I'm standing at the edge of it all, basket in both hands, watching the crowd arrange itself, when someone steps up beside me.
Saela. She glances around — probably looking for her mate in the same way I refuse to admit I was looking for Ursik — before her eyes land on mine. She's holding a woven basket with a blue ribbon, and there's something in the easy way she holds herself, in the soft smile and greetings she gives everyone as they pass, that makes even me feel calmer.
"Where are yours?" she says.
"They decided to sit this one out."
"Ah." She watches the crowd.
"They're fine," I say, and mean it, which is a strange thing to mean and feel simultaneously true. "Pell practically threw me out."
The corner of Saela's mouth moves. "That sounds right."
We stand there together for a moment in a silence that doesn't need filling. That's the thing about Saela — she doesn't perform comfort. She just exists beside you and somehow that's enough.
I think about Ressa telling me she'd done the same thing, the standing-beside-you-quietly thing, probably since they were children. I think about what it means to have someone who learned your silences before you knew what they cost.
Then Drogath arrives, and the moment evaporates entirely.
He comes from the hall doors with his beaded staff and his ceremonial robes — the deep blue ones he reserves for what he callsthreshold moments— and his particular walk that manages to be both a shuffle and a procession depending on which angle you're watching from.
The crowd parts. Of course it parts. Drogath carries himself with the absolute conviction of a man who has never once considered the possibility that a room wasn't arranged to receive him.
"People of Frostfang," he begins, and his voice carries the way voices do when a person has spent decades making sure they carry, "and our honored guests?—"
That would include me. Saela and I exchange a glance, and I find myself fighting a smile. I'm getting used to this, and I really can't help finding it amusing.
"—we gather today in the ancient tradition of the Offering, a practice stretching back to the very first humans who understood thatprosperity is not a solitary condition." He raises his staff. One of the beads catches the morning light. "The baskets we carry today are not vessels of object. They are vessels ofintention.Of knowing. The ancient texts are clear on this point?—"
"What ancient texts?" Kai mutters, loud enough to draw attention.
Saela covers her mouth at her mate's protest as he approaches.
"—the Offering asks us to look at another soul and say:I have seen you. Not your surface. Not your armor. Your marrow." He touches his own chest with one hand, eyes closing briefly. "The Long-Ear Bringer himself taught his people that a gift given without knowledge is merely an object. A gift given with knowledge is abond."
I look down at the basket in my hands. The deep red cord I'd tied the top with, chosen because it was Ressa's color. The lavender inside that I'd twisted with yarrow. The green ribbon. The coin, the charm, the small white stone with its faint grey vein.
Saela glances over. "You look nervous."
"I'm not nervous."
She looks at the basket and then at me with an expression that is entirely too similar to Ressa's particular brand of knowing silence for my comfort. "You worked hard to make it look good. The cord is a perfect bow."
"I wanted it to sit right."
"Mm." She looks back at the front of the crowd where Drogath is still going, gesturing now at the sky as though the clouds have something to contribute to the proceedings. "It's a good basket, Aislin."
I don't answer. I tighten my grip on the handle and watch Drogath wrap up his speech with the particular theatrical deceleration of a man who has been told, at some point, that endings should land with weight.
"—and so." He lowers the staff. The crowd stills. "Go. Find your person. See them."
People begin moving, and the courtyard shifts from a gathered thing into something looser and warmer, small clusters forming and breaking apart, the sound of laughter and surprised exclamations threading through the morning air. I spot Ressa near the far end, her red hair catching the light, standing with Falla who has both hands in his vest pockets and the quiet expression he wears when he's content.
I make my way over.
She sees me before I reach her and her face softens in a way that makes me feel like our slowly growing friendship isn't one sided — not the careful smile she uses for strangers, but the real one, the one that reaches her freckles. I hold out the basket and she takes it with both hands.
"Aislin." She looks down at it, at the red cord. Something in her expression shifts and settles. "This is mine?" She runs her thumb along the cord.
