"Don't throw it that way," Tarin said. "You're aiming like you want it to miss."
Caelan laughed and tossed the stick again anyway. It bounced once on the packed dirt and skidded wide of the stump they were using as a target.
Mireth groaned dramatically. "That's the third time. If you break my good stick, I'm making you carve me another."
"It's not a good stick," Caelan said. "It's crooked."
"It was straight when I found it," Mireth shot back. "The world did that, not me."
Brannik snorted from where he sat on the low stone wall, sharpening a knife. "That stick was crooked before you picked it up."
Mireth turned on him. "You don't know that."
"I do," Brannik replied calmly. "I was there."
"You're always there," Tarin said. "That doesn't mean you're useful."
Brannik didn't look up. "It usually does."
Elowen sat a little apart from the others, legs folded, ledger abandoned beside her. She was smiling, watching the argument like someone watching weather she'd already recorded. "You're all avoiding the real problem," she said.
Tarin squinted at her. "Which is?"
"Caelan's not paying attention."
All eyes turned to him.
Caelan blinked. "I am."
Mireth crossed her arms. "You're looking past us."
"I'm looking at you," Caelan said, then frowned. "Mostly."
"That's worse," Tarin said. "That means you're thinking."
Caelan opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. He hadn't realized how often his gaze had drifted—past the yard, past the fields, toward the dark line of trees beyond the fog-softened distance.
He glanced that way again before he could stop himself.
Mireth noticed immediately. "There," she said, pointing. "You did it again."
Did what?" he asked, though he already knew.
"That," Elowen said gently. "You keep checking the forest like it's about to walk over here."
"It's not," Tarin added. "I'd hear it."
Brannik paused his sharpening and looked up at Caelan for the first time. His eyes were steady, unreadable. "Something bothering you?"
Caelan hesitated.
The easy answer sat ready. Just tired. The true one felt too large, too unclear to hand over.
"I don't know," he said finally. "It's just… loud."
They stared at him.
"The forest?" Mireth asked.
"No," Caelan said. "Yes. Maybe. Not loud like noise. Loud like—" He waved a hand, frustrated. "Like when you're trying to think and someone keeps standing too close."
Tarin grimaced. "I hate when people do that."
Elowen tilted her head. "That's a strange way to describe trees."
Caelan smiled weakly. "I know."
They fell quiet for a moment. Somewhere nearby, a bird called—once, then stopped.
Mireth cleared her throat. "You want to do something else? We can head down to the creek. Skip stones. Tarin still owes me a rematch."
"I won that," Tarin said.
"You cheated," Mireth replied.
"I used skill."
"You bent the rules."
"The rules were suggestions."
Caelan chuckled, the sound coming easier now that he stood outside, open sky above him. The tightness in his chest had eased since leaving the house, breath coming fuller, deeper.
"Creek sounds good," he said. "If we don't mind getting wet."
"I always mind getting wet," Tarin said. "But I do it anyway."
They started down the path together, boots kicking loose pebbles, conversation tumbling back into place like it always did.
"You ever think about leaving?" Tarin asked suddenly.
Mireth blinked. "Where did that come from?"
Tarin shrugged. "Just asking."
Elowen looked thoughtful. "Sometimes. Mostly when I'm counting losses."
Brannik shook his head. "Running doesn't fix rot."
"I didn't say running," Tarin replied. "I said leaving."
Caelan listened, half-present. The farther they moved from the house, the easier it became to breathe. The path dipped slightly, the air cooling, damp earth scent rising stronger with each step.
He glanced toward the deeper woods again—longer this time.
Brannik noticed. "You sure you're all right?"
Caelan nodded. "Yeah. Better, actually."
Mireth smiled at him. "See? You just needed us."
"Maybe," Caelan said.
But even as they laughed and argued and pushed each other toward the creek, part of him remained aware of the forest—not watching them, not threatening.
Waiting.
And for reasons he couldn't explain, that knowledge felt less frightening outdoors than it ever had inside walls.
They reached the creek as the sun dipped lower, light slanting through the trees in long amber bands.
Tarin dropped his pack first and immediately started rifling through it. "All right. Same rules as last time. Three throws. Closest to the far rock wins."
