The sheets are still warm from the hearth, soft with rosemary soap and sun. Eileen lifts them one by one from the basket, shaking them gently before pinning each to the line. Every flick of her wrist releasing a puff of lavender-scented air. Before her the laundry line stretching from the porch post to the garden beam, just crooked enough to feel like it belongs. The center pole leans slightly to the right, planted years ago by Daniel, who had insisted they needed a proper post for the task. He had said it anchored the whole place together.
Eileen hums as she works, a simple tune. She can’t remember where she learned it, only that it suits drying linens and steady hands. It feels like something from the east, or perhaps from a place she no longer remembers clearly, the adventures she had been on were numerous, too numerous to count.
When the last sheet is hung, she turns to the pole. Its surface is streaked with old dirt and worn fingerprints, weathered from years of use but still strong beneath her hand. She lays her palm against it, firm and familiar, then pulls a damp cloth from her apron pocket and begins to wipe it clean. “There we go,” she says softly. “You hold up so much. Might as well let you shine a bit.”
She cleans it slowly, with care but not ceremony. The kind of care one gives to something they value, but do not need to speak about. Her fingers trace a knot in the wood. Her thumb rubs along the grain until it smooths beneath her touch. Until the cloth catches on a splinter, which she plucks free with gentle fingers before pressing the edge of her palm against the worn groove once more.
The wind shifting slightly as if in response to her moment of care. While at the base of the pole, a mote flickers in and out of sight, just for a breath, calling to the others to come. Eileen doesn’t notice.
Audry has tried not to get mad at the needle, but it keeps doing things it isn’t supposed to. The thread slips loose when it shouldn’t and tangles into knots that make no sense. Sometimes the needle stabs the wrong part of the cloth, even though her hand is moving slow and careful, exactly how she was told.
The hoop feels tight in her hands now, too tight. The fabric, bunched in the middle, like a flower folded in on itself, or maybe like one of those pancakes Eileen keeps mentioning that fall sideways in the pan. Her eyes are hot, but not because she’s crying. She is just warm, and annoyed, and a little embarrassed.
Eileen is nearby at the table by the window, folding dried mint into tiny cloth pouches that smell like cool mornings. Her hands move without hesitation. Each fold is sure, every corner tucks just right. She never fumbles, nothing goes crooked. To Audry, it’s like everything Eileen touches belongs in the world just a little more than it did before.
Audry doesn’t mean to speak, but the words slip out anyway, quiet and a little rushed. “Can you show me how you sew?” She pauses, then adds, “You were so quick last night.” Her thumb moves to the seam in her shirt, the one Eileen mended while rocking in her chair. “It feels different when you do it.”
Eileen doesn’t answer right away. She places the last pouch into a box lined with scraps, brushes her hands against her apron, and walks over slowly. She lowers herself beside Audry without a sigh, without a word of correction. She settles beside her like it’s a seat she has always known.
“Mine’s all wrong,” Audry mumbles. “I was trying to make a flower. But it turned into a dumb ration.” Eileen responds with a hum, not a melody, just a sound shaped like thought. “It’s not dumb dear. Trying something new is always a little messy.”
She lifts the hoop from Audry's hand, not to fix it, but to see. Then she hands it back and adjusts Audry’s fingers, gently guiding the needle into place without taking it from her. “Let it breathe,” she says. “You don’t have to pull so tight. I’ve found that stitches are like people. They both don’t like being bossed around.”
Audry tries again. The needle slips more smoothly this time. Not perfect, but softer. Her brow furrows as she focuses, tongue peeking out at the corner of her mouth. Her fingers curl in closer, steadier. One stitch, then another. The flower shape isn’t right yet, but it is no longer falling apart. She notices her breath has slowed.
“I want to make it feel like yours,” she says after a long pause. “Like, I want to make the fabric feel safe.”
Eileen doesn’t answer at first. She rests her palm lightly on the cloth, warm and steady. “You already are making it feel safe. I can hear it myself." Eileen smiles, "But I’ve often found that when we struggle with something, we stop listening as well as we think. That’s the bit most people skip, the listening part.”
Above them, a white mote flickers into view, soft and slow. It floats near the window, then circles gently above Audry’s head before drifting back into the rafters. Audry sees it, though she doesn’t say anything. Instead a small smile begins to form, and something deep in her chest eases like a knot working itself loose without help.
“Does sewing count as magic?” she asks, voice small again. “If it helps something stay where it needs to be?”
Eileen rests her hand over Audry’s. “If something you do helps something stay where it wants to be, or helps someone feel held in a way that’s comfortable for them, then yes. I think sewing counts more than most magic.”
