Chương 8: A New Light

Morning came in gray. The rain had stopped sometime in the night, but the sky hadn't decided on anything better yet. The wall by the stairs had more on it than she remembered. Small metal tags hung on nails in uneven rows, each one stamped with marks she couldn't read. She'd walked past this wall a hundred times without it meaning anything. Today the smell stopped her cold. Old metal held a person's scent longer than she'd have guessed. Faint, worn thin by handling and time, but still there.

She walked the row slow, nose close to the wall, and found threads of people she still knew. One scent stopped her longest. Faint. Half-forgotten. Someone who'd stopped coming around a long while back. Two more she only half remembered, their scents almost gone now, too faint to match a face to anymore. New tags hung at the end. Brighter than the rest. The metal hadn't dulled with dust yet. She didn't know any of these scents. None of these people had ever sat close enough to her chair to leave anything behind.

Ren came through while she sat there, a tag in one hand, a hammer in the other. She drove the nail in without a word, without even looking twice at what she'd hung, and walked off toward the kitchen like the wall wasn't there at all. Amber stayed a while longer, circling back to the new tags, sniffing the same strange scents over and over. The way she checked an empty bowl twice before she'd believe it was really empty. She left the wall before she meant to.

Her legs decided before the rest of her caught up, already carrying her toward the room where the wounded were kept. She passed Flint's corner on the way, feet choosing the path before she'd thought about it. Not empty this time. He was stretched flat across the bench, one arm hanging off the edge, snoring in a way she'd never once caught him doing while awake. A fresh line of stitches ran up his forearm, dark against the skin. She didn't wake him.

She hopped up just long enough to touch her nose to the back of his hand, then dropped back down and kept moving. She found Corin by scent before she found him by sight, moving down the row of cots until his scent got stronger. Chest rising. Falling. Rising again, slower than it should be, but still going. They'd put him in a chair at the end of the row, closest to the fire, wrapped in a blanket that wasn't his. Cloth was wound round his head from brow to jaw.

His back was to the wall, hands flat on his knees, like he'd been told to stay still and was holding himself to it. She crossed the floor and stopped in front of him. He didn't look at her. Thorn was a few steps off, restocking bandages onto a shelf near the hearth.

"He can't see you," he said, not looking up. She sat and waited. Then tried again, closer this time, close enough that her whiskers brushed the blanket. He turned toward the sound of her, not toward her, off by half a step, aimed at nothing. She lifted a paw near his face, the way she used to bat at his reaching hand. No flinch. No blink. Nothing followed her at all. Corin went still, head tilted toward whatever he'd caught, sound or smell or something else entirely.

"Thorn. That's... is that Amber?"

"Right in front of you." Corin's hand came up slow, testing before trusting, the way her own paws had once tested a ledge in the dark. It found the table edge first, then found her, settling on the top of her head like he wasn't sure he'd get another chance at it. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. She didn't bite him this time.

"Guess I finally get to pet you properly." His voice came out lighter than his face looked, the kind of joke that only worked if nobody looked too close at it.

"Took losing an eye. Feels like a bad trade, honestly."

"Both eyes, Corin," Thorn said, low, from over by the shelf, like he hated saying it as much as Corin hated hearing it.

"Right." Corin's hand stilled on her fur. The joke ran out of road before it finished.

"Thorn."

"Yeah."

"Is it going to stay like this?" Thorn didn't answer right away. The bandages he was stacking went still in his hands.

"Healer's still working on it," he said finally.

"Don't go deciding anything yet." Corin nodded, small, like he'd expected that answer and hadn't wanted it anyway. His hand found her ears again, careful, still learning where they'd moved to. She didn't understand what passed between the two men. She knew the sound of her own name, though, plain and familiar in his voice, even rough as it was now.

She stayed curled against his side a long while after that, until his hand went slack against her fur and his breathing settled into something slower, closer to sleep than waiting. She didn't decide to leave so much as notice, some time later, that she already had, pulled across the room by something else entirely. The healer worked the far corner most of that day, moving between cots, in no hurry, checking over what she'd already mended the day before.

Amber found a spot on a crate close enough to watch without being underfoot. Light sat on the healer's palms, pale and steady, though nothing was making it. No candle behind it. No window catching it right. It just came from her hands, brighter when they pressed against a healed wound, dimmer once she moved on. A few cots down, a woman flexed her bandaged arm at the healer's word, testing it. Whatever had been torn there yesterday held fine today. The healer nodded once, satisfied, and moved to the next.

Amber watched the light do its quiet work, cot after cot, most of it just confirmation now. Cuts closed. Bruises faded. Whatever had needed mending, the healer had already spent herself mending it. She remembered the cold from the tunnel, how it had wrapped in from every side, patient, taking without asking. This was nothing like that. This gave. She could feel the difference from all the way across the room. She wanted to know what that felt like up close.

[SYSTEM] Skill Acquired: Fleeting Envy A want that passes before it can take root. No effect. She hopped down and crossed the floor, slow, tail low, and settled just behind the healer's knee, near enough to catch the edge of the glow. It didn't burn. It didn't pull at her the way the hum under the city had. It just sat there, warm and even, close enough to touch if she dared. She didn't dare. Not yet. The healer glanced back once, surprised to find a cat at her heel, and went back to work without shooing her off.

She reached Corin last. Her hands passed over the wrapping once, the same quick motion as every cot before it, and moved on. Nothing about him changed. The healer checked the bandages again, then the pulse at his wrist. She waited. Pressed her palm lightly against his chest. The pale glow returned for a moment, steady between her fingers. Still nothing. The healer's shoulders dropped a fraction. She pulled the blanket higher over Corin and moved on without saying anything. Amber stayed where she was.

Down the next few cots the hands worked the same way, careful, unhurried, the light coming and going. Cuts. Bruises. Whatever had been torn and could be closed again. But not everything. She looked back at Corin, at the cloth still wound round his head, unchanged. Even from across the room the warmth clung faintly to the healer's hands, and she couldn't look away from it. The room settled back into its usual rhythm eventually.

Some time after that she found herself padding toward the door, without remembering deciding to leave. She ended up on the roof without meaning to get there, the drainpipe and the gutter and then the slates, familiar now in a way climbing never used to be. The sky was going orange at the edges, the sun already low, sinking fast the way it did this time of year. Her whole life fit under this roof.

Every warm spot she'd ever claimed, every chair she'd ever guarded, every meal she'd ever begged off someone's plate, all of it inside these same four walls, over and over, the same small rounds walked a thousand times without once wanting anything past them. It had never once felt small before. This evening it did. She sat at the peak and watched the light fade off the yard, the fence, and every warm corner she'd ever known by heart.

A bird cut low over the rooftops, wings barely moving, gone past the chimney and out over the wall before she'd even turned her head all the way toward it. It didn't slow. It didn't look down. It had somewhere else to be, and got there without asking anyone's permission first. She watched the space where it had been long after it was gone. She thought of the healer's hands, the glow that gave instead of took.

She thought of Corin's face, still and blind by the fire, and the moment she'd had nothing to give him either. She didn't want to just watch, next time. [SYSTEM] Fleeting Envy + Futile Wish Synergy conditions met. Something about the wanting had changed shape without her noticing when. It didn't feel like losing anymore. It felt like a direction.