The Flower Thief and Other Tales of Yalda - 9. The Tale of Two Little Reeds - Eighth Scroll

Lanterns in the Wind
Auryn —Duskgold

By the third week after the Festival of the Twin Stars, Ailin and Jaren had grown familiar with the rhythm of life in the outer wards of Yalda. It was a world measured not in chimes and meditations but in the scent of roasting squash, the gossip of neighbors, and the slap of laundry on river stones.

And laughter. So much laughter—often because of Jaren.

“Stop, you’ll scare the moon away,” Cedric groaned one evening, pressing a pillow over his ears as Jaren launched into a wavering rendition of a street ballad.

Jaren grinned, defiant. “You’re just jealous I hit the note.”

“You hit something,” Lysander said dryly from the next room. “I think it was the neighbor’s tabby.”

Outside, a sharp mrrrrow confirmed the insult.

Ailin leaned back on the windowsill, his curls catching the lamplight. “You’ll owe Lady Tameris another fish if her cat disappears again.”

“I’ll sing him back,” Jaren declared, placing a hand over his chest with theatrical pride. “Music is love, and I am nothing if not—”

“Tone-deaf?” Ailin offered.

Everyone laughed. Even Lysander cracked a smile.

Their lives had begun to root in the soil of this place. Cedric’s parents had taken the boys in without fuss—offering clothes, food, and more importantly, space. Space to learn to speak in full sentences again. Space to grow into their changing bodies and unlearn the instinct to flinch when hands moved too quickly.

Ailin’s brown curls had begun to frame his face, a startling contrast to the shaved-smooth look of the temple days. Jaren had gone for chaos instead—spiky black strands pointing in every direction, as if his hair, too, was learning to express itself.

They still signed to each other when nervous, but mostly they spoke. Sometimes in whispers, sometimes in shouts, sometimes even in song (with questionable success). They fed birds in the square, watched puppet shows with the other children, and once spent an entire afternoon trying to catch a chicken Cedric had lost. Lysander refused to help. “If the bird wants freedom,” he’d said, “I won’t be the one to deny it.”

But freedom was never absolute.

Far away, beneath paper lanterns long extinguished, the elders of the Whispering Reeds had noticed the boys’ absence. And now, searchers moved quietly across the kingdom—hooded figures in soft shoes and palanquin-graced silence.

Their robes bore the temple’s reed emblem stitched in silver thread, and they carried neither swords nor staves. Their weapons were words, persuasion, memory. Guilt.

But they would not find what they sought so easily.

The boys who had fled the temple were gone.

These new boys—these laughing, stargazing, clumsy-singing, well-fed, and loved ones—were no longer shadows of fear and silence. They had changed their clothes, their hair, their gait. Even their names might one day shift, should they choose.

And though the Whispering Reeds had their ways, it would take more than silence to bring these boys back.

They had tasted a different truth now.

And they were not alone.

Stonewall & Steam
Cira — Starcall, twilight falling

The back garden behind Cedric’s house was modest, but generous enough for a patch of vegetables, a spindly apple tree, and a low wall just high enough to sit on. Ailin had pulled his knees to his chest, staring at the thin curl of steam rising from his teacup. The smell of mint and wild parsley floated between them.

Jaren was lying on the wall itself, arms folded behind his head, black hair catching little tufts of dandelion fluff. He’d lost the temple stiffness in his shoulders, but something in his brow was drawn tight today—tight like string pulled around a secret.

Ailin finally broke the silence with a voice still not fully comfortable in his own throat. “Do you think they’re looking for us?”

Jaren didn’t move at first. Then: “Yes.”

Ailin’s fingers tightened around the cup. “Even now?”

Jaren turned his head to look at him. “Especially now. They won’t let it go. Not when we were meant to be part of their next generation.”

“They trained us to be quiet,” Ailin murmured. “To disappear into stillness. Maybe we did too good a job.”

Jaren gave a dry smile. “We disappeared from them. Not for them.”

Ailin laughed softly, then sobered. “We’ve changed. We don’t even look the same anymore. Our robes are gone. You’ve got spikes in your hair.”

“And you’ve got curls,” Jaren added, reaching out to gently flick one.

Ailin swatted his hand away but smiled anyway. “They won’t recognize us. Not unless they’re looking closely.”

“They’ll look closely.”

Jaren sat up, feet dropping onto the grass. “We should be ready. In case we need to run again.”

The weight of the thought hung between them.

“I’m tired of running,” Ailin said after a moment. His voice was small. Honest. “I like it here. I like the food. I like having friends. I like…” He hesitated. “I like being seen.”

Jaren reached for his hand, lacing their fingers together on the mossy stone. “I do too.”

They sat in silence, listening to the distant clatter of pots and the whine of some tuneless ballad Cedric was attempting to teach a very uncooperative cat.

“If they find us,” Ailin whispered, “will you still stay?”

Jaren didn’t answer right away. Then he leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to Ailin’s temple. “Yes. I’ll stay. Even if we must run again.”

From inside the house, laughter rang out—Cedric’s, then Lysander’s, then a soft thunk as something wooden toppled. The sound grounded them. A reminder of how far they'd come.

“They won’t find us,” Jaren said, finally. “And if they do…we’re not alone anymore.”

Things That Take Root
Noxen — Nightdeep
True night’s stillness, when thoughts settle and courage quietly grows.

