The wheat was off the fields.
The threshing floor in the center of Ashvale sat empty now, littered only with pale golden straw that the morning wind chased into the corners of the stone walls.
Cold river mist crawled over the low wattles every dawn, creeping up the lane toward the longhouses.
Aether found himself standing still more often these days. He’d stop by the well, or near the tail-race of the mill, just watching two men talk across a timber wagon. Before, a conversation was just noise—a signal for supper or a call for hands. Now, he kept listening for the gaps between the words.
No need, Mela had said. The words stayed in his chest like a small thorn, not deep enough to bleed, but sharp enough to feel every time he turned his shoulders.
"You're staring at the dirt again," Kaelen said.
Kaelen was crouched beside the wood-shed, shaping a fence picket with a draw-knife. The steel peeled long, paper-thin ribbons of pine from the stave, piling them around his boots.
Aether sat on an overturned trough, a piece of hemp rope hanging limp between his fingers. "Am not."
"You are." Kaelen didn't raise his eyes from the wood. "Yesterday old Brian said good morning to you, and you looked at his face like he was a goat trying to bargain at market."
Aether let out a short laugh. "I was thinking."
"You're always thinking." Kaelen set the finished stave against the wall and reached for another rough branch.
"Kaelen?"
"Aye?"
"Do the people here look... different to you now?"
Kaelen stopped his knife for a second. He looked over the turf roofs, the dry stone walls, the wood-piles, and the rutted dirt lane stretching toward the river.
"No," Kaelen said.
"Not at all?"
"Not a bit." Kaelen set the blade against the bark and pulled. "It’s just you looking at them different."
***
By mid-afternoon, Aether was carrying a sack of barley flour out of the mill.
The oak door was propped open with a heavy cobble, the breeze carrying the sweet, dry dust of crushed grain into the lane. Before he reached the threshold, he heard the laugh—loud, booming, and completely loose.
Rowan.
Everyone in Ashvale knew Rowan. For as long as Aether could remember, Rowan had been sitting on the bench outside the mill door. In good weather, he sat under the sun; in rain, he sat under the overhang of the eaves.
He told stories in the spring, in the summer, and in the harvest. When winter forced everyone around the longhouse hearths, he spoke louder than the crackle of the logs.
And every tale began the exact same way: "Have I ever told you?"
Once those words left his mouth, the village knew what was coming.
"Have I ever told you?" Rowan was saying right then, holding a half-eaten heel of rye bread in one hand while waving the other toward the northern ridge. "When I was a lad, I was three days away from joining the Royal Guard in the capital!"
Old Brian, who was sitting on a stump stitching a boot heel, snorted into his beard. "Last month you said you were riding with the merchant caravans!"
"The caravans were before that!" Rowan said without missing a beat, his chin held high.
Two boys sitting in the dirt burst into giggles. A woman passing with a laundry basket shook her head, smiling. "And what about the knight you met at the mountain pass? The one with the cape?"
"Was it red like the cloud over the high ridge?" a young weaver called out from the lane.
Rowan froze for half a second, his mouth open, before slapping his thigh with a loud thwack. "Aye! Red as a ridge-cloud in July!"
The yard broke into an easy chorus of laughter.
Aether smiled along with them. It was just Rowan being Rowan. But as he took three steps down the path, his feet slowed.
He turned back. Rowan was still on the bench, leaning forward, his eyes bright as he spun the same yarn he’d spun fifty times before. The people around him were grinning. Some believed him; some didn't; most didn't care either way.
Aether thought of Mela standing in her dark doorway, her hands clutching her cloak, saying No need.
A small stone dropped into the quiet pool of his mind.
What if they had Rowan wrong, too?
***
For the next three days, Aether watched the old man.
He didn't make a show of it. But every time "Have I ever told you?" echoed across the lane, Aether stopped his work.
A few days later, Rowan sat by the well, telling three young herders about the merchant train he’d driven south. "The wagons were so long," Rowan declared, "the lead team crossed the timber bridge before the tail-end even cleared the village gate!"
"How long were you with them, Rowan?" a young shepherd asked, winking at his friend.
Rowan took a bite of his turnip. "Three months."
Old Brian passed by carrying a yoke. "You said a month when we were clearing the drainage ditch last winter."
