Elias and Rellin were once more fixing their wagon, sun was particularly brutal today, which for Mirage isn't that weird. Today it felt particularly bad for Elias eye's, so he mainly sat in the deep shadows of the shed.
Rellin was blabbering on, from wider wheels to axels carrying capacity. Weirdly enough Aster is writing her reports almost regularly now here, and is currently, few feet away in a similarly shadowy corner.
All the small noises of life fill the shed around them, until suddenly standing in the middle of the room was a man, in a dark blue cloak worn down by the road so much so that blue is barely noticeable anymore.
The color is more grayish or black now. Still, somehow, Elias knew it had once been royal blue — the kind of knowledge that felt important simply because it arrived fully formed, like a book into the shelves of his mind.
The man was neither old nor young.
It's impossible to say what age he is, but his blue eyes are carrying depth that his smooth face seems to denounce creating weird contrast.
Man looks around calmly and slowly, as if assessing the space he found himself occupying. Whole of the shed seems to quiet down slowly as everyone is focussing on him.
"Hmm I'm looking for a Maybe? Friend of mine has been impatient, and let me tell you. She's not of the sort to care about time usually, so I offered to carry her package and a note to a maybe, or perhaps even definitely. Depending on how eager he is"
Man said without hesitation, as if reading from a list, while his gaze went from one to the other, finally landing on Elias" ah yes, maybe I presume?"
He lifted a hand twisted his wrist in quick move and suddenly red wrapped packet tied with blue frosty ribbon was there on his palm.
" Here you are, please be careful. She's a bit miffed that you're not outside but covering here. I tried to argue on your behalf, that you're probably just resting and learning to live before trying it, right?"
The shed felt muted now.
The rasp of Rellin's file had slowed, then ceased entirely.
Aster's quill hovered above the page, ink trembling at the tip, not daring to fall.
Outside, someone laughed — the sound cut off halfway through, like it had reached a conclusion it was no longer certain about.
Elias did not move.
He was very aware of the space man occupied.
Not just occupied — owned.
The man's presence did not press.
It did not weigh.
It did not intrude.
It simply existed in the same way the road exists when one has walked it long enough to forget how it began.
Elias looked at the offered packet.
Red cloth.
Carefully wrapped — not ceremonially, but deliberately.
The ribbon was pale blue, frost-threaded, cold enough that Elias could feel it without touching.
Frost of Ever-Winter.
His breath caught — only slightly.
"…She sent this," Elias said, voice low, careful not to disturb whatever balance had settled.
"Mm," the man replied, watching Elias the way one watches a tide decide whether to turn.
"She did. Or rather — she decided not to wait any longer."
He tilted his head, amused but not unkind.
"Patience is a virtue," he continued conversationally, "but it's a borrowed one where she's concerned. As you might expect, something borrowed like that isn't the same as something learned personally."
Aster finally moved.
Just enough to shift her weight.
Her eyes were on the man now — assessing, and measuring.
Slowly.
"…You walked in without triggering the wards," she said.
The man glanced at her as if noticing furniture he'd always intended to sit near.
"Oh, those?" he said lightly. "I didn't walk in. I arrived."
Rellin swallowed.
"…Is that different?" he asked weakly.
"Entirely," the man said, smiling at him — and Rellin felt, for reasons he could not articulate, like he'd just been forgiven for something he hadn't known he'd done.
The man turned back to Elias.
"Now," he said, gesturing with his chin at the packet, "before she decides to demonstrate her displeasure more… creatively."
Elias hesitated.
Not from fear.
From instinct.
"Am I meant to open it here?" he asked.
The man's eyes brightened — not with approval, but with delight.
"Oh," he said softly. "You are learning."
He leaned back against nothing at all, hands folding into his sleeves.
"No. Not here. Not yet."
A pause.
"But you are meant to carry it."
Elias accepted the package.
The moment his fingers closed around it, the cold receded — not vanishing, just… acknowledging him.
The shadows at his feet shifted.
Not eagerly.
Respectfully.
The man noticed.
Of course he did.
"…She worries," he said, quieter now. "That you'll try to understand everything before you let yourself be anything."
