The Flower Thief and Other Tales of Yalda - 10. The Tale of Two Little Reeds - Ninth Scroll

Almost

Vena — Duskgold, edge of twilight

It had been a long day—flour-streaked and sun-drowsy, the kind of day that left everything slower, softer. The kitchen was clean, the last of the bread cooling on its cloth-lined rack. Ailin stood by the open window, elbows on the sill, watching the lamplighters drift down the street like fireflies.

Behind him, Jaren leaned against the counter, arms crossed, eyes not on the street, but on Ailin. The golden-pink light caught the curve of his cheek, the dark curl of hair near his temple. He looked… peaceful. But also, miles away.

“Do you ever think,” Jaren began quietly, “how strange it is, to feel safe enough to miss someone?”

Ailin turned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… back then, we didn’t have time to miss anyone. Or anything. We just… moved forward. Survived.” Jaren looked down. “Now I think about people all the time. Cedric. Lysander. Henla. You.”

Ailin tilted his head. “You see me every day.”

“That’s not the same,” Jaren said, pushing off the counter. He walked over, close enough that their shoulders nearly brushed. “Missing you is something I do even when you're standing right in front of me.”

Ailin swallowed. He didn’t step away.

Jaren reached up, tentative, and brushed a curl behind Ailin’s ear. “Is that strange?”

“No,” Ailin whispered.

For a long moment, nothing moved. Their eyes held. The space between them was barely there.

Then Jaren leaned in, slowly—giving space to retreat. Ailin didn’t.

His breath warmed Ailin’s cheek, their noses nearly touching.

And then—

CLATTER. The back door burst open.

“I brought extra peaches!” Cedric announced, bursting in with a canvas bag over one shoulder and absolutely zero sense of timing. “Henla said she doesn’t need them, and I said, ‘Well then, we’ll—’ Wait, what did I just walk into?”

Jaren stepped back so fast he bumped into the counter. Ailin’s face went scarlet, his hands immediately finding the edges of his sleeves.

Cedric blinked. “Oh,” he said slowly. “Was this—were you—?”

“No,” Jaren said too quickly. “Peaches. Great. Thank you.”

“I'll... uh. Put them on the shelf,” Cedric offered, still eyeing them with a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Pretend I never existed.”

“You still do,” Ailin muttered, eyes fixed firmly on the windowsill.

Cedric didn’t help by humming a romantic ballad under his breath as he left the kitchen again, whistling cheerfully.

When he was gone, silence fell.

Jaren coughed. “So… peaches.”

Ailin laughed quietly and didn’t look away this time.

Finally

Vena — Silentmere

The night was clear, the stars sharp as pins against the deep velvet sky. Ailin and Jaren walked in silence through the narrow garden path behind the house, trailing fingertips against lavender stalks. The laughter from inside had faded to a murmur, distant and muffled.

“Cedric’s asleep,” Jaren said.

“Good,” Ailin replied, voice low. “He’d interrupt a sunrise.”

They reached the low stone wall at the edge of the property. The city stretched below them—warm lights glowing like lanterns set adrift in the dark. Somewhere, a flute played softly.

They sat close. This time, the quiet between them wasn’t uncertain. It was waiting.

“I’ve been thinking about...earlier,” Jaren said.

Ailin smiled. “So have I.”

“You’re not…?” Jaren glanced at him. “Worried?”

“I’m always a little worried,” Ailin said honestly. “But not about you.”

A pause. “Are you still missing me?” he asked, half a tease.

Jaren turned to him, his face open and unguarded. “Even now.”

Ailin leaned in first this time.

And Jaren met him there—no hesitation, no interruption.

It wasn’t dramatic. No soaring music, no wind catching in the trees. Just a kiss—soft and sure, the kind you don’t need to explain. The kind that says: I’m here. I’ve waited. I’ll stay.

When they finally pulled apart, their foreheads rested together, breath shared, eyes closed.

“Finally,” Jaren whispered.

Ailin chuckled, voice warm in his chest. “Don’t let Cedric find out. He’ll throw confetti.”

“I’m locking the door next time.” Jaren smiled ruefully.

They sat like that, hands entwined, as the stars wheeled overhead and the lavender swayed in the hush between heartbeats.

This time, nothing pulled them apart.

Ash and Honey

Auryn –Duskgold

Ailin was looking for lemongrass.

Lysander’s mother had promised a few dried stalks might still be salvaged from the old shops near the abandoned westward kiln, if the roof hadn’t caved completely. So, he’d come alone, basket in hand, skirting the charred alleyways where sunlight filtered through in long, dusty blades.

He didn’t expect the glint of glass.

