The lower districts of Solmere transformed entirely for the harvest festival, every street between the market square and the harbor road strung with garlands of dried leaves and late autumn flowers, stalls crowding the cobblestones three and four deep, the whole city given over for one weekend to the particular abundant chaos of a proper celebration.
FNN: I want to try everything. Every single stall. That's the plan.
BRR: That's not a plan, that's a stomach ache waiting to happen.
FNN: Same thing, different framing.
They arrived as a loose cluster of eight and dissolved almost immediately, the way crowds this size always encouraged, Finn towing Briar off toward a stall advertising some manner of spiced harvest bread, Mira and Talon drifting quietly toward a smaller, quieter row of stalls selling pressed flowers and preserved herbs, and Corin, after a moment's visible hesitation, following at a careful distance that suggested he hadn't quite decided whether he wanted to be found doing so. Elsie caught Arthur's eye briefly, glanced toward Yseult, and offered a small, knowing smile before disappearing after Finn and Briar with the particular deliberate casualness of someone leaving space on purpose.
YSE: She's matchmaking.
ART: She's not subtle about it.
YSE: No. I appreciate that about her. Subtlety wastes time.
She looped her arm through his without asking, the same easy confidence she brought to most things, and steered him toward the market's central row, where the crowd thickened around a cluster of game stalls, their proprietors calling out challenges with the particular theatrical enthusiasm of people who made their entire yearly income across one crowded weekend.
BTH: Test your strength! Ring the bell, win a prize!
Yseult stopped dead.
YSE: Oh, I'm doing that.
ART: You don't have a strength-based ability.
YSE: I don't need one. I have Alchemy, and I have spite, and between the two I've never once met a carnival game I couldn't out-think.
She approached the booth with total confidence, paid the proprietor his coin, and took up the heavy mallet with both hands, and Arthur, watching, felt a flicker of genuine curiosity about exactly how she intended to out-think a test of pure physical force. She did not swing the mallet the way the previous contestants had. Instead, she set it down, closed her eyes for a moment of visible concentration, and Arthur watched a faint shimmer gather along her forearms, the particular telltale sign of essence being redirected into something it wasn't naturally built for, and when she finally lifted the mallet and swung, the strike that landed carried considerably more force than her frame should have produced. The bell rang clean at the very top. The booth's proprietor stared at her with open, slightly offended disbelief.
BTH: That's not- you're not supposed to use Alchemy on the strength test.
YSE: There's no sign forbidding it.
BTH: It's implied!
YSE: Implication isn't a rule. I'd like my prize, please.
Arthur, watching the proprietor's slow, defeated capitulation, found himself laughing despite his best efforts at composure, and Yseult, accepting a small carved wooden charm as her prize with the particular satisfaction of someone who had never once doubted the outcome, turned back to him with visible triumph.
YSE: You're allowed to be impressed.
ART: I'm impressed you found a way to cheat at a strength test.
YSE: I prefer to think of it as identifying and exploiting an oversight in the rules. Cheating implies I did something wrong. I simply did something no one thought to prevent.
ART: That's a very generous interpretation.
YSE: I'm a generous person.
They wandered further through the crowded rows, sampling food from a dozen different stalls, watching a small traveling troupe perform something loud and acrobatic near the square's center, and Arthur found the afternoon settling into a particular easy rhythm, Yseult's constant, confident commentary on everything they passed, her genuine delight at anything sufficiently clever or absurd, the comfortable, familiar warmth of simply being beside her. They stopped eventually at a quieter stall near the market's edge, an old woman selling small paper lanterns meant to be released over the harbor once evening fell, their light supposedly carrying wishes out toward the water.
YSE: Do you believe in this sort of thing?
ART: I don't know. My mother always said wishes were just intentions you hadn't gotten around to acting on yet.
YSE: That's a very practical way to think about magic.
ART: She's a practical person.
Yseult purchased two lanterns anyway, handing one to Arthur without ceremony, and they carried them down toward the harbor as the light began its long slow fade, the crowd thickening again along the waterfront as the whole city gathered for the evening's release.
YSE: What will you wish for?
ART: I don't know yet.
YSE: You have to decide before you release it. That's the rule.
ART: Is that an actual rule, or another oversight you're planning to exploit?
She laughed, bright and genuine, and bumped her shoulder against his.
YSE: An actual rule, this time. I checked.
They stood together at the harbor's edge as the light finally failed entirely, the first lanterns beginning to rise around them, small points of warm gold light drifting up and out over the darkening water, dozens and then hundreds of them, the whole sky above the harbor filling slowly with drifting light. Arthur held his own lantern for a long moment, thinking, and found, in the end, that the wish that settled into him wasn't complicated at all.
He released it, and watched it join the others, rising slowly out over the water, and beside him, Yseult released her own, and for a moment neither of them spoke, both watching their small lights drift up into the gathering dark alongside hundreds of others.
YSE: Well?
ART: Well what?
YSE: What did you wish for?
ART: I'm not telling you. That defeats the purpose.
YSE: I'll find out eventually. I'm very good at finding things out.
ART: I believe you. I'm still not telling you.
She smiled, watching the lanterns continue their slow drift out over the water, and after a moment, quietly, without her usual performance of confidence behind it, she spoke again.
YSE: I'll tell you mine, if you like.
ART: You don't have to.
YSE: I know I don't have to. I want to.
She looked at him, the harbor lights reflected small and warm in her eyes, and something in her expression had shed all its usual armor entirely, leaving something simpler and more honest underneath.
YSE: I wished that you'd eventually let me in properly. Not just as a roommate you find amusing. Properly.
Arthur felt something catch in his chest at the plain, undefended honesty of it, and found himself, for once, without any ready response at all, and Yseult, watching him fail to find one, laughed softly and looked back out at the water.
YSE: You don't have to say anything. I told you because I wanted to, not because I expected anything back.
She reached over and took his hand, simple and easy, and they stood together at the harbor's edge as the last of the lanterns rose up into the deepening night, hundreds of small wishes drifting slowly out toward the horizon, and Arthur, standing there with her hand in his and his own unspoken wish already released into the dark, found the evening settling around him warm and complicated and entirely unresolved, in the particular way that the truest things in his life so far had always, eventually, turned out to be.