Do Not Vanish

Lantern Hall always felt different at night.

By day, it belonged to motion: bowls, basins, footsteps, low voices, soft curses when stitches pulled or fever refused to break. By evening, the noise thinned. The cots settled into rows of uneven sleep. Lanterns burned low, leaving the altar glow dawn-colored even after sunset.

Ṛṣi stood just inside the door with Maeril at his side.

His cloak was damp at the hem from river mist. His staff rested in his right hand.

Maeril pushed back her hood.

She did not speak at first.

Her yellow eyes moved over the room: the cots before the altar, the blankets folded where hands could find them in the dark, the water bucket by the far wall, the drain cut into the floor with practical ruthlessness. The painted dawn-disk above the simple shrine. The clean path from the door to the beds.

“Beds first,” she murmured.

Ṛṣi looked at her.

“Icons after,” she finished, voice low.

The comment landed more deeply than praise should have.

“That was Elisa,” he said. “She wanted the light to fall on the beds first.”

Maeril glanced at the drain. “And you wanted somewhere blood could go.”

“Yes.”

“Practical pair,” she said.

At the far end of the room, Elisa stood near the altar, turning down the last lantern. The little sunrise at her throat caught the flame and held it. Her hair had been pinned up badly after a long day; a few strands had escaped and clung to her cheek.

She heard them before she turned.

Ṛṣi saw the moment her face found him. Habit softened her first—relief, affection, the old counting of whether he had returned whole enough to stand.

Then her eyes moved to Maeril.

The softness closed.

“Morninglord preserve me,” Elisa said. “You bring guests at this hour now?”

Maeril bowed her head. Not deeply. Not falsely.

“Maeril Greenward,” she said. “Outer City witch. Soup-seller. Abjurer when the day is ambitious. I hope I am not too late for courtesy.”

Elisa came down from the altar step, bare feet silent on the floor.

“Elisa Duskwhisper,” she replied. “Priest of Lathander. Co-keeper of this Hall.”

Her gaze flicked to Ṛṣi.

“And sometime witness to monks deciding that ten days is an appropriate amount of warning before changing their lives.”

Ṛṣi felt that strike exactly where it was meant to.

“I should have spoken sooner,” he said.

“Yes,” Elisa answered.

No anger raised. No volume. That made it worse.

Maeril’s tail shifted once behind her cloak, but she did not speak over the wound. She only watched Elisa more carefully.

Ṛṣi stepped farther into the Hall.

“I wanted you to meet her before she became a rumor here.”

Elisa’s mouth tightened.

“She already has.”

Maeril’s eyebrows lifted.

“Elisa,” Ṛṣi said softly.

The priest held his gaze.

“Do you think a hawk on my doorframe, ink on your hands, and you looking toward the road every time you think no one sees you makes no noise?” she asked. “This Hall hears things. So do I.”

Ṛṣi lowered his eyes.

The room breathed around them: sleeping bodies, old wood, banked coals, the faint smell of salve and soup and river damp.

Maeril stepped forward only enough to be part of the truth, not enough to claim the room.

“Then I am sorry,” she said.

Elisa looked at her sharply.

Maeril did not flinch.

“For becoming a shape in your Hall before you saw my face,” she added.

That caught Elisa off guard.

Maeril folded her hands behind her back, fingers clasped around one wrist. For once, she did not smile.

“I asked for his time,” she said. “His thoughts. His company on a road, eventually. I did not want that to remain something whispered around your cots while you wondered what sort of woman had appeared on the bridge and started pulling at one of your walls.”

Elisa’s eyes narrowed at the word.

“One of my walls.”

“Yes,” Maeril said. “Unless I have badly misread this place.”

The silence tightened.

Ṛṣi drew breath, but Elisa spoke first.

“Are you leaving?”

There it was.

No accusation. No ornament. Just the question that had been waiting in the Hall longer than any of them.

Ṛṣi held his staff a little more firmly.

“Yes,” he said.

Elisa went still.

“Not forever,” he added. “Not tonight. Not before the book is ready. But yes. We intend to travel to Candlekeep together.”

Candlekeep.

The word did not echo. The Hall was too full of sleeping bodies for that. But it moved through Elisa all the same.

Her hands folded around the sun symbol at her throat.

“You choose a long road.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Ṛṣi looked down at his hands.

Maeril stayed quiet beside him. Ṛṣi could feel the restraint in her like heat held under a lid. She wanted to answer, to shield him, to make the room less cruel with a joke.

She did not.

Elisa looked from one to the other. Her eyes took in the distance between them, the way Ṛṣi stood beside Maeril, the way she held herself ready without challenging the room. Not a trespasser. Not exactly a guest.