Not the smooth, clear kind from apothecary bottles—but twisted, iridescent shards half-buried in soot. Alchemical glass.

Someone was crouched in the rubble ahead, black gloves dusted with ash, their wiry frame half-silhouetted against the burnt-out husk of a former storefront. A leather satchel hung open beside them, filled with metal tongs, folded cloth, and a broken piece of what might once have been a crucible.

Ailin made to step back quietly, but the stranger looked up. Pale eyes met his—neither startled nor hostile, but unmistakably sharp.

“You’re not from this part of the city,” they said flatly.

“I…didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You didn’t. This place has been dead for years.”

Ailin hesitated. “I’m just looking for lemongrass.”

The stranger arched a brow. “You think you’ll find herbs here?”

“Someone told me I might.”

The silence stretched. Then the stranger stood, dusted ash from their sleeves, and moved with the casual, practiced grace of someone long used to slipping through wreckage.

“Nothing grows here,” they said. “Not since the last fire. Just ghosts and mistakes.”

Ailin lingered. Something in the stranger’s posture reminded him of a bird with half-clipped wings—still upright, still dangerous, but no longer flying.

“Do you… collect the glass?”

“For now. It remembers more than most people do.” They crouched again, turning over a bulbous piece that had melted into a blue swirl. “I was apprenticed once. Before my master drank a formula he shouldn’t have.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He knew better.”

Their tone was dry, but not bitter. Just… spent.

“I’m Ailin,” he said, before he could think better of it.

The stranger looked up. “Tavi.”

They didn’t offer a hand.

Ailin stepped forward anyway, scanning the half-destroyed shelves. “Do you mind if I look?”

Tavi didn’t answer, which wasn’t no.

For the next several minutes, they shared the quiet. Ailin picked carefully through the edges of the scorched walls while Tavi sorted their glass. At one point, Tavi caught him watching and said, not unkindly, “You don’t ask many questions.”

“I used to. Then I stopped.”

“That’s a trick worth learning.”

Ailin found no lemongrass. But he found a scorched brass weight stamped with an unfamiliar symbol, and a piece of translucent green wax-paper. He handed both to Tavi without comment.

“You don’t want anything for them?”

Ailin shrugged. “You were here first.”

Tavi studied him for a moment—really studied him. Then reached into their satchel and pulled out a small tin wrapped in cloth.

“Try this,” they said. “Pepper honey drops. Made them myself.”

Ailin took one. The flavor bloomed warm and strange—sweet, with a bite that lingered.

“They’re good.”

“I know.”

He smiled, surprised.

Tavi didn’t smile back—but their voice softened, just slightly. “If you come again, bring gloves. You’ll bleed less.” Then they turned back to their work, sorting silence from ash and memory.

Glass and Rain

Noxen—Starcall

It rained the second time Ailin saw Tavi.

Not a storm—just a thin, persistent curtain of water that softened the edges of the broken kiln district and made everything smell faintly of rust and old stone. Ailin had come with gloves this time. He carried them tucked into his belt, along with a scrap of waxed cloth and a folded fig tart Cedric had pressed into his hands “just in case you forget to eat again.”

Tavi was under the broken awning of the same ruined shop, their coat slick with rain, their hair tied back in a hasty knot. They looked up when Ailin approached but said nothing.

“I brought gloves,” Ailin offered.

“I see that.”

“And a tart. It has cardamom.”

Tavi hesitated. “Did you bake it?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Ailin passed it over without ceremony, settling onto a dry-ish beam across from them. Tavi didn’t eat right away, just held the wrapped tart in both hands for a long moment as though weighing it for poison or memory.

“I thought you wouldn’t come back,” they said eventually.

Ailin pulled on one glove. “Why?”

“Most people don’t.”

“I’m not most people.”

“No,” Tavi said, looking at him through the slant of rain. “You’re not.”

Silence folded between them again—rain tapping the broken slate above, wind sighing through the ribs of the ruined beams. Ailin didn’t mind the quiet. In fact, he felt something inside him breathe easier here.

Tavi broke it this time. “The fire here wasn’t an accident.”

Ailin looked up.

“Three years ago,” Tavi continued. “Someone tried to distill false gold. Old formula. Unstable. The whole block went. My master’s shop was two doors over. He always said curiosity was safer than faith.”

“Did he make it?”

“No.” Tavi’s voice was calm. “But I did.”

There was no self-pity in the words. Just fact, like ash in the mortar. Ailin didn’t reach for sympathy. He simply said, “That’s why you’re here.”

“And why I’m not there,” Tavi said. “No one wants a failed alchemist. I’m too precise for faith work, too stubborn for guilds, too quiet for performance. So, I collect glass.”

