Captain NorthStar Lightwalker's Arc

Chapter 13 of 14

The fire at the cottage burned low, and the woman from the lodge stayed at his elbow longer than the night needed. She did not ask. She only walked with him past the courtyard, toward the old stone altar at the tree line, where the steps were green with algae and the air felt older than the rest of the clearing. He had come here twice this week to say it and left without speaking. He sat on the bottom step. She sat beside him. In his pocket, his fingers closed around a smooth black pebble he had carried since the dock. He turned it over and over. The words were right there. They would not move. Across the water, a small wooden tower rose against the dusk. She had hung a lantern from its rail two nights ago. He had not asked her to. The light was steady. It meant she was staying close. He looked at it and felt the pebble grow heavy in his hand. "I come back to an empty chair," he said. His voice cracked on the last word. He did not look at her. "Every night. For years. I never said it out loud." He set the pebble on the step between them. "That is what it weighs." She picked it up. She did not speak right away. She turned it the way he had turned it, learning it. Then she closed her hand around it and put her other hand over his. "You said it," she said. "You do not have to carry it by yourself anymore." He breathed out. The shrine behind them stayed quiet. The lantern on the tower stayed lit. He had said the thing he could not say, and the ground had not opened, and she had not gone. He walked her back to the lodge with the pebble still in her hand, and for the first time the path did not feel like a path he walked alone.