Marketplace

Vorein noticed the smoke before anything else that night, heavy and warm, settling into the stone the way old things settle, uninvited and sure of their welcome. Vorein was an elder, old enough that tiredness now cost more than it used to and was slower to pay back. Twenty-one days before, in the same city, a different weather had found them, rain against the same stone, and someone had asked what mattered instead of what was wrong. That question had done something to Vorein that no amount of careful listening since had undone. It had let them be unfinished and still worth hearing.