The light in Dyer's Crossing was different today.
The gang found themselves without rest for the third day in a row, exhaustion reaching its peak. Gus paced the room, then the hallway, then the street outside. He didn't want food and he didn't want to sit, he had become extremely irritable.
"Why is it always the same people outside?" he muttered. "Same woman sweeping the same spot. Same damn cart rolling past with that hollow-eyed kid." His voice was tight, frayed at the edges. "Are we even moving, or just circling the same hour again and again?"
Joren didn't answer, he didn't know any more than him.
Joren sat on the edge of the bed, his hands hanging loose between his knees, head bowed. His eyes were bloodshot and it felt like the room had a heartbeat of its own.
In Willow's room, she found herself coming into consciousness with her limbs morphed into a multitude of things that she couldn't turn back. This had never happened to her before, she has always been able to revert it to her original form.
Her right arm had stretched long and narrow like the demon arm she used in the Duskfen beast fight. Her left had grown translucent, shot through with thin branching lines like veins of crystal. One foot remained her own; the other had her toes stretched and fused, almost amphibian-like.
Willow reached for the nightstand and gripped it, grounding herself as best she could. The familiar grain of the wood, the soft grit of dust, the slight give of the drawer. She focused on those details and tried to remember what her fingers were supposed to feel like, but it didn't help.
Joren found himself unable to deal with an irate Gus or anxious Willow, so he took a walk to try and clear his mind. He just grabbed his satchel, pushed open the front door of the inn, and stepped into the soft early-afternoon haze.
Afternoon – The Streets
Joren walked with no real destination in mind. His feet carried him past the stalls that smelled of fried foods, and past rows of windows with drawn curtains and flower pots that never wilted.
Further on, a woman sat beside a basket of yarn, her knitting needles moving rhythmically. She didn't look up, but he supposed that was normal for someone knitting.
He cut across the footbridge toward the quieter part of town, hoping to find somewhere to just rest a little. That first day had seemed peaceful, but now he wondered if it had always been this quiet, or if they'd simply failed to notice the silence.
He reached a ledge overlooking the river and sat down, resting his elbows on his knees. Below him, the river moved in slow, unhurried loops that felt like a breath of life in this timeless town.
He closed his eyes.
Just for a second.
"Rough morning?" said a familiar voice.
Joren looked up to find Lysaire was standing nearby, hands folded in the pockets of her coat. She wore the same expression she always did, which made him feel a little better in his frazzled mind.
"Something's wrong," he said finally.
Lysaire didn't respond right away. She followed his gaze to the water, her expression unreadable.
Joren rubbed the back of his neck. "I haven't slept in three days. Gus is losing it. Willow's not okay, and I keep thinking about my mother and how guilty I feel about her leaving me."
Joren felt surprised to blurt out such things. Usually, he would keep those types of things to himself, but the lack of sleep blurred the lines of what was normal.
Lysaire's eyes softened just slightly. Not with pity, but with understanding. "Many people who find themselves coming to this town once carried similar kinds of guilt. Not always the same story, but the same weight."
Joren didn't speak. His hands had curled into loose fists on his lap, his jaw tight.
She continued, voice low but certain. "The kind of guilt that doesn't scream anymore but eats away at you slowly."
Joren looked up at her, a furrow deepening between his brows. There was something behind her words he couldn't quite pin. It felt like she wasn't explaining everything she knew, and yet, no part of her seemed false.
"I'm sorry you never got what you needed," she added gently. "But that doesn't mean you're meant to carry the absence and grief forever."
Joren didn't reply, he just stared down at his hands like they didn't belong to him anymore.
Lysaire stepped closer, but not too close. "Sometimes," she said, "I think the hardest part isn't the pain itself. It's how loud it gets when you try to keep going, like you are dragging chains through water."
He didn't interrupt, but he wasn't nodding either.
She lowered herself to sit beside him on the ledge, careful and quiet. "There's this lie people tell," she continued, "that if you carry something long enough, it becomes lighter. I've never shared that same philosophy, I found it repulsive. You see, here in Dyer's, we don't try to fix it anymore, we let it go."
His head turned slightly, eyes still unfocused. "Let it go how?"
Lysaire watched the wakes in the water. "There are places that teach you to face your grief, to wrestle with it until you understand it. Ever since I arrived here, people haven't had to face that pain anymore."
Joren looked up, finding ways to fill in the blanks of her claims. "You mean like that old woman? She seems to come to you a lot to feel that grief mellow out with her letters."
Lysaire smiled faintly. "Yes, exactly. She remembers what she needs to, but can forget about that storm that took her husband."
Joren's mouth was dry. He swallowed. "But it's not real if she doesn't acknowledge it."
"Real?" Lysaire tilted her head. "What is real, if not the shape something takes in your mind? If she finds peace believing he'll walk through the door again, isn't that kinder than remembering how he didn't?"
The words landed heavily between them.
Joren shuddered, his muscles tightened and his eyes widened.
Things started to make sense, even though he didn't want it to.
"She's not suffering anymore," Lysaire said simply. "And she's not alone. I help everyone who comes here find the version of their story they can live with."
Lysaire didn't press, she just let him sit with this new realization.
"You help them forget," he said at last, barely audible. "Piece by piece."
She nodded like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Only what hurts them."
His jaw worked silently before he spoke again. "So that's why they never leave."
"They can leave," she said gently. "They just... don't need to."
Joren blinked, and suddenly every slow-moving stall, every repeating cart, every person sweeping the same patch of stone hit his mind like a train. "They're all forgetting," he whispered.
Lysaire turned her gaze to the river, serene. "They're resting. What I am doing is best for them, no longer are the days where a baker's son cries himself to sleep for the family that will never return."
Joren didn't respond.
He couldn't.
His thoughts had scattered somewhere between her words and the slow ripple of the river below.
Lysaire didn't look at him as she spoke next, her voice nearly lost to the breeze. "There's a mercy in forgetting."
Joren's mouth felt dry.
He thought of Gus pacing the room, snapping at nothing and of Willow's fractured limbs she couldn't return to normal. He thought about his own reflection, blurred and tired in the window this morning.
"Is that what's happening to us?" His voice was only a raspy whisper now.
Lysaire gave no answer, and that, more than anything, told him yes.
When Joren finally stood, he wasn't filled with much resolve, mostly unease at the betrayal he felt.
"I know how heavy it is," she said softly. "You don't have to carry it anymore."
Joren didn't answer her this time. He turned to go back to the Inn, his steps faded with the moving river as he walked away from Lysaire.