Rowan’s brow furrowed. "That was the second caravan."
The boys roared.
Aether stood by the stone coping, his water bucket heavy in his hand. He didn't laugh. He looked at Rowan’s broad, weathered face and wondered: Why make the story so big?
Two days after that, Rowan was by the field hedge, swearing he’d once stood face-to-face with a mountain boar larger than a plow-ox. "Tusks this long!" he shouted, stretching his arms wide.
A boy’s eyes went round. "Really?"
"On my mother’s grave," Rowan said.
Old Brian cleared his throat as he walked past. "Did the boar ask you for a pipe of leaf, too?"
Rowan pointed a finger at Brian. "You remember that one!"
The crowd laughed again.
Aether watched Rowan’s eyes. There was no anger in them. When people mocked him, he laughed along. When they didn't believe him, he kept speaking anyway. The truth of the boar didn't seem to matter at all.
What mattered was that they were listening.
***
That evening, Aether sat on a wood-block while Kaelen split cedar shingles.
"Rowan’s got something he’s hiding," Aether said, watching the axe blade split the grain.
Kaelen set the adze down. "Like what?"
"I don't know."
"Then how do you know he’s hiding it?"
Aether bit his lip.
Kaelen picked up another cedar block. "You ask him?"
"No."
"Then go ask."
Aether sat in silence. Kaelen made it sound like chopping firewood—if a log didn't split, you just hit it harder. But people weren't pine logs. If you struck them the wrong way, you broke something inside.
Yet the thought wouldn't leave him. Aether began inventing answers in his head.
Maybe Rowan tried to leave Ashvale when he was young, but failed. Maybe someone made him feel small once, so he had to build big stories to keep himself tall. Maybe he was just lonelier than anyone else.
Every theory felt right until he saw Rowan again, beaming in the sunlight, looking entirely too happy for a man carrying a hidden sorrow.
***
The opportunity came one quiet evening.
The mill had closed early, the great water wheel dripping slowly into the dark race. The sun dipped behind the western crags, bathing the dirt lane in a heavy, golden dusk.
Rowan sat alone on the old oak bench by the door, chewing slowly on a crust of stale bread. Without an audience, his shoulders sloped slightly, his face quiet as he stared out over the empty wheat fields.
Aether hovered by the lane for a long time before walking over.
The bench creaked as Aether sat down beside him. Rowan turned his head, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
"Well now," Rowan said softly. "Finally come to hear about the Royal Guard?"
Aether looked at his own leather boots, covered in dry flour dust. "Rowan?"
"Aye, lad?"
"Why do you tell those stories?"
Rowan blinked. He looked down at his bread, then let out a short, rolling chuckle. "Now there’s a question I never bothered asking myself."
Aether looked at him directly. "The knights. The caravans. The Royal Guard. Why tell them?"
Rowan chewed his bread for a moment, looking out at the purple mountains. "Because it’s grand."
Aether waited. But Rowan just took another bite.
"That's all?" Aether asked, his shoulders dropping.
"That's all."
Aether felt a hollow disappointment in his chest. There was no hidden tragedy. No secret shame. No broken oath that kept him chained to the mill bench. Just... it's grand.
"Did you ever really go with a caravan?" Aether asked softly.
Rowan’s face brightened a little. "I did."
"How long?"
Rowan scratched his gray chin. "Seven days."
Aether stared. "Seven days?"
"Might have been six," Rowan admitted, squinting. "I was nineteen. My memory’s a bit rusted around the edges."
"You told Brian it was three months."
"Did I?" Rowan looked genuinely surprised, then let out a hearty laugh. "Well, three months sounds a whole lot better than six days, doesn't it?"
Aether didn't know whether to laugh or shake his head. "And the Royal Guard?"
Rowan straightened his spine, puffing out his chest. "That part’s true!"
"You almost joined them?"
Rowan paused, his grin wavering just a fraction. "Well... 'almost' is a wide word."
"What happened?"
"I saw them."
"Where?"
"At the south market town," Rowan said, leaning his elbows on his knees. "I walked there with that seven-day caravan. There were hundreds of wagons, iron merchants, horse-dealers... and four men in steel breastplates standing by the toll gate."
"Were they the Royal Guard?"
Rowan shrugged. "Couldn't say for sure. But they were wearing steel, and they looked like they owned the sky."
