“It’s a deal.”
Collin turned and walked away before his smile collapsed under Nic’s knowing gaze.
The path home seemed longer than usual. Each step dragged under the weight in his chest. The forest was too quiet now. Rain dripped steadily from the leaves.
His dream came creeping back—the glass orb in his hands, the flame inside, the monster chasing, the shatter.
That dream hadn’t been a warning. It had been a prophecy. And now, the light inside him was flickering, scattered into too many broken pieces to gather.
The Builder’s Son
The saw bit into the wood with a satisfying crunch. The air was filled with a cascade of fragrant woody scent. The forest rasped with the steady sound of steel upon timber. Nic focused on the rhythmic back and forth, back and forth, concentrating on the gentle vibration running up his arm and through the rest of his body, adding to the crescendo of his heartbeat.
As soon as the saw cut through the plank, silence quickly reclaimed its place. Once again, the forest rustled with the soft noises of birds in the branches, of squirrels scampering through the foliage, of the deep sighing of ancient trees.
Nic picked up the plank and eyed it with his usual scowl of concentration, fingers trailing the edge like he half-expected to find a flaw. He always did.
The cut was clean enough, but he still ran his thumb along the grain, disappointed it hadn’t come out straighter. With a quiet breath through his nose, he set the board aside and reached for the next.
Two more hours of sawing followed—measured, methodical, and just shy of punishing. By the end, he had a rough stack of planks and the ache in his shoulders to match. It wasn’t perfect, but it would hold. Probably.
Dragonfly’s house was coming together piece by piece, timber by timber. The earliest days had been the hardest,digging the foundation, setting posts deep into the thawing earth, but now the walls were beginning to rise, and with them, a shape that resembled her dream.
Nic should have felt proud.
He had borrowed his father’s crew, as he had no crew of his own. Progress was slow at first—unsteady footing, grumbles from the men, rain delays—but once the frame was up, the rhythm returned. April had started dry and bright, and if the weather held, he might finish before the flowers of May bloomed in earnest.
The project had begun with a letter. Dragonfly had written him, carefully worded, politely formal, requesting a quote for a modest home tucked amongst the trees. He was still only an apprentice, and at first, he brought the request straight to his father. He hadn’t expected Isaac to hand him the entire project, but when he did, Nic had accepted with more eagerness than good sense. Glee and dread, all knotted together, but he thought he could do it.
Dragonfly had offered some details on her vision. He used her correspondence to bring the image of her home into reality. He had sketched late into the night, drafting and redrafting until the outlines began to breathe. He showed her multiple floorplans, each one shaped by both her preferences and his knowledge of what she needed before she even asked.
He imagined the house not as an intrusion in the woods, but as something that belonged there—as though it had sprouted up from the tree roots, waiting to be discovered. A place where woodland nymphs might rest, or where weary hearts could find shelter in a rainstorm.
Design might’ve been his favorite part of building. There was something almost holy about it—seeing the thing before it existed, coaxing shape out of nothing but thought. He’d never match Lekyi’s brushwork or precision, and he knew it. But whereLekyi painted people’s longings onto paper, Nic carved his into stone and wood.
His father had spotted it early—always pressing chalk into his hand, setting him up with scrap planks to sketch on. Long before he was tall enough to lift a beam, he was drawing things he didn’t have words for yet.
But once the dreaming ended, the slog began.
He’d barely started and already felt like ditching the whole thing and picking a different trade. Anything simpler. The numbers were endless—supplies to price, receipts to sort, orders to chase.
He pored over Isaac’s old ledgers, trying to make sense of labor costs and fluctuating material prices, all the quiet calculations his father had made look easy. It wasn’t.
It felt like trying to read a language he only half knew—one his father had spoken fluently, while he was still fumbling through the alphabet.