"You changed the rules last time," Mireth said.
"I refined them," Tarin replied. "That's growth."
Elowen sat on a flat stone near the bank, pulling her boots off and tucking her skirts up. "I'll keep score. Properly."
Brannik leaned his spear against a tree and crouched near the water, testing the current with two fingers. "Creek's higher than usual."
Caelan knelt near the bank, selecting stones by feel rather than sight. Smooth. Flat. Familiar. His hands lingered longer than usual as he turned one over, thumb tracing the edge.
The pressure he'd felt earlier was different now.
Looser.
Responsive.
"All right," Tarin said, lining up his throw. "Watch and learn."
He cast the stone in a clean arc. It skipped twice, then sank with a soft plunk well short of the far rock.
Mireth laughed. "Refined, was it?"
Tarin scowled. "That was a warm-up."
Caelan barely listened. He stood, eyes on the water, and tossed his stone underhand—casual, unmeasured.
The stone struck the surface at an odd angle.
It should have sunk.
Instead, it skipped. Once. Twice. Three times. Each contact quieter than the last, the final skip nudging the stone just close enough to the far rock that the current carried it the rest of the way.
It tapped stone.
Silence followed.
Elowen blinked. "That was… lucky."
Caelan stared at the water. "Was it?"
Mireth grinned. "Beginner's fortune. Again."
Tarin snorted. "No way he does that twice."
Caelan picked another stone. This one was heavier. Less suited. He could feel it—how it wanted to fall, how gravity already claimed it.
He threw anyway.
Mid-flight, the stone clipped a low-hanging branch.
It should have dropped straight down.
Instead, the branch flexed just enough—just enough—that the stone deflected, flattened its angle, and kissed the water in a perfect skipping line.
Four skips.
This time it landed on the far rock, resting there as if placed.
Brannik straightened slowly.
"Huh," he said.
"That branch wasn't there before," Tarin muttered.
"It was," Mireth said. "You just don't look up."
Caelan felt his pulse quicken—not fear, not excitement. Awareness.
He hadn't aimed for the branch.
He hadn't needed to.
Elowen scribbled a mark in the dirt with a stick. "Point to Caelan."
"Best of five," Tarin said immediately.
They changed games then—dice carved from knucklebone, rolled on a flat stone. Chance, mostly. Skill only in how you tossed.
Caelan rolled last.
The first die wobbled, tipped, and settled on its lowest face.
The second followed—then shifted, barely perceptible, as if nudged by a breath no one felt.
Both showed the same mark.
Mireth groaned. "You're cheating."
"I didn't touch them," Caelan said quickly.
"I didn't say how you cheated," she replied.
They laughed it off. The sun dipped further. Shadows lengthened.
Next came a throwing game with knives—safe enough at short range, targets carved into a fallen log. Brannik demonstrated once, clean and precise.
Caelan took a blade, balanced it on his palm.
The weight felt… cooperative.
He threw.
The knife struck slightly off-center—but the wood split along a natural seam, drawing the blade inward until it buried dead-center in the mark.
"That log's rotted," Tarin said.
Brannik shook his head. "Not like that."
Caelan's hand tingled faintly.
Each time it happened, the effect was small. Explainable. Just enough to pass without comment. But Caelan felt it in his bones—tiny corrections stacking atop one another, reality leaning where he leaned.
Not pushing.
Agreeing.
"Do it again," Mireth said.
Caelan hesitated. For the first time since leaving the house, unease crept in.
"I think I'm done," he said.
"Aha," Tarin said. "So it is cheating."
Caelan smiled, but his eyes drifted, once more, toward the deeper forest.
The air there felt thicker now. Charged. Not hostile—but expectant.
Whatever was happening to him wasn't loud.
It didn't announce itself.
It just… adjusted things.
And the forest, watching from the edges, did not object.
The whisper wasn't a voice.
Not at first.
It slipped in between sounds—the creek's low rush, Mireth's laughter, Tarin arguing about whether dice were ever truly fair. It wasn't loud enough to interrupt any of it. It threaded through it, thin and persistent, like a breeze that kept finding the same gap in a wall.
Caelan stilled.
"…you all hear that?" he asked.
"Hear what?" Mireth said, already half-laughing.
