"What in the fuck," he failed to whisper. He cut his gaze away, quick as he had seen it. The strangeness of it there in the afterimage of his eye.

Ghost pillows.

His eyes zig-zag-shook there way back to see it. Had to see it. He was a squire. He could tell Lefelen. Surely the Dusk Knight would know what to do about this. Right?

Cold through the spine. Roki stared at it. As Marcy moved about. The others all, careful not to bump it. No one watched. No one seemed to see. Then it saw. His eyes met eyes that were not there. Saw teeth, too many. Felt his skin crawl, and his hairs stand tall at attention. For to survive such a thing, every part of one needed to be aware. Needed to feel and sense to find whatever edge they could.

It left.

Roki rememebred to breath. Lungs that had emptied in anticipation to spring and move, filled with a warm breath. Sounds clear in his ears again. Wind felt through his hair. She stepped toward the blanket the thing had left behind. Careful, he looked down at it. Folded so perfectly there upon the ground.

Like some anchor left behind by haunted ship. His eyes rose to look there between the wagons. Where he had seen it go. Fingers curled to fists. Breath let out with an huff, full of heat. His tusks gleamed proud, and his brow set firm. Not half-sure what he felt.

He stepped there too, betwixt the Wagons.

A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Hard and like a vice. "Roki-boy,"

Roki yipped a scared shout and hopped near out his own skin. Twist turned quick with hands up.

Lefelen stared down at him. Brow quirked. Lips flat in their line. "What are you doing?"

Roki looked over his shoulder again. Looked to Lefelen. Shook his head and tittered sharp and short as a bird trill. "Nothing, nothing!" he straightened up. Kicked the dirt with his shoe. "Just, getting to know the wagons is all,"

A slow tilt of the heads. "Right," the knight of Dusk sounded, the stretch of the vowels a test in its own. As if the sound would detect deception.

Roki just smiled the wider and tuskier. Nod in agreement with his own statement.

Lefelen shook his head. "We've been given passage, and I offered us up to whatever the wagons need in the interim of our ride, squire, you will make yourself useful," he held his gaze upon the lad.

Roki cleared his throat, and stood a little straighter. Nod. "Understood, Syr,"

Lefelen nod. "Good," he looked about. Spotted a wagon marked with the Weysa's mark. "We will make rest with those of the Weysa, as they could make use of our weaving, and field-craft,"

Roki gave another nod. "Understood, Syr,"

Lefelen leveled one last look upon the purple haired fire-starter. "On your best, Roki-boy," he reminded him. "We represent the Order," Nod, and was on his way.

Roki deflated with a long hiss of breath. Slumped under his own weight a moment, and peered back toward where that thing had gone to. "Worse than ghosts," he remembered.
 
The wind played games by the crooked wagon. Cold where it shouldn’t be. Not just cool – sharp – like draft drawn from an opened door. On a glance the camp moved normally. Pots clattered. Barbs were traded. But something was off.
No one had touched the blanket. Not even to move it aside. It sat folded too neatly. A line someone knew better than to cross.

Then the dog came. A half feral thing that lingered near scraps and kindness. Limped in, sniffed at the blanket, then yelped as if he’d been kicked. Bolted without looking back. A wrong that couldn’t be fixed with fists.

But Roki had little time for idle hands. News, and expectation, spread quickly.

“Syr Tusk…Roki” A voice came up from round Roki’s elbow. Old, slow, and gravelly.

“Syr Leflen told me you’d be able to take a look at our storage runes.” The Dwarf looked ancient, stone visibly taking parts of his skin, darker lines crackling in place of veins.

“Would now be a good time?”


*​


Later, when the circle was quieting and music had turned to memory, Vyn passed by a heap of stone near the edge of the firelight. She knew better than to look directly at him. Stood by instead.

“The wards may be failing again.”

Jem didn’t reply right away. Just thumbed something small in his hands, eyes low.

A slow nod, like he knew it was coming.
 
Roki blinked at the dog's approach. "Oh, hello," he said, naive love for things furry and legged helping him forget the utter creepshow he had been left in the wake of. Least, for a moment. Knees, bent, smile wide, he tapped at his thighs and offered hands out to the old hound.

Its snoot low to the ground and the grass. "On the hunt for scraps no doubt," the young wizard said pleased. Then it caught a sniff of the blanket. Yelped and ran.

