Ressa.
The name sits there in Drogath's cramped, slightly theatrical handwriting, and something moves through me that I wasn't prepared for — a small, specific lurch of feeling that I don't immediately have a word for. Not surprise.
I know Ressa. We've talked. She was the one who sat with me in the dark after the kiss and didn't push, just listened, and told me what it was like to be afraid of wanting someone.
She was held by the Stonevein. I know that without knowing the specifics, the same way I know it about all of us — the particular texture of damage that comes from the same source. And she found her way to Falla, and I found my way to — something — and neither of us could have been told that this was coming when we arrived here.
"Alright," I say.
Saela's smile does something at the edges that I don't comment on.
I put the parchment in my pocket and cross to the table and look at the objects spread across it. Shae comes to stand beside me, and for a moment we both just look at the options — the coins, the little carved charms, the dried herbs, a folded scrap of green cloth, a small jar of something amber, a single pressed flower that's been preserved flat and still holds its color.
"The idea is prosperity in the coming year," Shae says. "Or that's the official version. Drogath will tell you about the spiritual significance for approximately twenty minutes if you ask him." She picks up one of the carved charms — a small figure with its arms out. "But really you're just putting together things that feel right for the person."
"Things that feel likethem," Saela adds, coming around the other side of the table. "Or what you want for them. Both."
I pick up one of the dried herb twists and turn it over. It smells like something medicinal — not unpleasant, clean and slightly sharp. "What's this one?"
"Lavender and yarrow," Shae says. "Falla grows it. It's for calm." She looks at the table rather than at me. "Some people like it for the symbol. Some people use it."
I set it aside in a small pile without saying anything.
Saela is looking at the pressed flower. She doesn't ask me who I'm making the basket for — I don't know who she has and she doesn't know who I have and I'm not inclined to share, and yet somehow I know she isn't going to push.
She picks up the flower instead and holds it out to me. "This one's heartsease," she says. "Old word for it. It was always supposed to be for comfort, I think. After hard things."
I look at the flower. It's purple, the petals still slightly translucent where the pressing has thinned them, and it's very small and very whole.
"Keep it," I tell her.
She closes her hand around it, then nods. She puts it in her own pocket, quietly, and I don't ask.
We work at the table for a long time. The cabin fills with the low noise of women talking, Pell and Deva arguing cheerfully about which coin is luckier based on a criteria I cannot follow, Maret asking Shae something about the green cloth that turns into a longer conversation about weaving. Corrie moves from the corner to the edge of the table at some point — I notice it but I don't note it aloud, because she's been doing that, incremental repositioning, and drawing attention to it would stop it.
I find a small piece of deep green ribbon and hold it against the back of my hand. Ressa has red hair. Green would work. I don't know why that matters to me but I put it in the pile.
"That's a good color," Shae says, not looking up from the basket she's helping Wren line with strips of cloth.
"Mm."
"Whoever it's for has good coloring, I'm guessing."
I don't answer. She makes a small sound of satisfaction that means she already knows or suspects, and she's pleased with herself, and I let it go.
The lavender and yarrow goes in. The ribbon. A small coin with a mark on it that Shae tells me meanssteadiness. A carved charm that I pick because it's small and precise and well-made, because it looks like something chosen rather than grabbed, and it feels right to give someone something that was chosen carefully. I find a small smooth river stone at the bottom of the supply pile — polished to something near-perfect, white with a faint vein of grey — and I hold it in my palm for a moment.
I know what it's like to find something solid. I know what it's like to finally feel the ground under your feet after running for so long that you'd forgotten it existed. Ressa has found that. She found it in Falla, and I've seen it even from a distance, and it looks — not like rescue. Like landing. Like someone who had been holding themselves up for years finally let a wall take some of the weight.
I put the stone in the basket.
"You're a natural at this," Saela says, appearing at my shoulder and looking down at the basket. She doesn't know who it's for, but something in her expression suggests she's putting things together, and she doesn't say anything further, and I like her for that.
"I'm putting objects in a container," I say.
"Theintentionis the hard part."
I look at the basket. The ribbon, the coin, the herb twist, the charm, the stone. I think about Ressa in the dark, telling me about the moment she realised what Falla was to her. The wayshe'd described it — not as something gentle, but as somethinginevitable, like trying to hold a river back with your hands and finally accepting that you are going to get wet.
