Xozo is the first to speak, still staring into the empty hallway. “Well... that’s not ominous or anything.” she says, then turns toward the door... trepidation plastered across her face.. “It will be all right, dear.” Eileen says, patting Xozo’s arm tenderly as she opens the door.
Beyond, a quaint room sits expectant, as though it remembers the sound of their footsteps but not their footfalls, their cadence, or their pace. Before them lies a space, modest, circular, absent of ornament but thick with intent. A stillness aged and folded many times over, like a room inside a card inside an envelope sealed in wax. Not forgotten, exactly. Just waiting to be opened by the right hands. And in its center, as though it had always been there, waits the table.
Which begins to thrum faintly as they approach. A low, reedy breath, vibrating through wood and thought alike. Thin runes crawling across its surface in threads, not language yet, just motion. A murmur of meaning not ready to be spoken.
While at the far end, a faerie waits. It does not flutter. Does not blink. Its milky white eyes hold steady. Its onyx skin gleaming faintly under a shaft of pale light. It has no wings, no ornament, and yet its presence fills the room like dust caught in sunlight, quiet, heavy, and impossible to ignore.
“You’ve brought no formal offering,” it says. Its voice rustling like a page turned too slowly, as if the words were read from somewhere far older than the speaker. “I can offer cookies,” Eileen replies, setting her basket gently on the table. “But I can only spare two."
The onyx faerie tilts its head by the smallest margin, a motion so slow that it might have begun centuries ago and only just now has reached its peak. “Ah,” it says softly. “The manners of the fleeting. So quaint, so dear. Like a butterfly tipping its wings to the tempest, as though the storm might kneel in kind.”
Its paper-thin fingers make a brushing motion, and the runes on the table brighten... as if simply aware. “You bring sweetness to the gate of recognition. A kindness folded in dough. But tell me, not of the basket or what you carry in tow?”
Eileen blinks once, then rests her hands lightly on the lip of the table. “I’m trying to find The Dawkith Lorth,” she says. “The treatment of the goblins under their care is pitiful, they need to be taught modern child rearing methods and I won’t be leaving until they make a pinky promise to do better.” The table hums louder.
“Ah,” the sage murmurs, hands outstretched now “A child not bound to the system brings critique to the cosmos and calls it care. And so the weave is picked at by the spindle’s shadow, and the cord remembers it once looped through the mouth of the world.”
It leans forward, voice deepening into something papery and vast. “The reference you seek is not a name, but a knot. Not a being, but a beckoning. To find it, one must first walk backward through the echo of a promise not made, and breathe where the air forgets to settle. One must...”
“Yes, yes, all right,” Eileen says, smoothing her shawl and interrupting with the practiced warmth of a seasoned bargainer. “That’s quite lovely, dear. But if we could keep things just a touch more useful, that’d be grand. I’m not much for riddles before tea.”
The sage pauses. The runes on the table flickering for a moment, not dimmer, just briefly indignant, “A thread plucked too soon unravels,” the faerie says, slowly, almost sulking. “But if you insist upon haste, then hear this: the shape you seek slumbers beneath its own forgetting. Its cradle is carved from declarations unmade. It dwells where intention curdles, and yet still hungers for correction.”
“Mm-hm,” Eileen says, nodding politely, tapping the side of the table with one finger. “So is that up or down the stairs, and if so how many flights?” The sage’s face folds slightly, like a letter being re-sealed. “Direction is the lie we sell to time. Any reference here stirs behind mirrors that do not reflect, among scrolls written by hands that have never held whips. You cannot go. You must be seen. Only then...”
Eileen coughs politely, interrupting the cadence with the ease of someone used to salesmen overstaying their welcome. Reaching into her basket, she pulls out a boiled water skin, takes two modest sips while checking it for cracks, then tucks it back in place. She then speaks again, a touch firmer now. “I think we’ve gotten off track. I’m Eileen. And if you would be so kind, what should I call you?”
A long, rattling breath escapes the faerie now which places both hands on the table. The runes go still, not stopped, not frozen, just listening.
While above its head, hazy blue letters shimmer into existence, 2 Yellow Motes, 30 Blue Motes, 10 White Motes
Then, all at once, the atmosphere shifts. The air, once dry and parchment-thin, becomes something else soft, breezy. A hint of warm salt and crushed shells on the tongue. The taste of coconut lingering, bright and faintly artificial, like a beach memory caught in a snow globe. A memory meant to weaken, not bolster and so Eileen ignores it. Allowing her to catch the faerie’s eyes which are alight with amusement. Their expression, calm, still and centered like the eye of a storm even as a smile curls faintly at the edge of their lips, sharp, knowing, pleased.
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“What about Grand Dearie, then?” Eileen offers politely while glancing at Xozo for support. “I think it could be a fitting name,” But Xozo does not respond, she is staring instead, hollow eyed and a little glassy as if the last five minutes have been spoken in a dialect of pure metaphor she only had caught wiffs of. The spell’s effect only breaking when she blinks too hard, like someone rebooting from a dream that didn’t ask permission to unfold. One of her hands curls instinctively inward, close to her chest... fingers tight in her sleeve like she needed something to hold on to.