Elias looked up sharply.
"You spoke to her about me."
The man winced.
"'Spoke' is a strong word. We… shared a stage for a while."
He chuckled
"And," the man continued, glancing around the shed, "she may have mentioned — loudly — that you are doing something very sensible, very slow, and very irritating."
Aster exhaled through her nose.
"That does sound like her."
The man blinked at her.
"…Ah. You know her."
"Yes," Aster said flatly. "Unfortunately."
"Then you have my sympathies," he replied with genuine warmth.
He turned back to Elias one last time.
"Rest," he said simply.
"Build wagons. Learn how people forget each other."
He smiled — not wide, not sharp.
The kind of smile that suggests the universe has a sense of humor, and is mostly kind about it.
"And when you're ready to be outside again," he added, already standing, already halfway elsewhere,
"open the package."
Elias swallowed.
"…Will I see you again?"
The man paused.
Considered.
Then shrugged lightly.
"If you do," he said, "it won't be because you were looking."
And with that, he was no longer sitting beside Elias.
He was no longer in the shed.
He had not left.
He had simply vanished like smoke in the desert air. The sounds returned.
Rellin's file slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor.
Aster's quill finally released its ink in a sharp, startled line across the page.
Elias sat very still, the red packet warm now against his palm.
Aster spoke first.
"…Who," she asked carefully, "was that."
Elias looked down at the frost-blue ribbon.
Then, after a long moment:
"I think," he said, "he was a road, coming to greet the wanderers"
Rellin stared at him.
"…I hate it when you say things like that. Makes you more fey like"
The wagon creaked.
Somewhere very far away — or very close — a Fey laughed, sharp and pleased.
——————————————————————
Elias did not open the packet that night.
He set it on the small table beside his bed, carefully — as if it might wake if startled. The frost-blue ribbon had lost its chill now, warm beneath his fingers in a way that made his eyes ache faintly, like stepping into noon too quickly.
The shadows did not reach for it.
They leaned away.
That alone told him enough.
He sat on the edge of the bed and watched the fabric breathe — because it was breathing, just a little. Expanding. Contracting. As if it resented being wrapped, resented being still.
" Breath of Summer," he murmured.
It was recognition.
Somewhere very far away — or very close — something bright and petulant felt seen and was deeply satisfied.
Elias did not smile.
But he did understand the message.
"You've rested long enough, have this and be in your way to definitely"
It happened the next day.
Rellin was still unsettled — the kind of unsettled that refuses to admit it and therefore talks more than usual. Aster had returned to her reports, but her attention kept drifting to the empty space where the man had been.
Eventually, inevitably, someone said the wrong thing.
Rellin cleared his throat.
"So," he said, trying for casual and missing badly,
"that fellow yesterday. With the… road problem."
Aster did not look up.
"Yes."
"…Do we know his name?"
The air changed.
Not sharply.
Not dramatically.
It simply stopped leaning forward.
Aster's quill paused mid-stroke.
Elias felt it — the subtle pressure behind his eyes, the way sunlight feels just before it becomes unbearable.
And then, from the far side of the shed — from nowhere in particular —
"Oh," came a voice, amused and gentle.
"Absolutely not."
They all froze.
He was there again.
Standing by the open doorway this time, half in light, half in shade, blue cloak looking even greyer than before, as if the road had taken another year from it overnight.
Aster rose to her feet instantly.
"You returned."
"I wandered," the man corrected pleasantly. "Returning implies intention."
Rellin swallowed. "…We were just—"
"—about to make a mistake," the man finished for him kindly.
He looked at Rellin, then at Aster, then finally at Elias — and for just a moment, the depth in his eyes matched the depth Elias had seen in mirrors and shadows and spaces that were deeper than they should be.
"Names," the man said lightly, "are doors."
Aster folded her hands behind her back. "We are not Fey."
"No," he agreed. "Which is why you knock so loudly."
Rellin frowned. "That doesn't—"
"—matter," the man said, smiling. "Because you don't need my name."
He stepped aside, gesturing vaguely to the road beyond Mirage.
"You already know what I do."
He glanced at Elias again.