A threshold.

“I saw it happening,” Elisa said. “Before you named it. You would come back from the bridge with your body here and the rest of you elsewhere. Then the papers. The ink. The way you looked at maps as if they had begun speaking.”

Ṛṣi said nothing.

“You told me you did not know where the road led.”

“I didn’t.”

“And now?”

He looked at Maeril once.

Not for permission.

For honesty.

“Now I know the next step.”

Elisa closed her eyes briefly.

“That is not as comforting as you think.”

“I suppose it isn’t,” he answered.

A cot creaked. Someone murmured in sleep, turned, settled again. Elisa’s gaze went there automatically, checking. Even hurt, she counted the room.

Maeril saw it. Ṛṣi saw Maeril see it.

Something shifted.

“This Hall is beautiful,” Maeril said quietly.

Elisa’s eyes came back to her.

“Not pretty,” Maeril continued. “Beautiful. There is a difference. Pretty places often lie. This one doesn’t.”

Elisa looked at her for a long moment, searching for flattery and not finding it.

“Beds first,” Maeril said again. “Clean paths. Water near the weak. Light where frightened people wake. Someone thought about bodies before doctrine. I respect that.”

Elisa’s mouth loosened a little, but the hurt did not leave.

“He helped me build it,” she said.

“I know.”

“No,” Elisa said. “You know he serves here. That is not the same.”

Maeril inclined her head. “Then tell me.”

Ṛṣi turned toward Elisa.

She looked smaller suddenly, though she had not moved.

“I arrived in Baldur’s Gate with a cracked holy symbol and a sack of clothes,” Elisa said. “The Zhentarim were behind me. I had spent a year learning how not to sleep deeply, how not to trust kindness, how not to say my name in the wrong room.”

Her thumb passed over Lathander’s symbol.

“I met him at a ruined shrine,” Elisa said. “An old place. Broken walls, wet grass, a cracked stone circle where travelers had once left candles before the road.”

“I had made camp there because I was tired, and because the place still remembered dawn even after everyone else had forgotten it.”

She looked across the Hall, but her eyes had gone somewhere else.

“Before Baldur’s Gate, there was Waterdeep. Trollskull Manor. We called it the Beacon of Hope. It was supposed to be a sanctuary. A place for children. For the frightened. For anyone who needed a morning.”

Her voice stayed steady. That made it worse.

“My friend Firemind was captured by the Zhentarim,” Elisa said. “Tortured. Murdered. They wanted something we had, and they wanted Rika punished for leaving them.”

Her hand closed around Lathander’s symbol.

“Rika had been one of theirs once. We protected her. We thought that meant she was free.”

A small, bitter breath left her.

“Then they came for the Beacon. They attacked the place we had built for children and frightened people, and they burned it.”

Her voice did not break. That made it worse.

“Rika bought me enough time to run. She didn’t make it.”

Elisa looked down.

“So I fled. Hiding. Sleeping lightly. Alone.”

Ṛṣi remembered the pale morning, the dew on the stones, and Elisa kneeling as if prayer were the last structure still standing.

“This man,” Elisa said, nodding toward him without looking away from Maeril, “arrived and did not ask what was wrong. He did not offer salvation. He did not offer a sermon. He just sat where I could reach him if I wanted.”

Her mouth softened.

“He listened,” Elisa continued. “Then he brought me here, when this Hall was still a ruin, and said it could become something if enough hands believed it before anyone else did.”

Ṛṣi’s throat tightened.

Elisa looked around the Hall.

“We made this from broken furniture, old stone, borrowed coin, and stubbornness. We found candles, relics, beds, volunteers. He stood by the door the first day we opened, because I was afraid no one would come. Then too many came. He stayed.”

She finally looked at him.

“I thought,” she said, and the words cost her more now, “that perhaps Ilmater and Lathander had been kind enough to give me someone whose pain ran deep enough that he would never need to leave.”

Ṛṣi closed his eyes.

The sentence struck like a hand placed gently on a bruise.

“That was not fair,” Elisa said before he could answer.

“Fear is rarely fair before it is spoken,” she added.

Maeril let out a slow breath.

“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”

Elisa gave her a sharp, tired look. “You would know?”

Maeril’s smile came, small and edged. “Dawn-priest, I live in a doorless hut because I decided a door was a poor substitute for being ready. I know a thing or two about fear pretending to be architecture.”

For the first time, Elisa almost smiled.

Almost.

Ṛṣi stepped closer to the altar. The light caught the red cord at his wrist.

“When I met you,” he said, “I had nowhere to stand. I knew battlefields, cells, roads, and rooms where suffering was either currency or punishment. You gave me a place where pain arrived and was not worshiped.”

