The house should have returned to normal after the merchant left.
That was what I told myself while squinting at a blank page and pretending my brush was a tiny sword of willpower.
The sun slanted lower, painting the courtyard in lazy orange. The familiar smells returned—warm wood, tea, ink with a stubborn hint of old scrolls—stuff that made a scholar feel like he was exactly where he belonged. Arin chased a dust mote like it personally insulted his honor. Lysa sat by the window, knees tucked, thumbing through her new book as if it were a complicated puzzle made of silence.
Normal. Boring. Perfect.
And yet I found myself glancing at the gate more often than a man with nothing to hide should. Every time a cart creaked in the distance, my ears perked like a startled cat. The merchant's wagon had been gone for hours, but the rhythm of those wheels still seemed too steady, too deliberate.
I dipped my brush in ink and tried to summon the proper feeling for irrigation systems.
It did not help.
"Father," Arin announced from behind me, appearing with the heroic stealth of a small tornado, "why do you look like the paper has personally offended you?"
"I am contemplating," I said with solemn dignity.
"Is that scholar-speak for 'I forgot how to write'?" Lysa asked without looking up.
"Yes. That is the phrase I use in polite company," I replied.
Arin peered at the empty page. "You should write about generals. Or heroes. Or dragons. Or—"
"No." I set the brush down, firm as a judge. "I am writing a treatise on irrigation. Riveting stuff."
"Riveting," Arin echoed, disappointed. "You're cruel."
"I am practical," I said. "And practical men live longer."
Lysa lifted an eyebrow. "That is your excuse for everything."
"Not everything," I countered. "Only the useful things, like life and avoiding sharp wooden spoons."
Arin's shoulders drooped. "You just don't have imagination, Father."
"Imagination," I said, "is what gets you a broken vase."
He blinked slowly. "Is that official scholarship?"
"It will be soon," I promised, which was technically true in the same way "tomorrow" is sometimes true.
The children snickered, then fell silent. In the quiet that followed I noticed something odd: the windows were closed. Every shutter latched, every slat set like a wooden toothpick in a jar.
Avaris liked fresh air in the evenings. She always said stagnant rooms made thought go moldy. Yet now the house had been buttoned up as if we were expecting a particularly nosy rain.
"Avaris?" I called.
No answer.
I crossed the room and found her at the storage door, checking the lock with that efficient, non-wasting motion she had perfected. One click, two clicks, three clicks—it was almost as if she were promising the lock something.
"You know," I said, trying to be casual, "that door hasn't betrayed us yet."
She turned, and for a moment her face softened—just a touch—then the smile slipped away like a cat from a bathtub. "It only takes once," she said.
Her hand brushed my sleeve as she passed. The contact was small and ordinary, but the way she lingered made me feel like a coin somebody was weighing in their palm.
"Is something wrong?" I asked.
"No," she replied, sharp and quick. "But if you stay up again, I'll drag you to bed myself."
I almost choked on a polite cough at the line. There was love there—flat, efficient love—and the kind of promise that contained both care and a threat.
"That is very fair," I said, relieved. "I prefer to be dragged if it means I live to write another dull essay."
She arched an eyebrow, thoroughly unimpressed by my dedication to dull topics, and turned to the shutters. "Close them properly," she said. "And no late-night ink experiments."
"Best of luck, my commanding officer," I replied. She smirked, and the smirk was something like a victory flag.
Dinner was quieter than usual. Arin ate with the solemnity of someone who suspected punishment for chewing loudly. Lysa picked at her food, posture immaculate, eyes flicking to the window now and then as if calculating whether the sky had shifted in some meaningful way.
"You're being weird," Arin finally muttered, spoon stabbing the air.
"You're always weird," Lysa told him.
"No—extra weird."
She rolled her eyes with the precision of someone who could fold a map with her mind. "If you jabber on, I'll be less weird and more honest," she said, deadpan.
That shut him up immediately.
"Is it just me," I said into my cup, "or does it feel like we're waiting for something?"
Avaris paused mid-bite. "Waiting?" she echoed.
