Returned - Fennrick’s Shop

(Filed under: Velinwood Court- Fieldcraft lore) 

He didn’t mean to come in.

He was following the rain,
or maybe the smell of cinnamon bark and old wood,
or maybe the sound of a bell that hadn’t rung yet.

But there he was.

Dripping at the threshold.
One shoelace undone.
A smear of charcoal on his cheek that no one had told him about.

Fennrick looked up from his ledger without surprise.
“Bit young for forgetting already, aren’t you?” he asked gently,
and the boy stiffened—not offended, just caught.

“I didn’t forget,” the boy said. “I lost it.”

Fennrick nodded, like that made all the difference.
“Then we’ll see what wants to be found.”

The boy didn’t browse.
Didn’t touch the drawers or the vials or the compass without a needle.
He went straight to the counter.

And waited.

Fennrick slid a velvet tray forward.
Inside: a white flame. Tipped in gold.

The boy stared.

“That’s not mine,” he said.

“No,” said Fennrick. “But it remembers you.”

The boy blinked hard once. Then again.

“It was in my dream,” he whispered. “I was flying. But I kept dropping things. My voice, my name, everything. And the only thing I could hold onto was—”

He didn’t finish.

Fennrick didn’t need him to.

The boy took it with both hands.

He didn’t say thank you.

He didn’t have to.

Some things, after all,
are heavier than they look.

And outside, the rain had stopped.
But the sky was still listening.