taken in

as I arrived I thought I saw you leaving, carrying your shoes

"Listen, this is the last of my money and I really need that fabric."

The Gilded Market bustled around him in a haze of incense smoke, hammered metal, and sun-warmed stone. He kept his hands braced on the counter not out of threat, but to steady himself, even as his jaw feathered. The weeks had been long with moving, planning, dreaming in half-finished sketches with Aithne over candlelight, and the coins he laid down gleamed like a final exhale. He was trying to get her what she wanted, what he already told her she couldn't have.

He almost flinched admitting it, but he could already picture how she would light up at the sight of real fabric in their half-built home. He could imagine curtains stirring in a breeze instead of rough canvas walls. He wanted—more than he would ever say aloud—to make something that felt like belonging to her. Like home, and warmth, and safety that she never had before.

The guildmaster stood there, looking between the boy and the coins. Soren sighed. "If you can give me anything durable and fireproof," he added through nearly clenched teeth, "I’ll make it work." For once, this wasn’t vanity. This was a promise he was trying to keep.

Soren

decided that once again I was just dreaming of bumping into you

your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand

The Last Whisper folds around Flora like cigarette smoke and secrets, its cramped stone corridor holding the cool bite of subterranean air. Her curls frizz anyway in the damp, torch-lit gloom, and she’s weaving between customers when a voice hits her like a pebble skimming across still water.

Not the words at first. Just the tone. Young. Trying-so-hard-it-hurts young. And something in it pulls at her chest the same way old songs do—; sweet at the start and then suddenly sharp, like memory breaking skin.

She doesn’t look directly at Soren, not at first. Just drifts a little, her steps slowing as though she’d forgotten what direction she meant to take. The market noise blurs into background hum, her gaze catching only fragments: sun-warmed coins, a clenched jaw, determination so stiff it might snap. She knows that kind of hope; she’s seen it enough times in the mirror, and once, heartbreakingly, in Enzo’s face whenever he promised he’d fix something he shouldn’t have had to fix.

It’s that—more than the plea itself—that stops her.

Her fingers slip into the pocket of her pants, brushing against the soft mouth of a tiny change purse. She’s not carrying much; she rarely does down here, but coins are coins, and kindness disguised is easier for people to accept. Flora clears her throat lightly, stepping just close enough that it can look accidental. She bends, performing a little exaggerated flourish of reaching down as if plucking something just beyond her sandal.

"Oh hey," she says, tone airy and friendly, almost conspiratorial as she straightens and extends the small purse toward him. "I think you dropped this."

as I arrived I thought I saw you leaving, carrying your shoes

Soren was about to say something else across the counter to the guild master, but stopped, irritation pricking first, sharp and instinctive, before surprise had the chance to settle. For a second he genuinely considered that she might be speaking to someone behind him. Someone not currently bargaining with the last of his coin like a man trying to hold his own ribs together by force of will.

But the purse was aimed squarely at him. Suspicion flickered up. His first instinct was always to brace, to look for the hook hidden behind the bait. Kindness usually came sharpened.

Still, the purse was there, annd the woman’s expression carried none of the smugness he expected from someone catching him in a vulnerable moment. Just openness. Easy, like a warm breeze whispering across the beach, and that matched the softness in her sea foam eyes.

Which almost made it worse.

His jaw flexed. Pride kicked hard in his chest, but practicality—the part of him honed by lean years and every lesson he’d learned the hard way—slid in behind it. Aithne’s face rose unbidden in his mind: that small flare of wonder she tried so hard to hide whenever she imagined building something that belonged to her.

Curtains. Warmth. A home.

He exhaled through his nose, a sound halfway to a scoff, annd reached out. His fingers brushed the purse first—testing the weight—before he closed his hand around it. The leather was soft, worn from handling, and it was heavier than he expected. “Guess it is my lucky day, this is mine.” But even as he said it, he was still watching her with narrow, assessing emerald eyes—trying to figure out what she wanted in return.

Soren couldn’t decide if she was very generous, or if she was stupid. He had always been skeptical about this kind of treatment. In Stormbreak, in the circles his family ran in, there was never this kind of handout given without some expectation of matching or exceeding it to follow in return. Soren’s jaw feathered, but he turned to the guild master again, eyes masking the surprise and embarrassment and pride that all mixed and mingled together in his chest.

Soren

decided that once again I was just dreaming of bumping into you

your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand

Flora doesn’t flinch under Soren's stare. If anything, she meets those sharp emerald eyes with something softer, steadier, her own gaze open and uncomplicated, like clear water that does not mind being looked through. There is a whole conversation she could have offered him—about pride, about survival, about how help does not always come barbed—but she knows better than to speak it aloud. Words would turn the moment into something heavy, something exposed, and she will not be the one to make a kindness feel like a charity, so she does the simplest thing instead.

Her shoulders lift in a small, careless shrug, the kind you give when someone thanks you for holding a door or returning a dropped glove. A nod follows, easy and unremarkable, as if this is exactly what it looks like and nothing more. Found on the ground. Given back. End of story.

For a heartbeat, Enzo flickers there again—his grin, his stubborn pride, the way he used to hate being helped unless it came disguised as coincidence—and something warm and aching settles briefly behind her ribs before she lets it pass without ceremony.

Flora slides her hands back into her pockets, rings cool against her fingers, and turns away before the moment can curdle into awkwardness or suspicion. The Last Whisper swallows her quickly, the lane folding around her in torchlight and murmurs as she continues on, footsteps light, posture loose, as though nothing of note has happened at all. Just another stranger moving through smoke and stone, just another secret the Hollowed Grounds will keep.

~FIN