I picked it up. The carving was precise and clean, the facets even. Someone had taken real time with it.
“The stall two rows back,” Guruk said, watching me turn it over in my fingers. “The carver said he has been making them for years. No one here plays the games they are meant for, so they have mostly sold as curiosities.” He paused. “I thought you might like one. Something from the road.”
I closed my fingers around it.
A gaming token. In Havenlore.Sitting warm and solid in my palm, eight-sided and perfectly made, found in a crossroads market by an orc who had never played a game in his life and had gone back two rows to buy it for me while I was writing in my notebook.
I stared at him. Heat blooming in my chest as love filled me. Love for my orc.
“Guruk,” I said, choking back tears.
“Yes?”
I didn’t have the words. I kissed him instead — a quick press of my mouth to his cheek, as we were in the middle of a market and Berry was observing us from Guruk’s shoulder. With their head tilted at the precise angle, it meant they were paying attention, and while I loved the little florin, I didn’t quite want an audience when loving on my orc.
Guruk made a low sound in his throat, pleased and slightly startled. I leaned into his arm and looked down at the token in my hand.
An eight-sided die. Eight possible outcomes. Eight directions the game could go from any given moment.
“Thank you,” I said for far more than the token, and knowing he knew it.
“Always,” he said. Meaning more than the word, and knowing I knew it.
The market thinnedas the afternoon wore on. We made one last circuit of the northern stalls. Nothing new, no further sightings, and then we joined the throng of travelers heading east out of the square toward the highland road. The path narrowed back into the trees, and the noise of the market fellbehind us by degrees until it was just birdsong again, our footsteps, and the overflow of the spring somewhere far behind.
I turned the token over in my fingers as I walked. Eight sides. Smooth and warm from my hand.
Neither lost nor found. Held but not harmed. Not afraid for long.
“Raine is going to be so annoyed when we find her.” I giggled, a little delirious at the thought of finally finding one of my friends, even my frenemy.
Guruk glanced at me.
“That’s what she does, you know?” I shrugged, not sure how to explain Raine, but I trying anyway. “When she’s scared she gets annoyed. She always plays a warrior character, so I guess it’s her thing.” I smiled at the sky. “She’s going to be so mad, and I cannot wait to see her explode.”
Guruk stroked his chin in thought. “She sounds formidable.”
“She’s the most stubborn person I have ever met in any world.” I closed my fingers around the token. “ So, I know she’ll be fine. Shehasto be fine. The reader said she’s not afraid.”
“She doesn’t have it in her to fear for long,” Guruk agreed, solemn as a vow.
“Exactly.” I tucked the token into my pocket, close and safe. “She’s okay. I know it.”
Berry hummed their agreement between us. And as the afternoon wore thin, we walked on to whatever awaited beyond.
8
The Forest's Opinion
Guruk
I knew we were lost approximately seven minutes before I was willing to admit it.
The path had been straightforward enough as we’d left the market. It started as a clear, well-traveled road east, the kind that had seen enough boots to know where to go. But as the afternoon deepened and the trees thickened, I noticed a bend in the light that did not quite match our direction. Too much afternoon gold on the left side of the canopy. The shadows falling at a slight angle to where they should be.
I said nothing. I kept walking.
Five minutes later, we passed a mossy log I recognized. Large, split along its length by some old lightning strike, with a cluster of red mushrooms at its western end.