The house had gone quiet for the night. Outside, Southmere’s alleys hummed with the muffled end of festival songs and a distant clatter of hooves—but here, all was still. Ailin sat on the steps just inside the back door, his knees drawn up beneath his tunic, watching the moonlight slant across the garden wall. Jaren lay stretched out on his back on the cool stone floor, arms folded behind his head, his lips moving silently as if rehearsing a thought he wasn’t sure he wanted to share.

“You’re thinking too loud,” Ailin said softly.

Jaren snorted. “You can hear that?”

Ailin tilted his head, smiling faintly. “You talk with your eyebrows.”

Jaren turned his face toward Ailin, eyes shadowed in the half-light. “What if we’re not meant to stay?”

Ailin’s expression didn’t change, but his arms curled tighter around his knees.

Jaren sat up slowly, resting his forearms on his thighs. “I keep waiting for someone to say it’s time to go again. That we’ve gotten too comfortable. Too close. Like there’s a trap waiting behind the next kindness.”

Ailin nodded. “It doesn’t feel like a trick. But it doesn’t feel safe yet, either. Not all the way.”

Jaren was quiet. Then: “Cedric asked if I’d ever want to take over the bakery from Mistress Henla someday.”

That landed like a stone dropped into water.

Ailin looked over sharply. “What did you say?”

“I didn’t. I laughed. Changed the subject.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But he was serious.”

Ailin turned back to the garden. “That’s a ‘stay’ question.”

“Yeah,” Jaren said. “It is.”

The silence stretched, but this one wasn’t gentle. It was full of sharp edges and turning wheels.

“I’ve never stayed anywhere this long,” Ailin said eventually. “I don’t know how to hold onto something without also looking for the exit.”

Jaren reached out, brushing his fingers lightly against Ailin’s hand. “Same.”

“But I want to,” Ailin added, voice trembling just slightly. “I want to try.”

Jaren’s hand closed over his. “Me too.”

They sat like that, breathing into the weight of what they hadn’t run from yet.

Behind them, the lamp still burned low. Their shoes were by the door. The house was quiet in the way only a real home could be—not with dread, but with familiarity. Ailin’s cup sat on the table. Jaren’s coat hung near the stove. There were books with their names scribbled on the front covers, herbs they had planted themselves. Laughter had happened here. And fear. And healing.

“What if we plant things,” Ailin said, “and they grow, and we’re still here to see it?”

Jaren looked at him with something like wonder. “Then we’ll know it wasn’t just luck.”

Ailin nodded, once. “Then maybe it’s time.”

Time to choose permanence. Not as a promise, not as a vow, but as an act of courage—repeated daily, held loosely, but real.

They didn’t say anything else that night. But when they finally went upstairs to sleep, they left the garden door open behind them.

Just a crack.

Enough for roots to breathe.

The Names We Choose
Vena — Duskgold to Starcall
The day of connection and convergence. The hour of fading sun and shared change.

The late afternoon sun slanted low across the courtyard behind the herb shop, warm light gilding the clay tiles and creeping ivy. The air smelled of marjoram, beeswax, and drying lemon peel.
Jaren crouched next to a small planter bed, digging his fingers into soft soil while Cedric knelt nearby with a stack of seedlings. “These are foxmint,” Cedric said, holding one up. “Good for stomach aches. Also attracts the prettiest butterflies.”

Jaren smirked. “Important detail.”

Cedric winked. “Only the most.”

Meanwhile, Ailin stood near the shaded doorway of the shop, turning over a thin stack of paper slips in his hand—each with carefully penned phrases in both Yaldan common script and the slender strokes of temple glyphs. Lysander stood beside him, patient and precise, guiding his pronunciation as he practiced reading them aloud.

“You’ve got a good voice,” Lysander said quietly, after Ailin made it through a particularly tricky verse. “You speak like someone who’s choosing every word.”

Ailin flushed. “For years, I wasn’t allowed to choose anything.”

Lysander nodded, then held out another slip. “Then it’s time you did.”

The shop belonged to Cedric’s aunt, who’d taken a liking to the two temple runaways almost instantly—declaring, after tasting Jaren’s attempts at sweetened ginger tea, that any boy with that much spice in his fingers must have the gods' blessing. She offered them small tasks around the store: sweeping, sorting herbs, tending the garden beds, helping old customers carry baskets. It wasn’t glamorous. But it was honest. Kind.

And more than that, it was theirs.

That evening, the four of them climbed the low stone wall near the city gate, where the stars were just beginning to pierce the dusk. Cedric passed around a wrapped bundle of flatbread and soft cheese, and they ate with their feet dangling, watching lamps flicker to life along the streets below.

“I think we need real names,” Jaren said suddenly.

Cedric tilted his head. “You already have names.”

“We have given names,” Ailin said, nodding. “But not names we chose. In the temple, we were only reeds. No root. No leaf.”

“You want to grow your own name,” Lysander murmured, more a statement than a question.

Ailin met Jaren’s eyes. “Together.”

Cedric grinned wide. “I’ll help you write them out. We can put them on your shop badges. Or embroider them on your tunics. Or paint them in the sky.”

“Please don’t paint the sky,” Lysander said. “Cedric’s calligraphy is a war crime.”

But his smile was warm, and the moment felt like the end of something unfinished.

Later that week, two new names appeared on the bakery’s backdoor plaque—etched in simple lettering beneath the old family crest.

Jaren Thorn
Ailin Sage

Root and leaf. Reeds no longer.