Left Roki there, wide eyed once more. Still bent low. He looked to the blanket. Felt the cold wind run a razor's edge up his spine that saw him stand up bolt straight. Shiver and shake there in his own skin. "What are you," he whispered to himself. Left hand opened and closed at his side. Half the mind to reach down and-

Syr Tusk... Roki

Golden eyes looped to find the top of a head first. Shift of the eyes down and he saw the old dwarf. The orkin blinked. Looked back down to where the blanket had been. His brow pinched. Lips scrunched.

"Yeah," he said, too casual to be addressing an elder, by half. His eyes cut to the old man. Wide with a worry that came quick. "I'm sorry, I meant yes, sir," a turn of the shoulders. Head dipped to a bow. "I can have a look," rose up and followed.

Rune work they called it. Simple as writing, Roki always thought. Just had to remember the little pictures.

The orders they went in, and what they all meant when strung together. No different than a good story really. Least, that's how he had come to think of em.

Innis likened them more to poems. But he never much made sense of poetry. Hector seemed to think of them as songs. Though the way he said them, they felt more like prayers. Roki shook his head. Songs he could understand. Prayers though?

His sure hand worked the blade of a carving knife into the old wood to let it bight. The old runes of cold and desiccation worn shallow by wind and rain, no doubt. Face nearly planted against the old barrel walls, tongue stuck out against right tusk. He work, work, worked the carving knife along the delicate lines and bends of the rune.

Sok

He remembered it being called. Something like the summer sun. Like a field of golden wheat, set to dance against a hot wind. Felt dry in his mouth.

"Helps keep the mold out," he thought absently.

An old mallet and all manner of wood working tools scattered about where his bum had planted itself.
 
The barrel complained under Roki’s knife, edge threatening the wood. The motion of taking, but the result of adding. The wood needed time to decide how to feel. As he hunched among the tools, smells of old and mold clung all around.
From the far edge of the circle, Jem watched the boy mess with the runes. Stone still, only his eyes moved. If he had an opinion, his face refused to elaborate. He just observed in a quiet way trees sometimes do.

Vyn passed him without a word. Her hand brushed his arm – fingers warm against the rough rock. Jem didn’t flinch, but his hand did settle around whatever small object he was turning in his palm.

She moved on.

Came to a crouch beside Roki, boots noisy as they bent. Watched the sharp groove find its way to the echo of an old rune. Hoped her boots gave warning enough to spare him a jump. For the words followed soon after.

“You hum when you work.” Her voice was soft. She never had the mind for runework. Satya knew Jem had tried. Still, it spoke volumes of the boy’s skill that the other man kept his distance.

“You found your way around well enough?”

She resisted the urge to touch the rune as he carved it.
 
If she had surprised him, it only showed in the raise of hairs and shiver of spine. Eyes wider as lips curled into smile, gaze never quite leaving the work set before him. Knife's curved mouth smiled all its own as it sank into the grain. Shaved off a curl of wood, thin as skin. But the line left the rune sharp and deep in the old wood.

"Helps bring them out, I find," he half laughed to himself. Pulled knife away and blew on the engravings. The fresh line there carved caught what shroud he fed them. Glowed soft and gentle, as if twilight sun welled there in the valleys.

Runes of heat, gave way to runes of cold. Sharp lines turned corners to gentle waves. Spiraled and crested back to points. The light that glowed there in bled and skipped over each careful symbol. Shifted from golds to greens, to blues and purples.

Roki laid eyes on Vynella. "Well enough," a hint of tightness in the throat. His golden eyes shift to the edges of his skull. Spied the far side of the wagons he could see. Neck stiff. He licked his lips. As if gathering something to himself. "I think I saw one of them," he whispered on a hushed breath. Large eyes flit back to Vynella. "A ghost pillow,"
 
The beauty the script was lost on Vyn the moment she heard him say it. He saw. For all her years, she didn’t know to hide her surprise. It usually came to children. The Elum hardly ever saw it. An outsider, even one tied to them, might still sift what the rest of them had learned to forget.

She crouched by him, low and close. Eyes never left his. Hope born of rumor.

“Tell me.” She said, quiet enough for Jem not to hear. “What exactly did you see?”

Maybe Roki could do what she never could. And remember him enough. Yes, the children would scream and the elders scoff – but that wasn’t her concern. It had been so long. And now, it felt so close.

She looked back, over her shoulder. Just to be sure Jem hadn’t overheard – but the man was no longer there. Just Wagons.
 
Plum colored brows scrunched, as four moons arced over the late day sun, the glitter of the belt, a band of burnished gold and eggshell white that split the blue above.

