Page 28 of The Orc’s Comfort

He leaves.

I sit in the quiet for a long time.

He is right. He is entirely right. And I am still sitting here, the stone mortar put away with excessive care, the silver thistle gone, the condo holding the faint trace of her presence like a question I don’t yet know how to answer.

But I know what the answer has to be.

I will tell her what I have done, and what I feel, and what I am: a male who is thirty-two years old and doing this for the first time and who has no excuse except that grief is very good at consuming the years when you should have been learning how to want something.

It is not a good excuse.

But it is the true one.

I open my laptop.

I am not sure what I’m looking for exactly. Some human framework for what I need to do tomorrow. Some cultural protocol I have missed. I type, “How to tell someone you withheld important information in a relationship.”

The first result is from something called Cosmopolitan magazine.

“Oops, You Messed Up: 10 Steps to the Perfect Apology (Step 3 Will Surprise You!)”

I click on it. Step 3 is “bring snacks.” I close it.

I try a different search: “how to apologize sincerely when you have done something genuinely wrong.”

“We Asked 5 Relationship Experts: Can You REALLY Come Back From a Big Lie? (Spoiler: It Depends on His Zodiac)”

I do not know what a Zodiac is. I click anyway. The article informs me that as a Scorpio, he would need to demonstrate “radical vulnerability” while avoiding “trauma dumping.” I am not a Scorpio. Not certain what a Scorpio is. I close the tab.

“Quiz: Is He Withholding or Just Mysterious? There’s a Difference, Babe”

I stare at this headline for a long moment. Then I take the quiz. It tells me I am withholding. I am aware of this.

“He Said WHAT? 7 Signs He’s Just Not Emotionally Available”

I read this one in full. I recognize myself in signs two, four, five, and seven. Sign six is, “He forgets your birthday.” I do not know when Julia’s birthday is. I add this to the list of things I need to correct.

I close the laptop.

I sit in the dark kitchen for a while longer; the condo is very quiet.

The articles have not helped. I did not expect them to help. I think I was hoping that somewhere in the accumulated wisdom of human relationship advice there would be a sentence that said, “Here is how you tell someone that you fed them courtship meals without their knowledge because you were afraid and inexperienced and have never done this before and you are genuinely sorry and also you have feelings for her that you do not yet have words for.”

There is no such sentence.

I will have to find my own words.

I go to the drawer where I keep the things I brought through the portal. Some seeds that never sprouted. Some minerals. A few silver thistle seeds I’m saving in case the entire crop dies and I need to plant new. And at the back, wrapped in a square of cloth that has not been unfolded since my grandmother died, is her hair comb.

Carved bone, worked into an intricate pattern committed to memory as a child while she cooked, some of the carvings worn smooth from decades of daily use. She wore it every day. I don’t remember a single morning when her hair wasn’t fastened up with it, the bone warm from her skin, smelling faintly of herbs even now if I hold it close.

She brought it through the portal in her gray hair. I have been keeping it because I could not think of what else to do with it. Because giving it away felt like a finality I was not ready for.

I hold it for a moment.

Then I set it on the counter where I will see it in the morning.

I write out her healing broth recipe by hand: the full version, with the native language on the left and the translation on the right, every measurement and timing and intention exactly as she taught me. It takes an hour. I have never written it down before. It has always lived only in my hands and my memory, the way grandmother intended.