Page 29 of Pumpkin Spice & Orc Cinnamon Roll
I press my fingers to both, side by side in my palm.
Old and new.
Worn and whole.
He didn’t saylove.He didn’t sayforgive me.He didn’t ask for anything but the chance to give.
And right now, staring at those two little carved pieces of wood, I don’t know whether to fall into him completely or run until the breath leaves my lungs.
Because my walls are cracking.
And part of me still wants to patch them.
But the other part—the louder part—is tired of pretending I don’t feel like spring when he’s near.
I tuck both acorns back into the tin, close the lid, and press it to my chest like it might anchor me.
I whisper into the quiet, too afraid to say it out loud but too full to keep it in any longer.
“I think I’m falling.”
Not with fireworks.
Not with screaming.
But quietly.
Like roots threading deep through soil that’s finally soft enough to hold.
CHAPTER 14
DROGATH
The sounds of celebration float to me through the trees like echoes from a memory I haven’t let myself believe could be mine. Laughter, music, the unmistakable clatter of boots dancing on barnwood, someone hollering about apple fritters like it’s a holy calling. All of it hums under the hum of crickets and soft breeze, carried from the gala down the hill in bursts of gold and joy. It’s the kind of sound that used to feel like it belonged tosomeone else’sworld—a world of hearths and homes and warm hands held too long.
But now I sit in the orchard, just beyond the lantern light, and Iwantto believe I belong here.
Not as a guest or as an outsider looking in.
But as something—someone—rooted.
The crate beneath me groans as I shift, boots planted firm in soil damp with the last of yesterday’s rain. I’ve got a carving knife in one hand, a half-formed block of maple in the other, and for once, the fire in my chest isn’t demanding action. It just flickers steady and low, asking only that I stay.
The wood in my palm is still rough in places, edges not yet softened, the bloom inside it only just beginning to emerge. A flower—petals not wide open yet, but curling, delicate, alive. I’veframed it inside a gentle arc of grain, a curved loop that cradles it, like the idea of protection without possession. Not a cage, exactly. Not something that locks. Just something thatholds, steady and safe, while the soft things inside have room to bloom.
It’s clumsy. Imperfect. But honest.
And gods, that feels new.
I carve another curl of wood from the edge and let it fall into the little pile by my boot, and I wonder how many versions of myself I’ve whittled away just trying to get tothis one.
The one that isn’t sharp. Isn’t armored. Isn’t running.
The next morning, the sky’s the color of old cream, thick with low clouds and the promise of frost. My breath fogs out in short bursts as I walk the back path to Bramley’s orchard, past rows of trees drooping with the weight of autumn’s last fruit, their leaves turned brittle and blazing.
Bramley’s already up, of course. He always is. Stubborn old dwarf probably hasn’t slept a full night in twenty years. He’s hauling a cord of ciderwood from the stack behind the press barn, a chipped enamel mug steaming on the fencepost beside him and an axe embedded in the chopping stump like an exclamation mark.
“Didn’t think you’d show,” he says without looking up, voice as dry and gravelly as the path beneath my boots.
