Something to Carry

Four days passed in the way final preparations did: too quickly, too full of small necessary things.

Favors were asked. Routes checked. Packs mended. Straps reinforced. Cloaks patched against weather. Food was wrapped, herbs bundled, remedies sorted into small pouches by purpose and danger.

Lantern Hall learned which hands would hold which duties in Rishi’s absence. Maeril made sure the bridge knew her stall was still hers while she was away.

The road south stopped being an idea.

It became weight.

But the only weight that mattered that night lay on Maeril’s table.

The messy folio sat to one side. It was swollen with crossed-out lines, cramped margins, charcoal smudges, grease stains, and one thumbprint of dried blood.

One corner still smelled faintly of stew. Maeril denied this on principle.

Beside it waited the clean pages.

Cream-colored. Good paper. Better than either would have used for themselves.

Rishi had raised an eyebrow when she brought it out.

Maeril had only said, “This deserves clean skin.”

So they gave it one.

Rishi copied with slow, careful attention.

Maeril sat across from him, exhausted but sharp-eyed, hair half-fallen from its braids. She checked the master folio and stopped him whenever his discipline made a sentence too dry to live.

They began with the title.

At the top of the first clean page, Maeril wrote it once in charcoal, testing the shape.

On the Thresholds

Simple. Bare. Large enough to breathe.

Under it, in Rishi’s steady hand, came the smaller line:

A Study of Wounds and Ways of Mending at the Edges of a City

Maeril squinted at it.

“Accurate,” she said.

“You sound disappointed.”

“I wanted to accuse it of being melodramatic, but unfortunately it says what it is.”

“Then we keep it.”

“Yes, yes. Keep your tragic little subtitle.”

He almost smiled.

“Little?”

“It is trying very hard to be taller.”

This time he did smile, and the ink line went a little crooked.

When the final page was copied, neither of them spoke for a while.

Maeril reached out, then stopped before touching the stack, as if fresh ink had made the thing holy enough to require manners.

“It looks real,” she said.

“It is real.”

Her eyes flicked to him.

He set down the quill. His fingers were stained dark almost to the nails.

“We only made it visible.”

That silenced her more completely than he had intended.

Then she cleared her throat, far too loudly, and stood.

“Well. Since you have chosen to be inconveniently right, we should bind the thing before I become sentimental.”

Binding was slower than copying.

Rishi cut the leather strips himself, softening them over steam, measuring by touch.

His hands knew this kind of care: tension, alignment, pressure, the difference between firm and too tight.

Pages became signatures. Signatures became a spine. Thread passed through paper and leather in steady rhythm, in and out, like breath through a body learning to hold.

Maeril prepared the cover.

Over the front she worked a heated mark into the surface: the outline of a gate, plain and sturdy. Along its lower edge she added three small signs.

A bridge.

A circle.

A hut.

She held it up.

“Too sentimental?”

Rishi looked at it for a long moment.

“No,” he said. “Honest.”

“Hm.” She lowered the cover, but her smile stayed.

He fixed the pages into it.

By the time he tied off the final thread, the fire had burned low and the night had deepened around the hut.

The finished book lay between them.

Maeril placed her palm flat on the cover.

“Thank you, Rook,” she murmured.

Rishi looked at her hand, then at the book. He placed his own palm beside hers.

Not over hers.

Beside.

For a moment they stayed that way: with their hands on the first thing they had made together.

Then Maeril drew back and rubbed at one eye.

“If I cry on this now, I will kill us both.”

Rishi lifted the book before she could prove it.

The book pulled at his hand. It was not heavy, but the weight still surprised him.

Maeril saw it.

“Feels heavier than it looks?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Truth usually does.”

He held the book a moment longer.

The road to Candlekeep now had a shape they could carry.

Rishi set the book back down carefully.

Tomorrow, he would patrol as usual. Maeril would feed the bridge. Elisa would light the Hall before dawn. The city would grind its teeth and pretend nothing had changed.

But beneath the surface, a small door had been made.

At the threshold of the hut, Rishi paused.

“Sleep,” he said.

Maeril leaned against the table, too tired to pretend she was not.

“You first.”

“I have farther to walk.”

“Exactly. You need the practice.”

He bowed his head, smiling despite himself.

“Good night, Maeril.”

“Good night, Rishi.”

He stepped out beneath the herb bundles and into the damp night.

Behind him, in the doorless hut, the bound book rested on the table.

Ahead, Lantern Hall waited: Elisa, the cots, and the life he would soon leave for a while but not abandon.

They were as ready as people could be.

They had spent their lives watching other people’s disasters.

Now they had chosen something of their own to carry.