"And more importantly," he added, "why I don't stay."
Elias inclined his head slightly — not bowing, not deferential.
Acknowledging.
"If I must call you something," Aster said carefully, "what would you permit?"
The man considered this, genuinely.
Then shrugged.
"Traveler," he said.
"Story."
"Distraction."
He smiled, faint and crooked.
"Or," he added, "whatever you were already calling me before I arrived."
Aster's mouth tightened.
"…Magician," she said.
The man laughed — soft, real, unbothered.
"Yes," he said. "That will do nicely."
He flourished his hand, and suddenly a coin was running along his knuckles, he flicked it in the air. It spun around, light glinting from it to all over the room. Somehow managing to blind them all for single instant
And with that —
—he was gone, leaving behind nothing but the uncomfortably loud clinging as the silver coin landed on a stone.
Rellin let out a long breath.
"…I don't like him," he said weakly.
Elias looked at the wrapped breath of Summer he had taken to carrying all over.
"I think," he said slowly, "he likes us."
Aster closed her eyes frustrated.
————————————————————
The Council chamber registered the anomaly six minutes late.
Not because the wards failed.
Because nothing tripped them.
It was a clerk who noticed first — a junior functionary tasked with reconciling heat flow reports against seasonal averages. The numbers were wrong in a way that did not trigger alarms.
Too localized.
Too brief.
Too… polite.
By the time the Council convened, the sun had already moved on.
The chamber lights dimmed automatically as the members took their seats, stone and sigil adjusting to authority like old servants. The air felt normal.
Which irritated them.
"Report," said the silver-masked Councillor.
A slate slid across the table.
"Thermal variance," the scribe said carefully. "Lower Mirage. Southern sheds. Duration: approximately nine minutes."
The bronze mask leaned forward. "Nine minutes does not cause variance."
"No," the scribe agreed. "It does not."
"Then why is this here?"
The scribe hesitated. "Because… it resolved."
Silence.
The gold-masked Councillor frowned. "Clarify."
"The temperature rose," the scribe said. "Localized. Intense. Enough to discomfort one resident — Elias Marlow, per peripheral reports. Then it returned to baseline."
"No fire," obsidian said.
"No."
"No mana spike?"
"No."
"No Fey crossing?"
The scribe swallowed. "None registered."
The bronze mask struck the table once. "Then why are we discussing weather."
The silver mask raised a finger. "Because the wards recorded intent."
That got attention.
"Explain," gold demanded.
The silver mask tapped the slate. "The wards did not detect energy. They detected direction. Something passed through Mirage that behaved as if it expected the city to understand what it was doing."
"…That is not a thing," bronze said.
"It is now," silver replied.
A pause.
Obsidian spoke next, voice quiet. "Is Elias Marlow involved."
The scribe did not answer.
Aster stepped forward from the chamber's edge.
"Yes," she said.
Every mask turned toward her.
"He was present," Aster continued. "He was not the source. He was the recipient."
"Recipient of what," bronze demanded.
Aster considered the question carefully.
"…A reminder," she said.
That answer did not satisfy anyone.
The gold mask leaned back. "We are not a crossroads for Fey whims."
"No," Aster agreed. "You are a place they find useful."
That was worse.
Obsidian steepled their fingers. "Was there an incursion."
"No."
"A visitor."
"Yes."
The chamber tightened.
"Name," silver said.
Aster shook her head. "None was given."
Bronze scoffed. "Then you failed to ask."
"I asked," Aster said. "The answer was… precise."
"How precise."
"He gave a name that was true," she said calmly, "and not sufficient."
Silence followed — the kind that came from recognizing a game and realizing one had already lost the opening move.
Gold spoke slowly. "Was this visitor dangerous."
Aster did not answer immediately.
"Danger implies intent," she said at last. "This individual was… instructional."
Bronze slammed their palm down. "We are not a school for myths."
"No," Aster said. "But myths teach whether we ask them to or not."
The silver mask's voice lowered. "Did Elias Marlow change."
Aster exhaled once.
"Yes," she said. "But not yet."
That answer chilled the room.
Obsidian leaned forward. "Define 'not yet.'"