“Grand Dearie?” it repeats, not offended, not delighted. “Oh, how charmingly hollow. Would you name the silence before the thunder, thinking it gentle? Would you claim the space between a blink, certain it is empty? Would you hold out your hand to the thing whose fingers have always been reaching? Would you give in, for the sake of another’s redemption?”
Eileen shakes her head in an assuring yes, “Of course. How else can one grow if they are not encouraged, by themselves and others to become more than the space they are given. It is why I like names. It is why everyone deserves names.” she says reassuringly to herself.
“Names step us away from answers,” it says. “It forces one to step into invitations. Which one folds within themselves. Paper girl. Thread born. Do you even know whose name waits to be written on your tongue?”
Eileen offers a very polite smile, the kind reserved for salesmen about to be corrected. “I know that if someone doesn’t start parenting those goblins properly, they’re all going to end up with attachment issues and very small knives. And that’s not a good combination, it needs to be corrected.”
Xozo, having recovered slightly and standing behind her, slowly raises a finger. “Um, I think it just called you a paper girl?”
“Yes, dear, I heard,” Eileen says, while maintaining eye contact with Grand Dearie. “I’m choosing to interpret that as a metaphor.” The sage’s head tilts the other way now. “Metaphors are spines of belief. Belief the ruin of clarity. Clarity the cradle of hunger. And hunger...”
“Alright,” Eileen says brightly. “One more cryptic sentence and I will begin humming loudly.” There is a pause. A long one. But not with confusion nor judgment. Just with weight. As if something behind the faeries eyes is flipping pages, slowly, carefully, looking for the correct response in a language older than language itself.
Until the table responds first, a soft pulse followed by another. The runes brighten, shifting from an idle shimmer to a deliberate motion. Wherein they begin to braid themselves, layer upon layer, folding into a spiral so slow it takes several heartbeats to notice it's moving at all. Yet it only takes Eileen a fraction of a second more to recognize the motion as similar to that of a half-finished quilt, where each thread tugged toward meaning but never quite reached the edge. Something started, but never given the grace of an end.
“You speak of correction,” the sage murmurs, finally. “You speak of knives and names. Of parenting as if it were a spell that might unwrite ruin.” Lifting one finger, it taps the table once causing the spiraling runes to flatten as a map unfurls. Not a map of land. Not terrain. Not oceans or rooms or even floors. Not even something one could chart with footsteps or a compass. It is instead the essence and feeling of shape.
A glowing lattice of soft lines, curling and bending, some broken, some whole, some wrapped back around themselves like children hugging their knees. Threads of intent and unspoken consequence. Until one line glows brighter, pulling Eileen’s vision physically forward, a warm gold curve that pulses softly as her eyes rest upon it. “This is your path as set by today,” the faerie warns. “Or perhaps one of its many reflections,” the faerie softly whispers to itself.
“What are the others?” Xozo asks, voice softer and lower than usual. She’s edging toward the table now, blinking slowly, her hand raised just above, like a child in front of a burning stove... unsure whether to feel or flinch.
“Branches. Spirals. Errors. Inheritances. Echoes. The system does not ask for understanding. It does not need to be understood. But it does listen. It is always listening.”
Another thread lights up, pulsing red at the far edge of the glowing weave, a name surfaces beside it written in symbols that change and flicker as if to punctuate the notion that ‘Names step us away from answers.’ And so Eileen shifts focus to another patch of the glowing lattice to a foggy little squiggly line that undulates like a worm torn free from the dirt. Until a heartbeat later when it simply winks out of existence.
Xozo is the first to speak, squinting she tries to find words, perhaps like Eileen she had seen the same squiggly line but Eileen does not know and she does not ask. “Was that…?”
“It doesn't matter,” Eileen murmurs, still watching the threads. "We’re just asking for directions. Clearly, we need more than these interpretations and their intent."
The faerie exhales, if it can be called that. The parchment of its body rustles softly, like paper turned not to speak, but to listen. “The weave has marked you,” it says. “The invitation has already been folded within. There is nothing waiting for you.”
“That sounds rather dramatic,” Eileen replies, adjusting her shawl, trying to thread levity into the moment. “I still have quite a lot of laundry to do when I get back.” But no one laughs at her joke.
Yet the table before her does not ignore her. Its runes shift, not flashing, not announcing, but noticing. A shimmer of light blooming across the table, not with force, but with understanding. A sigil, or a gesture. Something offered. It spins once, slowly upward for then resting gently against Eileen’s chest. No sound. No pressure. Just presence.
Until the presence is broken by a soft chime that brushes the air, not proud, not loud. Just placed. Like a breath held and then released. Like a bookmark tucked at the end of a chapter she hadn’t finished yet.
Eileen doesn’t react. Not outwardly. But something leans gently into her spine. A stillness that wasn’t rest, but readiness. Not permission. Nor direction, but spacing. As though something had not just responded, but heard.
Like a shimmer of light that wants to bloom behind her eyes… but instead, draws inward. Resolving into a thread of thought, pulled from the hush of the room... into the quiet space between breath and knowing.
And with it, a quiet certainty: that some part of her, already knew, not where but when she needed to arrive next.