Eileen helps Audry sew for a while longer, in the kind of quiet that feels full. The hoop still wobbles, the thread still tangles sometimes, but it’s a better kind of mistake now, softer, more forgiving, the kind that’s going somewhere. The shape is beginning to become more than just the intent, not a flower, not a ration, nor a pancake either. But something else, something that will be hers.
Fenn spends the morning in motion without urgency. He moves from patch to patch, shadow to sunbeam, drifting like a thought not yet said aloud. He does not water the garden like Ollan, or hum like Audry, or help with the laundry, though Eileen would say, gently, that “he helps in his own way,” and leave it at that.
Instead, Fenn pads through the garden, sniffing the rosemary with suspicious disdain, ears flicking at every birdcall. For something hums to him at the edge of his senses. Not loud... just heavy. Like a word misplaced in a sentence and ignored until it spoils the whole story.
As such he spends all morning circling the cottage and its wild, half-tamed garden. His path narrowing as he spirals slowly inward, the thorough search taking time, but eventually he comes to a patch of rosemary that tastes wrong in the air. Something bitter, old and sunken.
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He moves through the Rosemary patch slowly now until he finds a flat place in the soil, too smooth and too still. When he presses a paw against it, the ground resists in a way that feels unnatural. He shifts his weight, pressing deeper, something below yields beneath the surface. Not a sound, just a shift, like the garden has momentarily forgotten how to breathe.
Fenn digs.
Not wildly or frantic, for Fenn moves with purpose. His claws scraping the soil in slow, deliberate rhythms. Tail flicking now and then, ears tuned to the silence. The rosemary patch trembling as he works, their roots shifting until the earth parts.
Fenn finds just beneath the surface, half-wrapped in root and dust, a stone. Smooth, flat and darker then carved obsidian. With a single rune etched into the top it feels old and deliberate. The shape of it making Finn feel more like they are being watched, then doing the watching.
Fenn snorts.
He places one paw on the stone, then lowers his muzzle. His teeth flash, not to threaten, but to break. He bites once, the rune cracking like dry sugar. He bites again, another piece splits. Then again, another piece crumbles. He continues like this spitting the fragments aside, one by one, until the stone is nothing but shards and dust.
He does not bury it though at least without taking precautions. Eileen left some of that purple leaf stuff near the door to the cottage, the lavender stuff.
Instead, he brushes the pieces aside with a single sweep of his tail, then trots to the porch. He digs through the satchel Eileen keeps near the step until his nose finds what it’s looking for... lavender stems, saved from a pruning yesterday. He gathers them in his mouth, returns to the garden, and places them in the empty space with the care of a creature who understands what graves are.
When the last stem falls into place, he noses the dirt over it, gentle and slow. He pats it flat, then sits. A breeze stirs, not weather but something else, like something old just blinked.
Behind him, the motes begin to gather... blue, green and one flickering white. They are not drawn to what he broke, they have come for what he planted, what he quieted in the garden, what he took time to rewrite.
One small blue mote drifts closer. It flickers near his ear, then vanishes like a sigh. Fenn then stretches, shakes once and then trots back toward the porch. There is a cushion there, it will be warm from the sun and he curls onto it, tail tucked, ears up.
Behind him, three green motes rise from the garden bed. They hover for a moment above the covered hole, watching stems of lavender begin to poke through, catching the light. Then, one by one, they sink into the soil, disappearing like breath returning to lungs.
+3 Green Motes: Broken Pattern Rewoven
And the garden, at last, is still.
The path opens without ceremony, just a break in the trees where the air turns cooler and the ground softens underfoot. Looking out, the four of them find the lake still as glass and almost too quiet, no frogs or dragonflies to meet them. The only sound is the hush of their steps on fallen leaves, for it is fall, and the world has begun to turn inward. The trees wear their fading colors like last years fashion, and the air carries the scent of bark and distant smoke, the kind that belongs to chimneys and not fires.
Together, they step into the clearing slowly wherein Eileen sets the basket down on a stone and begins to unpack it with the practiced care of someone who has never rushed a day in her life. A jug of water, a folded cloth, and five towels. Everything smells faintly of rosemary and flour, wrapped in the kind of warmth that doesn’t fight the season, just makes space for itself inside it.
Audry stands just shy of the waterline, arms folded tight to her chest. Her toes dig into the silt, testing the edge. “It’s cold,” she says, more to the air than anyone else. She doesn’t sound afraid, only uncertain like she needs the lake to give her permission.