"He has been shown a road," Aster replied. "He has not stepped onto it."
"And if he does?"
Aster met their gaze.
"Then Mirage will not be attacked," she said.
"It will be bypassed."
The word echoed strangely in the chamber.
Gold frowned. "You speak as if that is worse."
"It is," Aster said quietly. "Attack validates importance. Bypass renders us irrelevant."
Silver tapped the slate again. "You are saying a single individual could alter how the world interacts with this city."
Aster nodded once.
"And you are certain," bronze said sharply, "that this is not manipulation."
Aster's voice sharpened — just enough to cut.
"It is manipulation," she said. "But not of Elias."
Silence.
Then obsidian asked the question none of them liked.
"If this visitor returns."
Aster shook her head. "He won't."
"How can you be sure."
"Because he came himself," Aster said. "Which means the lesson is complete."
Gold looked unsettled. "Then what do we do."
Aster folded her hands behind her back.
"You continue," she said. "You record. You observe. You refine how you listen."
"That is not a plan," bronze snapped.
"No," Aster agreed. "It is a posture."
Silver's mask tilted slightly. "And Elias Marlow."
Aster paused.
"You do not summon him," she said.
"You do not constrain him."
"And above all—"
She looked around the chamber.
"You do not make him choose between us and the road."
The Council sat in silence.
Outside, Mirage continued exactly as it always had — unaware that, for nine minutes, Summer had leaned in close, delivered a message, and moved on.
And that the city had not noticed quickly enough to matter.
The bronze-masked Councillor broke the silence.
"You said the source was Fey," they said. "A child."
"Yes," Aster replied.
"Then we are discussing a minor caprice," bronze snapped. "Impatience. We can afford—"
"No," Aster interrupted.
The word was quiet.
Final.
Several heads turned.
Aster lifted her chin slightly.
"You are applying mortal expectations to a timeless race," she said. "That is your first error."
The silver mask frowned. "Clarify."
"The Fey are not patient," Aster continued evenly. "They are enduring. They wait because time does not pressure them. When a Fey becomes impatient—"
She paused, letting the implication form on its own.
"—it is not because time is scarce," she finished. "It is because interest is."
The gold mask stiffened. "You are saying the child is… invested."
"Yes."
"And Elias Marlow is the object of that interest."
"Yes."
Obsidian spoke softly. "What happens if we delay him."
Aster did not answer immediately.
"When a mortal delays another mortal," she said, "resentment forms. When a mortal delays a Fey—"
She exhaled.
"—the Fey attempts another solution."
Bronze scoffed. "Another gift?"
"Another approach," Aster corrected. "The Fey do not repeat themselves. They escalate sideways."
Silver leaned forward. "Define sideways."
Aster's eyes hardened.
"If Elias remains here against the child's expectations," she said, "there is no way of knowing what she sends next."
"Another essence?" gold asked.
"Possibly."
"A herald?"
"Possibly."
A pause.
"…Herself?" obsidian asked.
Aster met their gaze.
"Yes."
That word landed like a blade set gently on the table.
Bronze snapped, "A child—"
"A Winter child," Aster said. "With access to Summer. That alone should concern you."
Silence.
"She is not malicious," Aster continued. "But she is curious. And she has decided Elias is unfinished."
Gold spoke slowly. "And if we attempt to keep him."
Aster folded her hands behind her back.
"Then Mirage becomes the stage on which a Fey resolves disappointment," she said.
No one liked that image.
"And I assure you," Aster added quietly, "they do not resolve disappointment gently."
Silver's voice lowered. "Your recommendation."
Aster did not hesitate.
"You do not bind him," she said.
"You do not delay him."
"And you do not make this city the reason a Fey child learns what impatience can accomplish."
She looked around the chamber.
"You believe Mirage survives because it is unimportant."
A pause.
"For now," she added, "that belief is still true."
No one argued.
Somewhere far below, in a shed that smelled of wood and resin, Elias Marlow sat in the shade, unaware that the Council had just collectively agreed on something rare and dangerous:
They would not interfere.
Not out of kindness.
But because the alternative involved discovering what a bored, annoyed Fey child might decide to try next.
