Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

Elisser walks out of the back room with a different weight in her shoulders. Not lighter. Just redistributed. Whatever was sagging behind her ribs ten minutes ago has been lifted up to the level of her hands again, where she can do something with it.

She doesn’t say goodbye. She just nods at me on her way past—a small, deliberate motion—and disappears through the curtain of bone beads.

The clicking sound of the beads settles, and then it’s just me and Boris.

I take a slow sip of the wine. Sweet for two seconds, then bitter underneath.

"Boris."

He looks up.

"There’s one more thing in our deal."

Boris swirls the wine in his cup. Drinks. Wipes his mouth with the back of one massive hand.

"I figured you weren’t leaving until I was down to my underwear."

"You can keep them." I let a small smile through. "I want Scales."

I let the words sit.

"You said you’ve got them stockpiled. I want a cut. Payment and sponsorship for every run I make to the tower."

He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t even pretend to. The negotiation is already over and we both know it—he just hasn’t said the number yet.

"How much?"

"Enough to keep me happy. Not enough to bleed your supply."

He nods once. Ledger closed.

Then his face shifts. The cynicism softens at the edges, and what comes through underneath isn’t anger or amusement—it’s something older. He looks at the cup in his hand like he’s reading something written on the inside of it.

"You really think you’re going to get out of here, kid?"

I don’t answer right away. I let the question breathe.

His eyes aren’t on me anymore. They’re looking past the cup, past the wall, at something years away. His mouth pulls at one corner, not quite a smile.

I lift the cup. Drain the last of the wine.

"Ahh. Still bitter... What do you think?"

Boris gives me a sad, crooked smile. I feel the rest of it—the longing, the regret packed underneath like sediment—and I keep my distance from it. Some weights aren’t yours to lift for someone else.

The bone curtain clicks.

Oliver shoves through it sideways, Lola slung over one shoulder like a sack of grain, the metal case strapped crooked across her back and threatening to dump itself onto the floor with every step.

"Sorry, boss. Had a small situation."

He tips his nose toward the small situation in question.

"Uncle Dryden carries me better," Lola announces from her upside-down position. "It’s funnier."

Oliver crouches and sets her down. Lola plants her feet, brushes herself off, and gives me a look of profound, theatrical disappointment. Like I personally interrupted her favorite game by sitting in this room talking instead of being available for piggyback duty.

"How about we go out now and I buy you a gift?"

She nods. Hard.

I look over my shoulder for Rhayne. She’s already moving—stepping out from behind me, walking around the table, finding Lola’s hand without making it look like she found it. Lola doesn’t pull away. The two of them move toward the door together.

I turn back to Boris.

"Take Oliver to Elisser’s forge. He’s a solid scrounger. He’ll know what to help with."

Boris grunts an affirmation.

"Oliver—Elisser is a complicated person. But if you handle Lola and Rhayne every day, you’ll be fine."

Oliver scratches the back of his head. "You really like getting me into trouble, boss."

"Quiet night. Tomorrow we plan."

"Plan?"

"We patrol the tower’s perimeter. Figure out how to get out of here."

My hand drifts to my pocket without me telling it to. The Reentry Pearl is there, smooth and cold against my fingertips through the fabric. My chest tightens for half a breath.

Get out. See Mom. See Lili. Burn the cancer of the Deepwarden out of Thirstfall before it develops and spreads.

I let go of the Pearl.

Lola is back through the curtain before I finish standing up. She sprints across the room, latches onto my hand with both of hers, and starts pulling me toward the door like I weigh nothing.

"Come on, you talk too much. If you made noise, you’d be just like the pot."

"Okay, okay, little bear. Let’s find you something you like."

The Blue Light District after the Red Tide is a different city.

The faces I clocked on the way in—pinched at the temples, jaw muscles holding too much—are softer now. People nodding at each other across narrow alleys. A baker arguing prices with a buyer in a tone that’s almost playful. Two teens running past us with something stolen and laughing about it.

A new arrival walking through these streets would never guess what these people are carrying. Would never guess they aren’t ever leaving.

I let myself feel the calm for a few steps. Just a few.

We stop at a stall halfway down the main lane. The woman behind it is grilling skewers over a half-buried clay pit—chunks of pale meat threaded with a kind of onion and something purple I don’t recognize, brushed with a paste that smells like cumin and burnt honey. The bread she serves with it is flat, blistered, still smoking from the stones.

Lola eats hers in three bites and immediately asks for another.

Rhayne picks at hers, but she eats. That counts.

I’m finishing mine when I see it.

Across the lane, on a small jeweler’s table laid out with bits of wire and polished bone, there’s a thin metal ring catching the lamplight at an angle that doesn’t make sense.

It’s not silver. It’s not gold. It cycles through colors as the light hits it—blue, green, the faintest violet at the edge—the way light cycles on crystal.

The same metal as the bracelet I bought Lili before she died in my past life.

I’m across the lane before I decide to move. Rhayne and Lola are still on the bench, Lola attacking her second skewer with both hands.

"How much?"

The vendor is small, narrow-faced, with quick eyes. She turns the ring between her fingers like she’s checking my reaction against the metal.

"Thirty chittins and four medium fangs."

I keep my face flat. My inventory has neither. Oliver has all our materials.

"That’s a lot."

"That’s what it costs."

"What if I had something rarer than fangs?"

She tilts her head. "Show me."

I open my inventory in the corner of my vision and pull out the second Lunaria fruit. The first one I’d weaponized.

This one I’d been saving for some imaginary quiet evening that I now suspect was never going to come.

The vendor’s eyes change the second she sees it. The casual indifference goes flat and her hand twitches forward before she catches it.

"For the ring."

"For the ring," she agrees, almost too fast, and the fruit is in her hand and the ring is in mine before either of us reconsiders.

I close my fingers around it.

I look back across the lane.

Lola is laughing at something Rhayne said. Her whole face is open with it. Her hair is in her eyes. There’s grease on her chin. She’s fourteen years old and she looks like Lili will look in a few years, if I get the years back.

If.

I open my hand. The ring catches the lamplight and throws a thin band of shifting color across my palm.

It’s enough.

I close my fingers around it and start walking back across the lane.