Inside the common hall, the evening shadows were deepening into purple dusk. A single brass oil lamp burned on the corner table beside the hearth. It cast a warm pool of amber light across a clean sheet of heavy rag paper, an inkhorn filled with fresh carbon-dark oak-ink. A newly cut goose quill.
Davren Venn sat on a low three-legged stool with his braced left leg stretched out toward the hearth stones, warming his stiff fingers over the coals. For eighteen months, his comms with their mother, Maud Venn, had consisted of breezy, romantic omissions. Cryptic notes left on doorsteps about ‘impossible stairs’ and grand northern surveys, designed to make Maud admire his boldness while hiding the terrifying truth of his injuries and his entrapment.
Now, with Paxa’s medical veto ringing in his ears and the honest reality of his limitations laid bare, he picked up the quill.
Kezra sat across the pine table. She watched her younger brother’s hand as he dipped the nib into the dark ink. She didn’t prompt him, and she didn’t offer suggestions. This was Davren’s reckoning with the mother who had spent eighteen months listening to the wind against the drying shed doorstone in Kilnstep, wondering if her son was alive.