—————————————————————
The shed had gone still in the way places do when something important is about to be done quietly.
Not silence — Mirage never truly went silent — but a thinning of noise. The scrape of wheels outside softened. Voices passed and did not linger. Even the wagon seemed to rest, boards settling into themselves as if aware that this moment was not for creaking.
Elias sat cross-legged on the floor in the deepest shade the shed offered.
Not hiding.
Before him lay the beginnings of something that was not yet a thing.
Cloth, folded and unfolded again until it no longer held the memory of being flat. A shallow tray of powdered chalk and resin-dust. Thin leather strips, softened by oil and patient handling. Bone needles — not magical, simply well-balanced — laid parallel with deliberate care.
And beside them, the cloak.
Not worn.
Observed.
Elias touched it only once, fingertips brushing the fabric as if greeting an old acquaintance.
"…Not yet," he murmured.
Behind him, Aster sat on her crate, mask resting beside her knee for once. She had stopped writing. The report lay forgotten, quill idle between her fingers.
She did not announce herself.
She never did anymore.
Instead, she watched.
Not the shadows — they were behaving.
Not the materials — they were mundane.
She watched Elias thinking.
That, she had learned, was where the danger lived.
He reached for a piece of charcoal and drew on a scrap of linen stretched over a thin board. The lines were light. Provisional. Meant to be erased.
An oval.
Then paused.
Adjusted it — not symmetry, but balance. A shape that would sit on a human face without claiming it.
"…Masks are lies," Elias said quietly, more to himself than to her.
Aster did not respond.
"They tell people what to expect," he continued. "That makes them comfortable. Or afraid. Or curious."
The charcoal tapped once against the board.
"I don't want that."
Aster shifted slightly, the only sign she was listening.
He drew again.
This time, the lines were interrupted — broken where a face would naturally move. Cheeks. Jaw. Brow. A mask that acknowledged motion instead of denying it.
"I want something that disappears when looked at directly," Elias said. "Not magically. Socially."
Aster inhaled slowly.
"That is… ambitious," she said at last.
Elias nodded. "That's why I'm starting with materials."
He picked up a strip of leather and bent it gently.
"Leather remembers shape," he said. "Cloth forgets. Bone insists. Wood resists."
His fingers brushed the edge of a thin metal band — dull, flexible, treated to avoid reflection.
"Metal," he added, "announces itself even when quiet."
Aster leaned forward slightly.
"And shadow?" she asked.
Elias shook his head immediately.
"Not yet."
That earned her full attention.
"Why."
He hesitated, then answered honestly.
"Because if I involve shadow now, I won't know which parts are me and which parts are… echoes."
Aster did not hide her approval.
"Good," she said softly.
Elias smiled faintly — not at praise, but at confirmation.
He laid out the materials again, rearranging them. Testing proximity. Seeing which ones wanted to sit together.
"This isn't armor," he said. "And it's not disguise."
He tapped the charcoal drawing.
"It's permission. For the world to not ask questions."
Aster watched him draw another shape beside the first. Smaller. More angular.
"…You're planning more than one," she observed.
"Yes," Elias said. "Masks are contextual. One is never enough."
She leaned back again.
"You understand," she said carefully, "that once you wear one publicly, it will be remembered. Even if you are not."
Elias nodded.
"That's why I won't wear this one," he said.
Aster stilled.
"This," he clarified, touching the first sketch, "is for travel. Roads. Inns. Places where people don't care enough to look twice."
He gestured to the second.
"That one… I'm not sure yet."
Aster studied the lines.
"You are building identities," she said.
Elias considered the phrasing.
"No," he said. "I'm limiting exposure."
Aster almost smiled.
Almost.
Outside, sunlight shifted, and for a brief moment the shed brightened enough that Elias squinted and leaned instinctively deeper into shadow.
Aster noticed.
"So," she said, carefully neutral, "you are preparing."
"Yes."
"For departure."
"…Eventually."
Aster rose, quiet as a thought concluding.
"See that you take your time," she said. "The first mask is always the most dangerous."
Elias looked up at her.
"Because it hides you?"
Aster shook her head.
