Chapter 248 — One Week

Chapter 248: Chapter 248 — One Week

He slept the better part of two full days once he was properly home, and woke on the third morning to sunlight slanting warm across his floor and Yveth’s side of the bed already empty.

He found her downstairs, going over the morning’s deliveries with Pella, and she glanced up at him with the same knowing, unhurried warmth she always greeted his homecomings with now.

"You’re up," she said. "Properly up, not just wandering around half-asleep."

"Properly up."

"Good. Eat something. Then tell me about Region Four’s doorstep, since I know that’s where your head’s been since you walked in."

He ate, and told her, carefully — the crystal formations, the strange, shifting light, the resonant hum he still half-remembered in his bones even now, days removed from it. She listened properly, interrupting only once to ask whether he’d actually seen anything living in there yet or just the scenery.

"Glimpses," he admitted. "Didn’t get close enough to identify anything."

"So you stood at the edge of an entire new world and came home without even a decent story."

"I came home with a decent story about standing at the edge of it."

"Weak." She said it fondly, and went back to her ledger.

He spent that first proper day doing something he hadn’t managed in longer than he liked admitting — sitting down with Rilla and actually learning something from her, rather than the other way around. She kept a modest garden box behind the inn, mostly herbs, and had never once let him near it.

"You’ll trample something," she said, when he asked.

"I won’t."

"You stepped on my thyme last spring."

"That was an accident."

"It’s always an accident with you." She relented anyway, showing him how she staggered the planting so nothing competed for the same light, and he found himself genuinely absorbed by it, the small, patient work feeling like a good counterweight to everything waiting underground.

Pella wandered out partway through and declared the whole project "boring, but in a nice way," which Rilla accepted as the closest thing to a compliment Pella was likely to offer.

He spent part of the second day at the market rather than the smithy, hunting down a specific kind of oiled cloth a trader had once mentioned was good for wrapping gear against crystal dust — fine, abrasive particulate that apparently worked its way into joints and seams if left unchecked. He found a bolt of it after visiting three separate stalls, and spent that evening in his room carefully wrapping the seams of his pack and boots, a small, unglamorous precaution that felt, by the time he finished, considerably more useful than it had any right to look.

He met Elira and Dallin on the third evening, though this time at a different tavern entirely, one Dallin had been wanting to try for weeks, and the change of scenery shifted the whole conversation’s shape without either of them intending it to.

"Tell me honestly," Elira said, partway through the evening. "Are you actually nervous about this one, or have you genuinely run out of things that scare you?"

He considered the question properly rather than brushing it off. "A little nervous. Not about dying. About not being as ready as I think I am."

"That’s an oddly specific fear."

"It’s the one that’s actually true, though." He turned his cup slowly. "Everything else I’ve learned to manage. That one I can’t fully test until I’m already in it."

Dallin studied him a moment. "That’s the most honest thing you’ve said about any of this in a year."

"Don’t make it weird."

"Too late." Dallin grinned, and the conversation moved on, lighter again, though something in the exchange stayed with Arlen the rest of the night.

He spent the fourth day largely alone, walking the river district without any particular destination, and found himself stopping at a small shrine he’d never properly visited before — modest, unassuming, tucked between two larger buildings, dedicated to some minor deity of travelers he didn’t recognize by name. He lit a candle more out of old habit from a different life than any real faith, and sat a while in the quiet, thinking about nothing in particular.

He visited Bellwyn’s apothecary on the fifth day, mostly to ask whether she’d ever handled materials from Region IV and what, if anything, she knew about the resonance phenomenon the archive had described.

"Never worked the materials myself," she admitted, "but I’ve heard enough from other customers to know the light down there does strange things to the mind if you’re not careful. Disorientation, mostly. Nothing permanent, from what I’ve gathered, but unpleasant while it lasts."

"Any remedy for it?"

"Not a proper one. Some people swear by chewing a bitter root beforehand — keeps the senses sharper, supposedly. I’ll sell you some if you want to try it, though I can’t promise it does anything beyond give you something to do with your hands while you wait it out."

He bought a small pouch of it anyway, trusting her honesty about its uncertain usefulness more than he would have trusted false confidence from someone else.

He spent his final evening at home simply sitting with Yveth on the back step, the week’s rest settling comfortably into him, no particular urgency pressing at either of them despite tomorrow’s departure waiting just past tonight’s quiet.

"You’re ready," she said, not quite a question.

"I think so. As ready as anyone gets for something they haven’t actually walked yet."

"That’s an honest answer too." She bumped his shoulder lightly. "You’ve had a lot of those lately."

"I’ve been working on it."

"Keep working on it. It suits you." She settled against him, quiet for a long while, and when she finally spoke again, her voice had dropped something of its usual teasing edge. "Come back the same shape you left in. That’s all I’m asking."

"I’ll do my best."

"That’s all anyone can promise, I suppose." She let the silence settle comfortably after that, and they stayed there a long while, the evening gathering dark and easy around them, nothing more needing to be said before tomorrow finally arrived.