The candlelight flickered in softly across the wooden table of Joren's room. Most of the guests had turned in for the night, but our trio of travelers are still up finding things to do.
The inn was quiet, save for the occasional creak of the roof beams shifting in the cool.
Joren sat at the table under the window, his star charts spread out like he was a researcher.
Gus leaned back in a chair nearby, exhausted but chewing on the last of the evening's bread.
Willow sat cross-legged on the floor, her head resting against a bench leg, watching the candlelight shimmer through the base of a glass bottle as she morphed different parts of her body. Willow was trying to work on multi-morphing, where she could resemble many different things limb by limb.
"You always work on those at night?" Gus mumbled around a yawn.
Joren didn't look up. "The skies are clearest after dusk. Easier to compare positions."
Willow remained by the table, her outstretched and mismatched limbs settling back into place as she leaned forward. "So what exactly are you charting? Is it just the star drift stuff?"
Joren shook his head and gently turned the page to a clean quadrant. "Not tonight. I'm not tracking motion, at least not directly. I'm studying relational integrity."
Gus blinked from his chair. "The what now?"
"The shapes," Joren said. "Constellations. I'm comparing their proportions such as distance, angle, and alignment to older records. Some charts are from a century ago, some older. I've been trying to find out whether any shapes have warped or broken as I make my own guide."
Willow looked down at the parchment. "Why would they change? Aren't stars basically fixed?"
"In theory, yes," Joren said, head down and pen to paper. "But early astronomers used the shapes for navigation and storytelling. If enough tiny shifts occur over a few generations, what once was a familiar pattern becomes unfamiliar. It stops pointing to the right place or meaning what it used to."
"I know they shift with the seasons," Joren added, "but I'm more interested in changes beyond that.
He tapped a trio of inked points. "See this? It is part of the Flexa Crown, which should form a soft triangle with this star here. However, in two older atlases, the base is flatter and at a sharper angle."
"That could just be a user error, right? Like when they were drawing it at the time and whatnot." Gus offered.
Joren nodded. "That's what I thought at first, but I've checked other atlases as well and all had the same triangle shape. Constellation work from the last era hasn't been redone as much because it takes a considerable amount of time to redo and explain the ratio of change."
Joren continued, lightly sketching the altered triangle onto the margin of his guide. "It's not just the Flexa Crown. The Hollow Sister's arc is shallower than it used to be, and in the Weaver's Spindle, two stars that used to align with the solstice marker are now offset by nearly a quarter degree."
Willow leaned over his charts now. "And people just… don't notice?"
"Most navigators go by tradition," Joren said. "They follow the fixed points in the sky, not the shapes. It's really interesting how constellations became more popular for research after the first era, as not many accounts exist from that period. It became more popularized with the growing sects of mathematics and philosophy."
Willow rested her forearms on the table, eyes flicking across the faded notations. "So, people only started paying serious attention after... what, the first era?"
Joren nodded. "Roughly. The early records were mostly navigational usage such as merchant maps, sea routes, things like that. Once university became a concept for people to grow their learning and do specialized research, we saw a huge jump in theories about the world and how portraits came to be."
Willow tilted her head. "So the rise of education led to people connecting the stars and the Portraits?"
"In part," Joren said. "There were always stories linking them, but it became more popular in theology that god or many gods exist in the sky. I can't say I personally believe in most of the theories and theological concepts, but it does give ways to explain how portraits came to be."
The candle flickered again, its shadows dancing across the papers.
Willow leaned back, arms folded now, her earlier curiosity dimmed from exhaustion. She left shortly after the conversation to head to her room, while Joren finished up his charts.
No one got any sleep that night either.
Late Morning – The Inn
The morning light had risen higher than expected by the time they came to.
Joren sat at the small table near the window, already dressed, though he couldn't remember doing it. His boots were laced tight and his satchel was at his feet already packed.
The candle from last night had burned down to the base and cooled into a smooth puddle. He blinked slowly, trying to piece together how the morning had started; he had no memory of waking up, only of being here.
The other two found themselves in similar situations of sleepwalking and disillusionment.
Willow sat at the edge of her bed for what felt like minutes before realizing her boots were already on. One of her sleeves was rolled up neatly, the other not. She couldn't remember brushing her hair, but it was tied back with a band she didn't recall packing.
Gus stood in the hallway with his coat half-buttoned, squinting at the floor as though he'd lost something.
"I was halfway down the stairs before I realized I hadn't even opened my door," he muttered when they gathered.
The common room of the inn was occupied, though only technically. They hadn't really been looking at the people around them when they first arrived, but now that they felt beyond exhausted, they could see that everyone was barely present.
"Good morning again," the Innkeeper said, her tone unchanged.
Joren hesitated. "We haven't been down yet."
Her smile didn't falter. "Of course not."
She turned and began rearranging a stack of plates that didn't need rearranging. The three took a table in the corner, and for a while, no one said anything.
Willow was the first to speak up. "Does it look like people here sleep at all? They look so lost, like they aren't even there."
Gus glanced around slowly, his eyes landing on a man seated by the hearth. The man was holding a spoon just above a bowl of oatmeal, not moving. The man's hand trembled slightly, but his gaze was vacant to the world.
Joren leaned forward, elbows on the table, fingers laced. "They were like this yesterday too, I think, I just didn't notice. I thought they were quiet. I thought this town was peaceful."
A few tables away, a woman reached for her cup, lifted it halfway, then set it back down. A minute later, she did it again.
Identical motion.
Same hand, same rhythm.
Joren turned toward the window.
Outside, the sky was an even, indifferent blue as usual. A boy rode past on a slow-moving cart, his head was down and eyes wide, just like the boy Joren saw when they first arrived.
Willow followed Joren's gaze. "That's the same boy," she said softly. "Same clothes. Same look on his face."
"No," Gus said slowly, shaking his head. "It can't be. That was yesterday."
"Gus" Joren's voice was serious now, "That was two days ago now."
Gus opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked down at his hands like they might know the truth better than he did. "I don't remember going to sleep last night."
"None of us do," Joren murmured.
Evening – The Street
The three followed the path along the canal in silence. The sky had softened to a quiet gold, but the warmth didn't settle, just slid off the skin like light through fog.
Joren walked a little behind the others, watching the water ripple below from wind and debris. His thoughts drifted the way they always did when things grew too quiet.
Lately he was still thinking about the man he watched die in his hands when his mind drifted, but today he thought about his mother. He felt guilty for not being enough for his mother to stay, he was far too young to help her in the ways she needed.
It was probably a year after his father was transferred to a top-secret facility for his research; his mother became aggressive and snappy.
He remembered the way she'd moved through the house and how some days she wouldn't speak at all. On other days she'd speak too much, asking questions he couldn't answer, and then scolding him for not answering fast enough.
He tried to be useful when she was around still.
He brought in water from the well, stacked firewood, sat quietly away from her presence when she needed silence, but it wasn't enough.
He was somewhere around the age of nine when she disappeared, it was so sudden that she just left without telling him. He had woken up that next morning to find most of the things gone, and a house he couldn't afford to stay in any longer.
The neighbors whispered about her grief, said she must've broken under the weight of waiting for her husband to return.
He didn't talk about her much to Hazel, she just let him process things in his own way.
Elira may have known some of the gossip about her, but she never brought it up to Joren.
He'd buried his mother somewhere in his thoughts over the years, like a ghost or vague figure, but the guilt clung to the spaces between.
Ahead, Gus kicked a stone into the canal. Willow didn't look back at the two of them.
Joren let the distance between them stretch a little longer.