"What I saw?" he echoed. Diving into those cold waters of his memory. Frigid enough to set him to shiver, and prickle his skin in gooseflesh. "Teeth," he said for certain. "Where no mouth had been, and no lips there either," he looked to Vynella. Brow cocked and lips pursed. Might be, some part of him thought, he would learn more about it, if he looked at her too.

"It smiled at me, like, it knew I had seen it," he went on. "Like it knew, while all the others just," a wiggle of hands, a stroll of fingers, "walked about it, blind to its creepy little," he mimed the folding. Too perfect. Too clean and measured, his arms hands and digits, exaggerated in the sharpness of their own function as his whole spine stacked straight and tall, "Folding," his hands set down the invisible blanket, there in the grass beside them. He stared at it a while. The spot wherein he could see that blanket. "And no one stepped on it," he said in a cold voice. "Dog sniffed it, near scared the old mutt to death,"

Roki cast his eyes back up, unto Vynella. Brows raised, and chin jut forward in wordless, so?
 
It was a struggle to keep her hands still as she listened. Part of her believed that if she grabbed Roki and shook him, the secrets would come out faster. But she didn’t interrupt. Didn’t even blink much. Just stayed crouched, knee pressed below. And what Roki described seemed familiar. Because folding was the one chore he didn’t hate. Probably because he used that time to steal ghost material. And she almost thought the name that wasn’t his…but the shape of it was wrong.

The mouthless teeth. That sounded like the Pale. Maybe even one that she knew. Dogs always did get scared around the creatures. And a more terrible thought dug at her insides. A realization she never wanted.

She stood up before he was done. Fast and deliberate. She got very serious as she looked at him. “Where did you see it?” Her voice kept low, strained. “Exactly. Can you take me?”

Nearly said a name right there. But it caught in her teeth. And she knew to bite down. Not all weight was meant to be shared. Her head shook, thought banished. Fingers curled against her thigh. Guilt and memory. And something else.

A need.
 
A blink. A gulp. "Y-yes, it, it was in the middle of camp," he said with a breath pulled into his lungs. The air buoyed him up and onto his feet. A straight shot up with a push of ankles and plant onto the soles of his feet. "I," he looked around them. Cautious.

Was he afraid?

This all felt so serious so of a sudden.

But was this not the sort of things Knights of Anatheaum were meant to face?

He nod. Reassured. "I'll take you,"

He went, straight back to that spot by the crooked wagon. Where he had seen the blanket. Bright red robe ruffled and skirted behind his haste. Blue sash there in the breeze of his steps.

What was this thing? He could not help but wonder. Worse than ghosts.
 
She could feel the fear coming off the boy, but pretended not to. She didn’t have it in her to be kind this time. Just needed to see. Needed to know. Vyn trailed after, blue sash taunting. Like it was a thread she was meant to pull. Always nearly there, but just out of reach. It didn’t take them long to come upon it, but each step felt like an hour. As the distance disappeared, she knew it even before she saw it. The crooked Wagon. The squeaky floor and the sticking door. Not hers. But not not.

The little fluff at her collar stood on end. Because she knew this place. This ghost. And much like the little ones who refused to play here, it gave her the creeps too.

Roki was the first to spot him. A short man, rounding the edge of the far Wagon. Coat long, and face away. Patchy blanket folded over one arm. The kind of thing you’d miss if you weren’t looking. He walked slow. Each step accompanied by a soft jingle. Coins in his deep pockets. Keys, maybe. Vyn didn’t seem to see him.

She stepped right past Roki to look at the trail. Eyes fixed on the mud.

“Here.” She wasn’t sure if she was questioning Roki or her own sense. “You saw it here?”

But the man was already vanishing. Folded behind canvas. Gone before she turned her head. Roki could still hear the sound, though. That faint jingle.
 
Roki's eyes were fixed on the short man. His ears tuned to the jingle and clink of metal unseen.

Silver? Gold? Copper or iron? The ring too muffled by fabrics to get any real sense of it. Was that the same blanket on his arm?

Vynella's voice grabbed his attention again. He turned toward her. Voice tight in his throat. "Yeah, it, it was right here," he said, pointing to the spot where he had seen it lay its blanket down. The spot all the Elum had walked around and avoided. As if stepping there would have sent them some place else.

He passed a gob of spit down his throat. Set his eyes to that space between the Wagons where he had seen the eyeless thing, bent all wrong as it was, disappear between. The gap seeming like a yawning mouth now, with so few folk around. The shadow's there about, yawning a cold and hungry welcome that made his skin crawl.

