Kūrush's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The tea cups still sat on the low shelf behind Kūrush's stall. He had washed them twice and set them out again, ready. The stranger with the teal eyes had sat here once. They had held a warm cup in both hands and said little, but they had stayed. Kūrush had thought that meant they would come back. Now six mornings had passed. He hung the red tapestry each day and watched the crowd move through the bazaar. Bright roof fabrics snapped overhead. Children ran past with sticky fingers. Merchants called their prices. But the brown hood never came. Kūrush kept busy with his hands. He straightened the deep purple cloth. He combed the fringe on a teal weave until every thread lay flat. He fixed a corner that did not need fixing. His grandmother used to say the loom knew when a weaver was worried. His knots came out too tight that week. A woman stopped to buy a small orange runner. She counted her coins slow. Kūrush smiled and thanked her, but his eyes went back to the gap in the crowd. The gap stayed empty. He wrapped her runner and looked up too fast each time a shadow passed. By midday he let himself think the thought he had pushed away. He had done something wrong. He had spoken too much over the tea. He had asked too many questions. He had not even learned their name, and now he never would. The stranger had looked at him like someone who wanted to stay quiet, and Kūrush had filled the quiet with his own voice. He took one tea cup down and held it. It was cold and clean. He pictured the teal eyes above its rim, and the picture hurt more than he expected. He had wanted the beloved stall. He had wanted the whole bazaar to point his way. But none of that mattered right now. He only wanted one person to walk back through the crowd. Kūrush set the cup down. He could keep waiting, hoping, folding the same corner for weeks. Or he could stop. He made himself choose. He reached up and took the red tapestry off its hook. The wind had nothing left to catch. He folded it slow and laid it flat on the shelf, out of sight. If the stranger came for the red cloth, Kūrush wanted to know. He would not keep the cloth hanging as a lure. He would hang something new tomorrow, something he wove for himself. He closed the stall early. The empty hook swung where the red tapestry had hung for weeks. Kūrush walked home through the thinning market and did not look back at the gap in the crowd. He had stopped waiting. Something in his chest had gone quiet, and he did not yet know what would fill it.