By the time I arrived in Ashford, my cart was little more than a wobbly rattle-box held together by stubbornness and spite.
The mule pulling it, bless his sagging soul, had long since stopped responding to names or bribes.
I called him Justice.
It wasn't ironic when I named him.
It is now.
We limped through the village gates, my boots soaked, cloak dust-worn, and exactly seven coins to my name—three silver, four copper, and a button I was fairly certain used to belong to a king.
Children stared.
A dog barked and then looked ashamed of itself.
Justice sneezed and nearly keeled over.
"Steady," I muttered. "Die in a dramatic pose later. I'm negotiating for trinkets."
It was the kind of town where everything smelled faintly of onions and overly hopeful bread.
A few vendor stalls lined the square—wooden things with faded paint and too many carved hearts.
I wasn't looking for anything.
Until I saw it.
A small pendant.
Bronze.
Oval.
Set with a bit of dull blue glass, cloudy and cracked.
Simple.
Forgettable, really.
Except I'd seen that exact design once before—long ago, in a place I don't like to remember, beside someone I barely allow myself to.
The stallkeeper was young.
Too young to know what it was.
Probably found it in a dead man's box and marked it _"vintage charm"_.
"How much?" I asked, already knowing I couldn't afford the answer.
"Three silver," she said.
Justice picked that exact moment to wheeze like a dying bellows and collapse sideways into a sack of potatoes.
I turned slowly. "You planned this, didn't you?"
I had four copper to spare after stabling the mule with a very tired stableboy and bribing him with one of my last healing tonics.
"Should I water him?" the boy asked.
"Water him, sing to him, tell him stories of battle," I said. "He's earned his retirement. Maybe he'll finally pass into legend. Or sleep."
Back in the square, I returned to the trinket stall.
It was still there.
I stood a long time staring at that pendant.
The shape of the glass.
The twist in the metal loop at the top—worn smooth from time.
Exactly the same as the one she wore, back then.
Back when we thought we could save things.
Back when the world was cruel, but we hadn't realized it was also indifferent.
Her name was... no.
That part stays mine.
I handed the girl all four copper.
She shook her head. "Still three silver."
I paused.
Then reached into my cloak and pulled out a small carved rune-stone—no power left in it, just decorative now, but rare.
"Trade?"
She looked at it with wide eyes.
Nodded.
The pendant was mine.
That night, I sat by the fire behind the town's one inn, Justice snoring like thunder beside me.
I held the pendant in my palm, feeling the weight of it.
Old memories rose like smoke—her laugh, the snow, the scream I never stopped hearing.
Funny how objects remember for us.
I tucked it away beside the other trinkets.
One from every town.
Every place I've walked.
Every person I couldn't keep.
I don't collect for wealth.
Gods know I wouldn't know what to do with it.
I collect so I won't forget.
There was a river outside of Ashford the locals call Sam's Folly.
I didn't name it.
I only suggested one.
Once.
A long time ago.
It was wide enough to drown a mule's stubbornness in.
I know this because Justice walked into it once and refused to come out until I apologized for something I hadn't said.
Or maybe I had.
He's very emotional for a beast of burden.
The river—whatever you want to call it—carved through five valleys, each greener than the last, like a painter couldn't decide which shade of smug to use and just kept adding more.
At the base of these valleys, five peoples met at its banks. They brought with them tents, drums, gods, grievances, and the sort of pride you usually need a war to sustain.
Each had a name for the river.
Each believed theirs was the original, true, and obviously correct name.
Each also assumed everyone else was being difficult on purpose.
Which, in fairness, they were.
The mountain-folk called it Ankhil, after the sound meltwater makes when it escapes a glacier.
They said it through noses like broken ocarinas and carried flasks full of regret and fermented yak.
The reed-singers named it Velurra, a word meaning "vein" or "thread," depending on whether you sang it in joy or sorrow.
They communicated in lullabies and passive-aggressive humming.
The sand-tribes said Durai, which translated to "gift of the sky," although they conveniently forgot to thank the sky for the recurring flash floods.
The stone-clan whispered Grunn.
Just "Grunn."
It might have been a curse.
It might have been their way of saying "hello."
It might have meant "river."
No one really pressed them on it, partly out of fear and partly because they only spoke once every three days.
The river-daughters didn't name it at all.
They just danced in it.
Naked.
With alarming grace.
They said naming a river was like naming your blood. You could do it, sure, but it made family reunions complicated.
I was there by accident.
I didn't come to mediate.
I didn't come to trade.
I came because I followed a bird that didn't belong to this season, and it led me to the valley.
In retrospect, I probably hallucinated the bird.
It told me its name was Charles.
And it winked.
Still, I arrived on the second day of arguing, just in time for the first stabbing (a superficial wound, ego only), and stayed through the seventh because Justice had thrown a shoe in protest and decided we lived there now.
They argued vowels.
They squabbled over syllables.
One man insisted the river didn't need a name because it remembered itself and that anything else was a colonial imposition.
A woman dumped an amphora of wine into the current and declared the river had chosen her as its emissary.
Someone tried to trademark "Ankhil" for merchandising.
Someone else proposed a runoff vote and was promptly thrown in the runoff.
On the eighth day, weary of their echoing self-importance and in dire need of an excuse to leave, I stood in the shallows and said, mostly to myself:
"Why not just call it The Flow?"
The water lapped against my boots like it found me amusing.
Nobody heard me.
Or maybe they did and just preferred not to.
That's usually how it goes.
The meeting ended when a sideways storm rolled in—rain that flew horizontally, thunder that sounded suspiciously like sarcastic laughter.
Everyone scattered.
Tents collapsed, gods were tucked into satchels, and one of the reed-singers claimed the deluge was proof that the river agreed with her pronunciation.
Some still hurl insults across the water to this day.
Others come down to it in silence and let their feet dangle off stones.
The river, for its part, never chose.
It flowed.
It still flows.
When I passed through Ashford years later and heard they'd named that same river Sam's Folly, I was horrified.
I didn't correct them.
Honestly, it's a better name than some.
Besides, if you're going to be remembered for anything, it might as well be a river that made five proud peoples argue themselves hoarse while a tired traveler muttered nonsense to a duck.
I still don't know where Charles went.
But Justice stared at the river that day, nodded once, and didn't sneeze for the rest of the week.
That's the closest he's ever come to agreement.