Palm to Palm
The parchment is old, older than this lifetime, older than even the fortress I’d wager. Its creases hum faintly in my hands as if each fold remembers when it was last opened. The moment I fully unfold it, a scent rises of charred cedar, ancient ink, and something unmistakably mine: fire-forged starlight.
Cael’ari offers a response that isn’t loud, but it is unmistakably present. I can feel memories reaching the edges of my awareness but I gently push them back; I want to give this moment to Vaerion.
The parchment is not full. It bears only seven words, written in a deep, slanted hand, Vaerion’s hand, though perhaps it wasn’t his name when he wrote it. The ink is not black. It’s the reddish shimmer of dried blood and flame.
"When the flame remembers, the door opens."
Below the phrase, faint symbols are burned into the parchment not drawn but seared through. They aren’t Ogham. They aren’t sigils from the Codex. These are older. Personal. The kind of markings a soul would etch into bark or stone when words failed.
A spiral. A flame. A feather.
And, half-faded but clear as breath in cold air: The outline of two hands, pressed palm to palm.
Vaerion watches me, not pushing, not pulling just present. The weight of all he almost says hovers between us. The air around us thickens slightly and the sconces on the wall in the pub seem to lean in just a bit more.
He quietly asks, “Does it mean anything to you… now?”
That ache that I had been feeling earlier returns. It should mean something. I should know. Everyone else knew. The whispers in the halls. The glances in the Council chamber. The 'what ifs' and the 'what will happen whens'. Everyone else knew what could happen if the Fifth returned. Everyone but me.
I don’t have the heart to tell him. Not because it doesn’t mean anything because right now it means everything, but I truly don’t recall. I quietly shake my head, not bringing myself to say the words. Instead I reach my hand out to him, palm up.
He looks at my hand, my palm offered like a memory waiting to be found, and for a long moment he does not move. The firelight dances in the obsidian of his eyes, catching some truth neither of us have fully spoken aloud.
Then, slowly, deliberately, Vaerion places his hand in mine. Palm to palm. Just like the marking on the parchment.
The moment my skin meets his, the edges of the world seem to soften, not blur but bend, as if the air itself remembers how to hold us both. Not as warriors. Not as myth. But as something much simpler.
Something real.
There is no flash of power, no explosion of light. Just warmth. Quiet resonance. A recognition without language. I feel it not as a thought, but a presence beneath the surface.
Not everything must be remembered for it to be true. Not every vow must be spoken for it to live. Not every feeling needs to be defined.
After a moment, Vaerion speaks not a declaration, not even a question, just a quiet truth, "I remember enough for both of us."
And in that stillness, we both hold the flame. Not as burden, but as bond.