Ollan doesn’t speak at all. He steps in without pause, like a thought already decided. The cold snaps at his ankles, then climbs to his knees. He stops, breathes through his nose, and steps deeper. By the time he’s waist-deep, the water has stolen his shiver so he just watches it settle around him.
Fenn trots toward the shoreline, unimpressed. He sniffs at the reeds and paws at a patch of lichen, then backs up fast from a sudden gust, ears flat, tail twitching like a flame just starting to catch. Then Ollan turns in the water, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Come on!” he shouts, not with urgency, but with delight, the kind that slips out before you know it’s there. “It’s cold, but it’s not mean!” The laugh that follows is sharp and bright, like a stick cracking in a hearth, and it bounces off the still surface as it echoes through the trees.
Audry flinches at the sound, but only just. Fenn too stops pawing at the ground and lifts his head. Ollan splashes once, then falls backward in joy, sending a small wave lapping toward the shore. “You’re gonna miss it!” he calls again, surfacing and spinning in place. The motion startling a leaf from a branch above him, and they both watch it fall, one gold scrap against the silver water.
Fenn is the first to move. He darts forward with a sudden burst, splashing into the lake until the cold hits his belly and he yips, indignant. Audry laughs too, small and surprised... then follows. Her steps are careful but sure, the kind of bravery that doesn’t want to be noticed.
The water darkens as the sun climbs higher, not with clouds, but with age. Light slants long between the trees, and the surface glimmers like a mirror learning how to forget. Eventually, the children drift back to shore... wet, shivering a little, their movements loose with effort spent and laughter left behind them like footprints in sand.
Eileen wraps them in towels without fuss. One for Audry, one for Ollan, one she sets down for Fenn, though he only shakes and sneezes and rolls against it once before darting off again. He circles the clearing, tail high, then charges toward a flat piece of driftwood and bites down hard enough to claim it.
Ollan gets up and takes it from him a moment later, laughing as he tosses it sidearm like a disc. It wobbles but flies, and Fenn takes off after it with a wild, low sprint. A game as old as time begins without the need for rules. Ollan throws, Fenn retrieves. Sometimes it’s the other way around for Fenn has a surprisingly good ability to toss the stick in a long, arcing distance. Their laughter folds into the trees, brighter than it has any right to be, and it leaves Eileen and Audry a quiet moment to speak.
Sitting down on the cloth Eileen has laid out, Audry tightens the towel around her shoulders. She’s quieter now, the kind of quiet that comes after physical exercise has cleared the fog in ones mind. She stretches her legs out and rests them on a rock still warm from the sun peeking in from above, her feet bare, toes curling against the stone.
"They said it was training,” Audry says after a while, her voice thin but steady. Eileen makes a soft humming note not in agreement, nor denial, just acknowledgment.
“At the camp. Orders from our father came down, he told us to wait for adventurers.” Audry picks at the edge of her towel, unraveling a loose thread. “We were supposed to act scared, then happy, you know, in order to show off our teeth to the adventures.”
Eileen nods once, slow, her hands resting in her lap, she doesn’t interrupt. “But nobody ever came. Not even when the food was gone.” Audry frowns down at her knees. “I think… I think someone forgot to come get us.”
The wind moves through the trees like someone holding their breath. Eileen’s gaze doesn’t change, but something in her stillness tightens, just beneath the surface. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” she says, and her voice is soft, but not light. “You were there as asked. You did a great job for a bad situation, that was enough.”
Audry doesn’t look up. “Maybe they just got busy, fathers like that about orders. You can't do anything if you don't have the orders to do it."
Eileen’s voice is almost a whisper. “Your father. Was he there at the camp when you departed it?”
Audry nods, slowly. “We’ve never seen him, but he’s on every wall we look at. His orders create the schedules, the guard rotations and give us access to the food slips.”
Her hands still on the towel. "So when orders came for us, we knew the mission was special, that it came direct from our father The Dawkith Lorth."
Eileen doesn’t flinch, but something in her quiet deepens. She looks out at the water, then down at Audry... this small, serious child clinging to structure like it might mean safety. How thoughtless her father must be, to have children and never take the time to raise them. It was despicable even if Audry could not understand why.
The wind rustles through the reeds, and it has Eileen reaching for her shawl, wrapping it gently around Audry’s shoulders. Not because she is cold, but because she is small, and the world has asked too much of her already. “Then tomorrow,” she says, “We’ll go back to the well and find this camp.”
Audry looks up, uncertain, but Eileen’s face is calm. “I have to teach this Dawkith Lorth what it means to be a parent.”