"Because it teaches you how easy it is to become someone else."
She replaced her mask, the familiar authority settling back into place.
"I will not interfere," she said. "But I will watch."
Elias nodded once.
That was fair.
As she turned to leave, he returned to his work — charcoal whispering across fabric, hands steady, shadows obedient and distant.
The first shape was taking form.
Not a face.
But the absence of one.
And for the first time since the Council decided not to stop him, Elias Marlow was not preparing to leave.
He was preparing to be forgotten properly.
—————————————————————
Elias worked long after Aster left.
Not obsessively.
Not frantically.
With the calm focus of someone assembling a truth they had been circling for years.
He abandoned the charcoal sketches first.
They were useful, but too literal. Faces were a trap. Shapes that pretended to define instead of suggest.
Instead, he turned the linen over and began again — not drawing a mask, but marking negative space.
He brushed a thin layer of resin-dust across the fabric and gently blew it away.
What remained was not an image.
It was a gap.
A shape the dust refused to settle in.
Elias frowned, intrigued, and repeated the process.
Again, the same hollow emerged — slightly different, but recognizably related.
"…Interesting," he murmured.
He traced the outline lightly with his fingertip.
Not a circle.
Not a sigil.
Not a rune.
It was the intersection of two ideas:
A vertical line — steady, unmoving.
Crossed by a horizontal arc — not cutting it, but passing through.
Like a horizon intersecting a standing figure.
Or night touching day.
Or a moment where neither side fully won.
Elias leaned back.
"That's not mine," he said quietly.
The shadows did nothing. They never did now.
Still, the shape lingered.
He tried to erase it.
The dust returned everywhere except that place.
He tried a different angle.
Different pressure.
The absence remained.
Aster's words returned to him unbidden:
The first mask is always the most dangerous.
Not because it hides you.
Because it teaches you how easy it is to become someone else.
Elias stared at the mark.
"…I don't want to become someone else," he said.
He hesitated, then added honestly:
"I just don't want to be forced to be myself all the time."
The shape did not change.
He sighed softly.
"Fine," he said. "Then you're not a symbol."
He reached for the thin metal band — the dull, non-reflective one — and set it at the top edge of the work.
"What are you, then?"
The answer came not as a voice, nor a thought, but as recognition.
He had seen this shape before.
Not here.
Not recently.
A memory surfaced — small, fragile, half-forgotten.
A child on a roof at dusk.
Day refusing to leave.
Night refusing to arrive.
The word he had loved for its impossibility.
The one he had given to something he thought was alive.
"…Equinox," he whispered.
The shape settled.
Not glowed.
Not pulsed.
It simply felt… correct.
Elias closed his eyes briefly.
"So that's how it happens," he murmured. "You don't choose the name. You just stop arguing with it."
He did not write the word.
He did not carve it, engrave it, or inscribe it anywhere.
Instead, he incorporated the shape into the structure of the mask itself — a subtle interruption in symmetry, a place where light would hesitate for half a breath before deciding what it was looking at.
You would not notice it at first.
But once you did…
You would never forget it.
Later — much later — people would argue about it.
Some would say it represented balance.
Others would insist it was a horizon, a crossing, a gate.
A few would swear it meant judgment.
They would all be wrong.
It meant pause.
The moment where the world did not yet know what to call you.
Elias stitched carefully, sealing the first layer closed.
When he lifted the half-finished mask and held it at arm's length, it did not feel like wearing a face.
It felt like stepping into a space where names had not arrived yet.
Outside, the light shifted again.
Not day.
Not night.
That thin, dangerous edge between.
Somewhere very far away — or perhaps not far at all — a Fey child sneezed and grinned, convinced she had done something very clever.
And somewhere else entirely, a man in a worn blue cloak smiled faintly, as if a punchline had just landed exactly on time.
The symbol had been born.
The name already existed.
Elias Marlow did not know it yet, but history would not remember him by his face.
It would remember him as:
The Wanderer of Equinox.
And long after his real name faded, the mark would remain — stitched into cloaks, carved into rumors, and whispered only at dusk, when people were no longer sure which side of the day they were standing on.