set aside your soul
New Haven—he mouthed the name silently as he walked, the syllables feeling strange, the gravel crunching beneath his boots rather than the loam he once knew. It was the first time he’d set foot here since the settling of this town. Now, where silence had once reigned, there was life.
The air smelled of tilled soil and wildflowers, the sweetness of lantern oil and bread drifting from the open windows of houses that lined the road. Flowerbirrh was alight here. People worked away in their yards, starting gardens and cleaning up the evidence of Deepfrost. Some fought against memory mud that threatened to overtake their walkways, and some went to help their neighbors.
As he walked, his chest ached—a mix of sorrow with something gentler. He could see Cordelia in the shadowed corners of the settlement, in the shining sunlight that came down. She would love this town, a better and broader home for people than it had been for them, once upon a time.
He remembered when Kings End had been all ruin and solitude, a place where even hope had felt exiled. And yet here it was—proof that life returned, that hands other than his had built something enduring. It made him miss his wife.
“New Haven,” he said again as he turned a corner, leading him out of the town proper where the houses started to spread apart and the green came in rolling, brilliant waves.
The air smelled of tilled soil and wildflowers, the sweetness of lantern oil and bread drifting from the open windows of houses that lined the road. Flowerbirrh was alight here. People worked away in their yards, starting gardens and cleaning up the evidence of Deepfrost. Some fought against memory mud that threatened to overtake their walkways, and some went to help their neighbors.
As he walked, his chest ached—a mix of sorrow with something gentler. He could see Cordelia in the shadowed corners of the settlement, in the shining sunlight that came down. She would love this town, a better and broader home for people than it had been for them, once upon a time.
He remembered when Kings End had been all ruin and solitude, a place where even hope had felt exiled. And yet here it was—proof that life returned, that hands other than his had built something enduring. It made him miss his wife.
“New Haven,” he said again as he turned a corner, leading him out of the town proper where the houses started to spread apart and the green came in rolling, brilliant waves.
Noah
let tomorrow realize itselt