"It went over there," he pointed to the place, stepped toward it. Felt something draw in a breath. As if to taste him. Take in the scent. He let out his own breath, felt the air from his lungs go cold. "Vynella," he said soft as rime. "What are we looking for?"
 
Vyn needed a moment. But there were never enough of them. She looked up at the boy, blinking her panic into anger, into whatever else she could get her hands on. “It’s Vyn.” Her eyes stayed on the track for a while. She didn’t look at Roki right away. Because she wasn’t sure whether his parents taught him. Wasn’t sure he should be taught. Perhaps that was why he could still see. Because he wasn’t one of them. Not really.

“Something old.” It leaked in bits. “And forgotten.” And the needy part inside her struggled with the truth and its measure. So she dripped the parts needed, swallowing the rest. Her hand pressing into the dirt below like it hid a secret. Grime pressed deep, became dirt under her nails. That’s how it all felt. “Sometimes we forget things on purpose. People. Mistakes. Whole names.” She stood back up, wiping her dirty hand on the worn-out clothes.

“And some come back.” She needed a moment. Help. And to hide all of this from Jem somehow.

“That’s what you saw, isn’t it?”
 
"Vyn," he said with a nod. Eyes dart between her and the space where his ears had last heard the bells.

Looked back as the words dribbled out of her. His breath fast. Short. Slow it down. He remembered someone saying. Push it out. Empty. Let it out. Fell from his mouth in curls of purple and blue. Emotion high. Shroud still lingering about him. Sprites of fire. Sprites of ice. From the runes. From the cook flame. From the bottled cream and the green band of clover thread bound about his wrist.

Old. Forgotten. Purpose and people. Their mistakes. Their names.

How he felt it all swirling about him. Like whispers on the winds. Hum soft howls like songs of ageless agony. Traces that came to light in his eyes that widened gold as the moons on a dark night.

"That's what I saw," he rasped, pointed a finger out to the maw. The door of the crooked wagon. Not the wagon. Half a lipless grin spread wide there in the darkness gathered inside. "Bent and backwards, wrong and stitched together," his mouth seemed to move on its own. Breath short. The words ragged croaks against chords too taught. "Wrong," he said.

Thunder clapped in the distance. What moons and stars were out, covered by gathered clouds, heavy with a rain most foul.
 
She followed the crook of his finger to an open door. But nothing blocked the doorway. Still, each word of his nicked at her very bones. Patience and courage bled together as her face settled into something angrier. She knew the Wagon. Knew its ghost – cloth and flesh both. And she, of all people, wasn’t allowed to see. That stung.

“Come on.” She said, nodding away from the Wagon. Her hand touched his shoulder. “We’re going back to mine.”

She didn’t ask more questions. Not yet. Just walked, her steps and his, until the sound of others fell away. Until the weight of that Wagon’s shadow no longer lay on her spine.

She only dared speak again when the door closed behind them.

“I want to show you something. But I need you steady first.” She looked at him, mix of worried and eager. “Need you to be ready. To know you’re safe.” Readier than she was. That first time.

She wished she could ask someone for help. But there was only one – and he was out of the question.
 
He moved in a daze. Head full with the sound of arcs of lightning, spidering across the clouds overhead. Fractures and breaks, white hot against a cold that grew the heavier. The wind, gentle in the daylight, whipped fast with the twist of currents.

Laundry, still hung on the lines, snapped hard and fast in flutters and hisses. Some wagons rocked, as their Elum hopped out and hurried to anchor their beds to the soft earth. Hammers quick as loose goods tumbled and rolled and sailed on the sudden storm.

Drops. Fat and heavy. Fell hard from on above. Smacked against skin in thwumps and thwacks. Pelted flesh and bone. They were out of it quick enough. Door came shut with a snap, and the crooked wagon rocked and creaked with the wind. The bread, forgotten, sat on its high shelf. Rising.

...To know you're safe. Roki blinked, slow. Looked at at Vyn. His purple shock of hair almost seeming to stand, and stir with the charge of the storm. His ears full of those old whispers. Loud. The rattle of the wagon. The shake of knick knacks and stowed-aways.

"I'm..." he looked to his hands, his feet. Her feet, her hands. Her eyes. Let out a hot breath from his nose and shift the bones he stood upon. "As steady as I'm going to be," he swung his arms. Fingers splayed, as if to feel the currents he felt so caught in. Thinned as they were.

Nothing he couldn't handle. Right? This time. He pressed cold breath out his lips.

He was a Squire of Anatheaum. He would help, however he could. Another nod. "I'm ready,"
 
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