"Yes," I said. "Like when a storm doesn't come but the air is wrong. Like someone took all the spoons and hid them."
"Then we'll have to make do with chopsticks," Avaris said, completely unruffled. The suggestion came with the exact tone of a person who had planned a thousand contingencies.
Lysa smirked. "Or we'll train Arin to use his spoon more discretely."
Arin beamed. "I can be very discreet!"
He then proceeded to make a noise that was emphatically not discreet, and I had to hide a laugh as Avaris shot him a look that promised later consequences.
That night, I woke to the sound of the house breathing. Not loud—more like a careful draft through a rope. The space beside me was empty.
I wrapped my robe around me and padded through the dark. Moonlight sliced a silver path across the courtyard stones. Avaris stood barefoot under that light, shoulders straight, staring at the sky as though the clouds were sending a message in their wrinkles.
"You'll catch a chill," I said softly.
She turned, and for a heartbeat she looked tired. Then she smoothed into her practiced mask again. "I didn't want to wake you."
"You underestimate how lightly I sleep when my wife vanishes."
She gave me a small smile, the kind that softened edges. "I could say the same. You snore like a contented scholar."
"Ouch," I said—hurt and honored in equal measure.
She laughed, briefly. The sound was small and human. Then she grew quiet. Her hands found mine, warm and firm.
"I just needed to check the shutters," she said. "Old habit."
"From school? From—" I stopped. The list of possible origins was long and unhelpful. It included wars, forts, deserts, and all sorts of things you don't mention over tea.
"Habit," she repeated, squeezing my fingers. "Go back to sleep."
I wanted to pry; curiosity is the scholar's vice. Instead I let the night fold quiet between us and we returned to bed.
But sleep was a capricious thing that night. I listened to the house: the mouse in the pantry, the loose tile on the roof, the faint whisper of sandals on the lane. I kept thinking of the merchant's eyes—patient, precise, as if he'd been reading us in a book and paused on our family like a footnote.
At first light, when the house smelled like warmed bread and the kettle was doing the polite whistle, I found a faint mark on the corner of my desk.
A circle, cross-hatched, barely visible in the grain of the wood as if someone had traced it with the tip of a pen and then thought better of it.
I touched it with a finger. The wood was cool. The mark was not fresh enough to be a prank, but not old enough to be explained away by whim.
I wrote a note in the margin of my notebook: Odd merchant. Ledgeri symbol. Children noted. Neighbor interest—curiosity, not alarm.
Then I added, beneath it in smaller letters that looked like they belonged to the part of me that expected the best: Observe. Ask gently when safe. Don't panic—this is not a tragedy, it is a mystery.
Arin burst in at that moment, spoon aloft like an accusation. "Father! The neighbor's hen tried to join the market. She wanted a discount!"
"Tell her the hen is not eligible for market negotiation," I said, hiding the mark under my palm as if anyone could see logic if you waved it at them long enough.
Lysa glanced at me, expression unreadable. "You're frowning."
"Thinking," I lied.
She nodded, satisfied—or at least willing to let me be foolish for a little while longer.
I brewed tea. Avaris fussed with my robe in a way that meant love had started a small, practical war with worry and had declared a truce for now. Arin attempted to balance his spoon on his nose. Lysa read the book upside down deliberately to annoy him.
Nothing dramatic happened.
The sky remained politely indifferent.
And yet that tiny circle at the edge of my desk felt like a punctuation mark—an ellipsis where a sentence once planned to end. The silence around it was loud enough to make a man listen.
I told myself it was nothing. I told myself many things. But I had learned, in the small hours with a wife who checked shutters and a merchant who catalogued faces, that waiting for the storm and pretending it will never come are different arts entirely.
For now, we trained, we taught, we fumbled with spoons, and we drank our tea.
When the road carried a new voice in the days to come, I wanted to be ready—not panicked, merely prepared, with a scholar's notebook and a father's stubbornness.
And if Arin kept practicing his "discreet" spoon technique, I would save those vases by sheer luck and a great deal of invention.