Ash finds her in the storage shed behind the tower, alone with a crate that smells like earth and rot. Nay Raven's hands shake as she pries at the wood. Her fingers slip. She tries again. Ash steps closer and says her name, but Nay looks up with eyes that don't land anywhere specific. She tilts her head like she's waiting for him to introduce himself. The shed's roof drips with moss. Tools lean against the walls where someone left them weeks ago. On the workbench sits a glass orb that swirls with colors Ash doesn't have names for — pink bleeding into blue, then gold, then violet. Around it, she's arranged scraps of fabric in a circle. Black thread. Blue silk. Each piece labeled with words that don't connect to anything. The handwriting gets messier toward the center. Ash picks up one of the fabric scraps. The label reads "coat for the one who." It stops there. He holds it up and Nay flinches like he's holding fire. She grabs for it but her hands won't close properly. The trembling gets worse. She pulls back and stares at the orb instead, mouthing something he can't hear. He sets the fabric down exactly where he found it. Steps back. Asks if she needs help, but the question lands wrong because she's already forgotten he's there. Ash leaves the shed and walks back toward the tower with his hands in his pockets. He knows what it looks like when someone's trying to hold onto pieces of themselves. He also knows there's no coat he can make for that.

Ash goes back to the shed the next morning. He tells himself he's only checking on her, but his hands move first to the fabric scraps on the bench. He lifts one. Then another. The black weave. The structured weight. He knows this cloth because he cut it himself. These are pieces from his coats. Nay sits in the corner with her knees drawn up, watching him without recognition, and she cannot tell him why she took them. He kneels in front of her. He asks, gentle, when she came to his shop. She blinks. Beside her sits a smooth moonstone egg, cracked through with fine lines, still warm in her palm. She used it to weight the labels, she says. She thinks. The handwriting on the scraps is hers. She traces a word she wrote and cannot read it back. Ash gathers every scrap into his coat. He carries them across the wet grass to the shop where he builds his work, the one with the buzzing windows and the heavy door. Inside, he lays the pieces out on the floor in the shape they came from. A sleeve. A collar. A panel meant for a back. Together they form something like a wild blooming thing — bright fabric and black thread piled into a heap that should have been a coat for someone who needed it. He stands over the pile a long time. Then he picks up his shears. He will not remake these pieces. He will build the coat again from new cloth, and he will lock the shop door from now on. Nay keeps the egg. Ash keeps the work. Something between them has closed.

Ash locks the shop behind him at dawn and walks into the wet street with the new coat half-finished in his head. He turns the corner and stops. A stranger stands at the curb wearing one of his coats. The black weave. The hardware at the collar. Ash never sold it. He never gave it away. The stranger has not seen him yet. The coat is wrong now. Painted over. Flowers and leaves bloom across the black weave in blues and yellows. A hood rides high on the stranger's shoulders, stitched into shapes that did not come from Ash's bench. But the bones are his. The cut is his. And at the chest, exactly where he always puts it, a small stitched sun shines pale against the dark lining. His mark. His hand. No one else makes that sun. The stranger turns and walks. Ash follows at a distance, through the wet street and down a path he does not know, until the stranger ducks into a small clay shack with a thatched roof and dried bundles hanging from the beams. Ash stops at the door. Inside, the stranger lifts the coat off and lays it across a low table beside jars of leaves. Ash steps in. He keeps his hands open. He says, that coat is mine. The stranger does not flinch. They say a woman gave it to them at the south gate, half-finished, and they painted the rest themselves because the cold was bad. They show Ash the inside seam, where two of his stitches still hold. Ash touches the small sun at the chest. He does not ask for the coat back. He asks the stranger's name, and where they walk, and who else saw them wearing it. The stranger answers. Ash writes nothing down. He walks out with empty hands and a name he did not have an hour ago, and the work, for the first time, is somewhere he did not put it.

Ash walks back the way he came with the stranger's name sitting heavy in his mouth. The work is out there now. Someone wore it down a path he did not pick. Someone saw it. Word moves faster than thread. By the time he reaches his door, he knows the name has already left the clay shack and gone somewhere he cannot follow. He stands at the lock with the key in his hand and waits to see who comes asking first. He does not wait long. A figure rounds the corner before he turns the key. They carry a folded coat over one arm. The cloth is bright with flowers and leaves in blues and yellows, a hood stitched into strange shapes. It is not the coat from the clay shack. It is another one. Another piece of his work, painted over, finished by hands that were not his. They hold it out like proof. They point past Ash to a stone post at the edge of the lane. The post is new. Someone has traced fine black marks across its face in long looping lines, a pattern that curls and folds back on itself. At the center of the marks, small and dark, sits the shape of his stitched sun. The figure says a name. His name. They say the coat in the clay shack is theirs, and they want it back before more hands touch it. They say the marks on the post went up last night. Ash looks at the post. He looks at the coat in their arms. He says no. He says the coat in the shack belongs to the stranger now, and the one in their hands belongs to whoever wears it next. He steps inside and turns the key. Behind the locked door he stands still, breathing. The work is loose in the world. His name is on a stone where anyone can read it. He cannot pull it back. He does not want to.

Morning comes and Ash unlocks the door. Word reached him at dawn through a knock and a whisper. Someone is selling coats under his sun mark at a market two lanes over. The coats are already gone. Every one sold before he heard the first name spoken. He stands in the open doorway with the key still in his hand. He walks the two lanes fast. The market is half awake. He finds the spot by the shape of what is left behind. A rusted metal cart sits crooked on the stones, its canvas torn, faded letters reading CLOTHING SALE across the side. Beside it stands a tall painted container, blue and gold, the lid pried open and empty. Fine script runs along its belly where buyers signed their names. None of the names are his. A small scaled creature crouches near the cart wheel, blinking pink eyes up at him. It clutches a folded square of cloth to its chest. Ash kneels. The cloth is a receipt scrap, and stitched into one corner is his sun mark, copied in coarse thread. The creature holds it out like a gift. Around the market, others move past in coats he has never touched, each one carrying his sign on the shoulder or the cuff. The seller is gone. The work is gone. His name walks away on every back. Ash stands. He does not chase. He takes the scrap from the small creature and folds it into his pocket. The coats are out there now under a stitch that is not his, worn by people who think they know what he made. He turns back toward his shop. The work he still owns is on the rack behind a locked door. He will cut tonight. He will sew tomorrow. The only answer left is more.