Elisa’s eyes shone, though no tears fell.

“You gave me work that made sense,” he continued. “This Hall rooted me. Every cot, every repaired wall, every drain and folded cloth—there is part of me here. I am not forgetting that.”

His fingers tightened around his staff.

“If I walk south, it is because this place taught me mercy can be built. Not only felt. Not only offered one wound at a time. Built. In stone, in habit, in beds placed before icons.”

Maeril looked down at that.

Ṛṣi swallowed.

“The book is another kind of building. Ink instead of mortar. Road instead of wall. I am not leaving you behind, Elisa. I am carrying what we made here.”

Elisa’s breath trembled once.

“You should have said that sooner.”

“Yes.”

“You are very bad at knowing when people need words.”

“Yes.”

Maeril made a small sound.

Ṛṣi glanced at her.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I am admiring your spiritual growth.”

Elisa huffed despite herself.

It broke the room a little. Not enough to end the pain. Enough to let air through.

Then Elisa sat down on the nearest bench as if her legs had finally decided the conversation was heavy.

“I have been afraid,” she said. “That if you step away, the Hall will discover it has only been standing because you leaned against it.”

Ṛṣi knelt before her before thinking better of it. Not supplication. Not penance. Only closeness enough to answer plainly.

“It stands because you built it,” he said.

“With you.”

“Yes. With me. And with everyone who learned where the blankets are kept. With every volunteer who came back twice. With every patient who became a helper because you remembered their name. I am part of this Hall. I am not all of it.”

Elisa looked at him for a long while.

Then her face changed.

Not healed. Not free of fear.

But the fear lost its right to rule.

“You will come back,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

He did not know the road ahead, but he truly intended to come back.

Maeril shifted, then spoke quietly.

“I will do my best to bring him back with all necessary pieces attached.”

Elisa looked at her.

“All?”

“Most,” Maeril amended. “Travel is unreasonable.”

Elisa’s lips twitched.

Maeril’s expression softened past the joke.

“I mean it,” she said. “I know he is not mine to take. I asked him for a road. I did not ask him to cut his roots.”

The words settled.

Elisa stood.

“Good,” she said, voice rough. “Because if you had, I would have disliked you.”

“I assumed.”

“I may still dislike you slightly.”

“That seems healthy.”

Ṛṣi let his head bow for one heartbeat, hiding the beginning of a smile.

Elisa saw it anyway.

“Oh, don’t look relieved yet,” she said. “I am still cross with you.”

“I know.”

“With both of you, potentially.”

Maeril nodded. “Reasonable.”

“And I want wine.”

Maeril blinked.

Elisa crossed to a cupboard near the altar and pulled out a small clay jug and three chipped cups.

“Pilgrim’s gift,” she said. “Rough, young, and probably better used for cleaning wounds.”

“Honest wine,” Maeril said.

Elisa poured.

The red wine looked nearly black in the low light. They stood near one another, three tired figures between beds and altar, the Hall breathing around them.

Elisa lifted her cup.

“To what?” she asked.

Maeril considered, all mischief gone from her face for once.

“To thresholds,” she said. “The ones we guard. The ones we cross. The ones we pretend we haven’t already stepped over.”

Elisa’s smile came properly this time, small but real.

“To thresholds.”

Ṛṣi lifted his cup.

“To bonds carried,” he said.

They drank.

The wine was terrible.

Maeril coughed once, delicately, then stared into her cup as if it had personally betrayed her.

“Elisa,” she said, “your god owes you better pilgrims.”

Elisa laughed.

It startled the nearest sleeper.

The laugh softened everything that followed.

They spoke briefly of practical things—not enough to bury the wound under logistics, only enough to let the future become less monstrous. The road south. Weather. Which stretch of the Coast Way had been bad for bandits last season. Which of the Hall’s volunteers could be trusted with keys.

Elisa asked questions like a priest, a quartermaster, and a worried sister at once.

Maeril answered with more seriousness than Ṛṣi expected. She named safe camps, bad wells, shrines that were truly tended and shrines that were paint on stone. She admitted what she did not know.

That helped.

Elisa respected people who knew the limits of their knowledge.

At last, the priest set down her cup.

“Come here,” she said.

Ṛṣi obeyed at once.

Maeril did not. She hesitated.

Elisa noticed. “What?”

“Will your god mind?”

“About what?”

Maeril gestured vaguely at herself. Horns, tail, green skin, witchhood, the whole inconvenient assortment. “Blessing a woman who swears at dawn and feeds alley children under the table.”

Elisa looked up toward the painted sun-disk.

“If he minds,” she said, “he can take it up with me in the morning. Come.”

