Khaivor exhales.
He notices me staring but of course he does. He always seems to notice everything.
I jerk my attention back to the bell hook, heart beating faster than the moment deserves. Heat crawls up my neck. Ridiculous reaction. He is only a traveler. A strange one, yes. Still only a traveler.
Across the street, footsteps retreat and I glance up again to see him leaving.
Annoyance sparks sharp enough to surprise me. He arrives every autumn. Buy one bell. Leaves. This year he lingers. Watches. Reacts to sound like a struck string. Then disappears the moment I look at him.
No, not today.
I hang the bell back on its hook, wipe my hands on my apron, march straight out of the forge before doubt catches up.
Khaivor stands at the far end where the noise thins. He watches the water as if expecting it to speak.
Good and nowhere to escape.
I stop beside him without greeting. The dock creaks once beneath my weight, announcing me before I can choose otherwise.
"You flinched," I say, leaving no room for dispute.
He turns his head slightly. No surprise in the movement. Only patience, deep and practiced, like a man accustomed to being watched.
"Many sounds cause reactions," he answers, as though the words have been waiting a long time to be used.
"Not like that," I say.
Silence lingers long enough to become deliberate. A heron lifts off the far bank, wings beating slow and heavy against the morning air.
I cross my arms. "You looked like the bell struck you," I press, leaning into it. "Like it reached… inside your chest and grabbed… something."
His gaze shifts back to the lake. Mist curls across the surface in thin drifting ribbons, slow and indifferent to both of us.
"I experience sound differently than most," he offers, like a man sliding something small and insufficient across a table.
"That… explains nothing," I mutter.
Another pause. Longer this time. Wind rattles loose ropes against wooden posts somewhere behind us. Water taps the dock in soft repeating beats, patient as a question nobody is answering.
"I did not intend to be noticed," he admits at last, the words coming out slow, reluctant, like something pulled from deep water.
"That also explains nothing," I shoot back.
His mouth moves, stops and moves again. As though weighing words before allowing them air, testing each one for what it might cost him.
"My magic responds to resonance," he utters, and the steadiness in his voice makes it sound both simple and enormous.
The answer lands heavier than expected. Heavier than he perhaps meant it to. I feel it settle somewhere behind my sternum.
I lean closer before I realize I am doing it. "Respond how?" I ask, too quickly, too openly.
He hesitates. The kind of hesitation that isn't uncertainty — it's a door being held shut from the other side.
The refusal sits quietly between us, stubborn as stone, immovable and faintly maddening.
"That is not an answer," I say, though the evenness costs me something.
"It is the only one I am offering," he replies, like a man who has rehearsed exactly this conversation and knows how it ends.