Aether couldn't help a small smile. Rowan chuckled too.
"Now tell me, lad," Rowan said, poking Aether’s shoulder with a thick thumb. "Isn't it a better yarn to say I nearly wore the steel, rather than 'I stood in the mud and stared at four grand bastards across a sheep pen'?"
Aether thought about it. "I suppose it is."
"Why did you come back?" Aether asked.
Rowan looked toward the dark woods at the edge of the valley. "Back to Ashvale?"
"Aye. If the south was so grand."
Rowan swallowed the last piece of rye bread, chewing slowly. "My feet hurt."
Aether blinked. "Your feet?"
Rowan lifted one heavy, mud-caked boot. "You've no idea how far those caravan men walk in a day, lad. Up before the crows, marching till your boots fill with blood. Sleeping on frozen turf with the wind whistling through your ribs."
He rubbed his calf with a sigh. "By the third night, I was ready to crawl back on my hands and knees. But I stuck it out till the market town. I saw the steel armor, I saw the crowds, I saw the gold..."
His voice softened, dropping into the quiet of the dusk. "...and then I remembered the way the stream sounds behind Harold’s forge. And the shadow of the great pine over the mill race. And the smell of dry pine-ash on a cold night."
He looked down at Aether, a gentle smile on his weathered face. "So I turned around and walked home."
"Don't you regret it?" Aether asked. "The world outside?"
Rowan thought for a moment. "The world outside is vast and bright, I expect. But my feet hurt."
Aether laughed—a real, clear laugh this time.
Rowan smiled, watching the first oil lamps flickering to life in the longhouse windows across the lane. "Besides... Ashvale’s not a bad place to sit, is it?"
Aether didn't answer. He’d never asked himself that question. Ashvale was just where the sky met the ground; it was air, water, and stone. He’d thought about the wild timber, the distant cities, and the old imperial roads. But he’d never asked if his home was good.
Rowan watched a farmer pushing a handcart full of turnips down the lane, the wooden axle singing a quiet, familiar song.
"I think it’s plenty good," Rowan whispered.
Aether quieted down. "Then why keep stretching the tales?"
Rowan rubbed his thumb over his palm. "I don't start out to stretch them, lad. But a story’s a living thing. When you're old, a little thing you saw when you were twenty suddenly feels like a grand adventure when you look back on it. And if telling it makes the boys laugh after a long day in the mud... well, where’s the harm?"
He stood up, groaning slightly as his knees popped in the chill air, and dusted the rye crumbs from his trousers.
He took three steps toward the lane, then stopped and turned back, his eyes twinkling in the twilight.
"Have I ever told you?" Rowan said, his face dead serious.
Aether looked up. "What?"
"When I was twenty, I was three days away from becoming a court minstrel."
Aether stared for a second, and then both of them burst out laughing into the quiet dusk.
***
Later that night, Aether sat on the low bench outside Garan’s hut.
The old tracker was mending a leather net-line, his yellowed hands working slowly, pulling every knot tight with practiced ease.
Aether told him about the seven-day caravan, the steel breastplates at the market, and Rowan’s aching feet.
"I thought he was hiding some grand sorrow," Aether said, looking at his charcoal-stained fingerprints. "I thought there was a deep reason."
Garan didn't stop his needle. "And there wasn't?"
Aether hesitated. "Not the kind I was looking for."
Garan nodded, tying off a knot with a hard tug. "It is a good thing to try to understand a man, lad."
He set the net on his knees, his milky eyes reflecting the dim glow of the hearth fire inside the doorway.
"But don't go writing your own stories inside another man’s chest."
The autumn wind swept through the larch trees overhead, carrying the faint, distant sound of laughter from the longhouse lane, where someone was undoubtedly asking: Have I ever told you?
Aether listened to the wind. He didn't try to peel Rowan apart anymore, nor did he search for dark secrets behind his tales.
Mela said No need because she was holding tight to the last piece of herself she had left. Rowan said Have I ever told you because he simply wanted to give the village a reason to laugh before the sun went down.
Aether pulled a fresh pine slat onto his knees. In the dim light, his charcoal twig did not draw swords, nor banners, nor merchant trains.
He simply drew the outline of an old wooden bench by a mill door, quiet and still, waiting for the sun to rise.