Maeril did.

Elisa lifted both hands.

“Lord of the First Light, hear us,” she said softly.

The Hall seemed to quiet around the words.

“You watched this place rise. You saw beds carried in before we had enough blankets, candles lit before we knew whether anyone would come, and two stubborn fools pretending they were not afraid.”

Ṛṣi closed his eyes.

Maeril’s shoulder brushed his.

“Now one of those fools walks a new road,” Elisa continued, “and brings with him another, equally troublesome, who has the good sense to feed people and the questionable sense to invite monks into her plans.”

Maeril whispered, “Accurate.”

Elisa ignored her with priestly dignity.

“Let the road meet them with more dawn than darkness. Let change bring renewal, not ruin. Let the work begun here in bandage, bowl, ink, and stubborn mercy take root wherever it can.”

Her voice thinned. Not weakness. Truth.

“And when they are far from this Hall, remind them that walls are not abandoned when their stones are carried forward. Remind them that some bonds are not chains, and some departures are not betrayals.”

Ṛṣi’s throat closed.

Elisa’s hands trembled once, then steadied.

“And if it would please you,” she added, much quieter, “send them back to me alive. Preferably with all necessary pieces attached.”

Maeril bowed her head.

“Aye.”

“Let dawn hear it,” Ṛṣi said.

The blessing settled without light, without thunder, without proof.

Only the Hall, the sleeping wounded, and three people choosing not to let fear become the final word.

Elisa lowered her hands.

For a heartbeat, none of them moved.

Then Maeril sniffed. “Well. That was dangerously sincere.”

Elisa wiped quickly at one eye. “I can ruin it if needed.”

“I was hoping you might.”

They let the blessing end and moved apart.

The night loosened.

At the door, Elisa’s expression changed with dangerous suddenness. Ṛṣi knew that look. It usually meant she had found a way to make truth useful and embarrassing at the same time.

“You know,” she said, far too casually, “I am empowered to bless unions as well. Weddings, handfastings. Rituals people use to justify sharing blankets.”

Ṛṣi froze.

Maeril turned slowly.

“Oh?” she said.

“Elisa.”

The priest looked innocent. Badly.

“I only mention it because Candlekeep is a long road, and arrangements sometimes change on long roads.”

“Elisa.”

“And I would hate for anyone to lack proper ritual support.”

Maeril’s grin spread bright and wicked.

“As far as I know,” she said, “your monk has taken no vow of chastity.”

Ṛṣi’s ears burned hot.

“I said that in confidence.”

Maeril blinked at him. “You said it to me over tea while trying very hard not to flirt.”

“I was not—”

Both women looked at him.

He stopped.

Elisa’s shoulders began to shake.

Maeril leaned toward her, solemn as a magistrate. “If I decide to marry your wall, Dawn-priest, I will send the request in writing. Triplicate. Proper seals. Candlekeep sounds fussy about documentation.”

Elisa laughed aloud.

Ṛṣi covered his face with one hand.

“You are both impossible.”

“Yes,” Elisa said.

“Deeply,” Maeril agreed.

“And now,” Elisa said, still smiling, “one of you is leaving my Hall before I regret being hospitable, and the other is going to bed.”

Maeril pulled her hood up. At the threshold, she turned back.

The smile had softened.

“Thank you,” she said to Elisa. “For the blessing. For the Hall. For him, before I knew him.”

Elisa’s face gentled.

“Bring him back.”

“I will.”

She stepped into the night.

Ṛṣi watched until the dark took the line of her cloak.

Then he closed the door quietly and turned back.

Elisa stood with her arms folded, the lanternlight warm on her tired face.

“Well,” she said. “She is not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know. Someone softer. Or worse.”

“She is not soft.”

“No.” Elisa looked toward the door.

Ṛṣi waited.

“She will keep you honest,” Elisa said. “And possibly alive through spite.”

“That seems likely.”

“And you will write.”

“Yes.”

“And return.”

“Yes.”

Elisa stepped forward and adjusted the edge of his cloak at his shoulder. A small act. Familiar. Maternal only if one ignored how often she had threatened to throw him into the river for overwork.

“Go to bed, Ṛṣiśūra,” she said. “Dawn comes whether you are ready or not.”

He smiled.

“Yes, Elisa.”

As he walked toward his small room, staff touching the floor in soft, even beats, something inside him settled—not into ease, exactly. Ease would have been too simple.

The road to Candlekeep was still long.

Leaving would still hurt.

But now the Hall had seen the hut.

The priest had seen the witch.

The woman who once stopped running had blessed the road that would take him away for a while.

That did not make the leaving easy. It made it honest.