.

They met by accident or at least, it seemed like it. He was fixing up the old bell tower behind the community center when she wandered in, holding a broken ukulele with three strings and a dream.

“You’re the one who makes things work, right?” she asked, tilting her head. “Can you fix this?”

He took the uke from her gently. “Might take a minute.”

She smiled. “I’ve got time.”

From that day on, Sunny was everywhere. She’d bring mango juice and vinyl records to Minerva’s porch, sit cross-legged as Rudolph worked, and hum old freedom songs while he sanded and carved. Minerva liked her—said she had “an honest spirit and a golden tongue.”

But things were never simple for long.

One night, as summer melted into fall, Rudolph woke to the sound of wind screaming through the trees. He followed it to the workshop out back, where a carving he hadn’t touched in days—a staff of dark wood etched with ancient runes—was glowing.

Minerva was already there, standing still as stone.

“It’s waking up,” she said. “Your gift. Something’s coming.”

“What kind of something?”

“The kind that tests who you are.”

The First Test

It began with a man named Arlo, a traveling preacher with too much charm and not enough soul. He arrived in town with fiery sermons and promises of healing, drawing crowds and collecting “donations” in buckets big enough to feed a hundred families.

Minerva knew something was wrong the moment she saw him.

“He’s not just preaching,” she whispered. “He’s pulling. Feeding on folks’ pain.”

And then Sunny started acting strange. Distant. Her songs are slower, her eyes duller. She had begun attending Arlo’s revivals, saying he made her feel “weightless.”

But Rudolph knew that weightlessness wasn’t freedom—it was a hollowing out.

One night, he followed her. What he saw froze his blood.

Arlo stood under a makeshift altar, surrounded by candles and symbols Rudolph recognized from his grandmother’s hidden books. He wasn’t healing—he was draining. He fed off the energy of the people who came to him in faith.

And Sunny was at the center of it.

The Confrontation

Rudolph stepped forward, heart pounding, hands clenched around the staff that had finished itself weeks ago.

Arlo smiled when he saw him. “Ah. The Maker’s boy.”

“You don’t belong here,” Rudolph said. “You’re hurting her.”

“I’m revealing her,” Arlo hissed. “She’s a conduit. A singer of the old songs. But you’re just a boy with a toy.”

The staff flared in Rudolph’s hand, runes pulsing like a heartbeat.

Rudolph didn’t know what would happen next. He only knew he wouldn’t lose Sunny. Wouldn’t lose himself.

When he planted the staff into the ground, the earth trembled. Light poured from the wood like dawn breaking through centuries. Arlo screamed, his spell broken, his illusions shattered.

When it was over, the people woke as if from a dream. Sunny collapsed into Rudolph’s arms, tears carving tracks through ash.

“You brought me back,” she whispered.

“You never left,” he said.

Aftermath

Arlo disappeared that night, or maybe was taken by the very power he tried to wield. Minerva said it was the first trial, and there would be more.

Rudolph knew now that his hands didn’t just build—they protected. His love wasn’t just soft—it was strong.

And somewhere, out in the distance of time and spirit, his father was watching.

Not gone. Just waiting.