“Too honest for most people, too,” Ailin said without thinking.

Tavi blinked at him. The corner of their mouth curled—barely—but it was there.

“And you?” they asked.

Ailin didn’t answer right away. The truth felt large, unwieldy, like a fragile jar wrapped in cloth. Still, he tried.

“I used to be part of something that told me I shouldn’t feel. That silence was the only way to be good. But I kept wanting. That was my mistake.”

“Was it?”

He looked up. Tavi was watching him closely now, their expression unreadable.

Ailin shrugged. “I wanted to be seen. To choose things.”

“You’re doing that now.”

“Sometimes it still feels like I’m stealing it.”

Tavi was quiet for a moment. Then they unwrapped the tart and broke it in half, offering him a piece.

“You can’t steal what’s already yours,” they said.

They ate in silence again, the kind that didn’t need permission. The kind Ailin could breathe inside. When the rain eased, and Ailin stood to leave, Tavi surprised him by speaking first.

“Same time next week?” they asked, voice casual.

Ailin nodded. “I’ll bring real gloves.”

“And I’ll bring better pepper honey. Last batch had too much bite.”

“No,” Ailin said, smiling. “It was just enough.”

The Shape of Things

Vena —Zenithrest

It was the smell of burned cinnamon that drew in Jaren first.

They were supposed to be buying cedar oil and soap root for the bakery, but Ailin had paused at the edge of the kiln district—again—and Jaren, sensing something familiar in the air, had followed.

The courtyard was half-flooded from the last rain; its stone tiles were patterned with soot stains and the delicate skeletons of dried leaves. Tavi stood near a crooked workbench, coaxing a flickering flame beneath a battered copper alembic. They didn’t look up right away.

Ailin stepped forward without hesitation.

“You added rosehip.”

“I did,” Tavi said. “And ruined it. Too sweet.”

Ailin sniffed the air. “I like it.”

“You like over-steeped mint.”

“Still better than your cumin tea.”

Tavi turned then—and caught sight of Jaren.

There was no flinch, no guardedness. Just a pause. A flicker of calculation, brief and precise, as if they were cataloging him like another ingredient.

Ailin gestured. “Tavi—this is Jaren. My—”

He stopped, unsure what word would be right in front of someone new.

Jaren stepped in, not unkind. “He means ‘everything,’ but it’s hard to say out loud.”

Ailin flushed but didn’t argue. Tavi blinked, then gave a slight, wry smile.

“Well. Everything. That’s useful in a person.”

Jaren tilted his head. “And you’re the glass scavenger?”

Tavi shrugged. “Depends on the week. Sometimes glass. Sometimes burnt roots. Occasionally fragments of purpose.”

“That last one’s expensive,” Jaren said, folding his arms. “Most people I know hoard it.”

“I don’t hoard. I just lose it a lot.”

Ailin watched the two of them, unsure if they were circling or sparring—but the tone was light. Curious. He let himself exhale.

Tavi turned back to their bench and adjusted the flame. “Ailin told me about you. Not the names, but the shape of things.”

Jaren glanced at Ailin. “Did he tell you I talk too much?”

“No,” Tavi said. “But I guessed.”

Jaren laughed. “Fair.”

“I also guessed you’d have hands that touch everything when you shouldn’t.”

Jaren raised his palms, guilty as charged. “And Ailin lets me.”

“That,” Tavi said, “is not surprising.”

The smile between them was easy, surprising even Ailin. He hadn’t been sure what he expected—jealousy? Distance? But this was something else. A shift, yes. But not a threat.

Jaren crouched beside the bench. “What’s this mixture for?”

“Originally? Calming the breath. But now I think it’s for remembering the wrong season.”

“Spring?”

“Autumn,” Ailin guessed. “Just at the edge of fading.”

Tavi gave a pleased nod.

Jaren leaned closer to the still. “Can I smell?”

“You may regret it.”

Jaren inhaled, then reeled back with a grimace. “Yep. I certainly regret.”

Ailin laughed.

The afternoon unfolded without rushing. Jaren fetched rainwater and asked too many questions. Ailin translated a few glyphs on Tavi’s notes. Tavi, for their part, let the boys fill the space without comment, observing as if documenting an experiment they hadn’t yet decided the nature of.

And later, when the mixture cooled and the flame had gone out, Tavi said simply, “Next time, bring your everything again.”

Jaren blinked. “You mean me?”

“Yes.”

Ailin didn’t say anything, but he reached for Jaren’s hand and held it a little longer than usual. Tavi didn’t look away.

Not approval. Not permission. Just presence.

A new ingredient. Not disruptive.

Simply added.