Tarin cupped a hand to his ear in exaggerated fashion. "If you're about to say the forest calling, I swear—"
"No," Caelan said quickly. "Never mind."
Because the whisper hadn't been sound.
It had been direction.
A tug, gentle but insistent, pulling not at his ears but somewhere behind his eyes. He swallowed and forced his attention back to the group, to the familiar shapes of them—the way Elowen sat cross-legged now, stick forgotten in her fingers, the way Brannik leaned with his weight settled just so.
Stay here, he told himself.
The whisper waited.
They shifted games again, half-hearted now as the light faded. Stones were pocketed, knives sheathed. Mireth splashed Tarin deliberately, earning a shouted protest and a retaliatory shove that sent her stumbling, laughing, into the shallows.
Caelan laughed with them, but the sound came a beat late.
The whisper sharpened.
Not words yet. Recognition.
He turned his head without meaning to, gaze sliding past the creek, past the nearer trees, toward a small rise where a fallen oak lay half-cradled by younger growth.
There.
Nothing about it stood out.
Just another dead limb shed by the forest, stripped of bark in places, pale wood showing beneath. It lay angled against a rock, one end caught cleanly in the fork of a root, lifted from the damp ground.
Ordinary.
Perfect.
Caelan's breath caught.
That, something inside him said—not urgently, not greedily, but with absolute certainty.
That is yours.
His hand twitched.
He frowned, unsettled. He had never wanted a staff. Never thought of one as anything but a tool for old men or travelers who needed the help. He'd never felt lacking without one.
Now the absence felt… wrong.
Like realizing you'd been walking without a boot you'd somehow never noticed missing.
"Elowen," he said, voice rougher than intended.
She looked up. "What?"
"You see that branch?" He pointed, immediately regretting it.
They all followed his gesture.
"That?" Tarin said. "It's a stick."
Brannik squinted. "Straight enough."
"Dry," Mireth added. "Good for a fire, maybe."
Caelan lowered his hand. Of course. To them, it was nothing.
The whisper swelled—not louder, but closer.
Not for them.
His pulse quickened. The pressure beneath his skin gathered, no longer diffuse but focused, coiling inward toward his chest and arms. The air around him felt tighter, expectant, as if waiting for him to decide something that had already been decided elsewhere.
"I'm going to grab that," he said.
Mireth raised an eyebrow. "Now?"
"Why?" Tarin asked.
Caelan searched for an answer that made sense. "It's… straight."
Tarin snorted. "So are half the trees here."
Brannik watched him more closely now. "You all right?"
Caelan nodded, too quickly. "Yeah. I'll be right back."
He didn't wait for permission.
The moment his boots left the worn path and pressed into leaf litter, the whisper resolved.
Not into words.
Into knowing.
Each step toward the branch felt lighter, easier, as if the ground itself adjusted to meet him. Roots that might have snagged his foot lay flatter. Fallen leaves shifted under his weight instead of sliding.
The forest made room.
When he reached the branch, he stopped.
Up close, it was still ordinary. No glow. No warmth. No mark of craft or magic. Just wood—oak, by the grain, seasoned by time and weather.
But when he wrapped his fingers around it—
The pressure vanished.
Relief flooded him so sharply his knees nearly buckled. The whisper fell silent, replaced by a deep, steady sense of rightness. The branch fit his grip as if shaped for it, weight balanced perfectly, length aligning without thought.
He lifted it.
The forest exhaled.
Behind him, Mireth called, "Find something good?"
Caelan turned back toward them, the branch resting naturally in his hand.
"Yeah," he said, surprised by the certainty in his voice. "I did."
They didn't comment much when he returned. Tarin made a joke about him becoming a wandering mystic. Mireth poked the wood, declared it unimpressive. Elowen watched quietly, eyes thoughtful.
Brannik said nothing at all.
Caelan barely heard them.
For the first time all day—no, longer than that—everything inside him felt aligned. The tightness, the corrections, the whispers—all of it had settled into something solid he could hold.
The branch was not a weapon.
It was not a symbol.
It was an answer to a question he hadn't known how to ask.
And somewhere deep in the Greenwake, something ancient and wounded took note of that answer—and turned, ever so slightly, toward him.