Chapter 3 #4
I found him in a workspace I hadn't seen before, lit by a single thermal vent's golden glow.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, a position that should have looked awkward on someone so large but instead seemed natural, like the mountain itself had decided to fold into human shape.
Mica lay cradled in his massive hands with the kind of gentleness usually reserved for sacred things, newborns, or spun glass.
The volcanic glass thread caught the light as he worked, black but not truly black, holding colors the way oil holds rainbows.
Each stitch was microscopic, precise, the kind of work that required not just skill but patience that came from having centuries to perfect it.
He was repairing her torn seam, the one that had been leaking stuffing for weeks, the one I'd been meaning to fix but never had the right thread, the right time, the right anything.
Beside him sat a small box that looked older than the mountain, carved from some wood that had fossilized into stone.
Inside, I could see treasures—buttons made from polished gems, fabric patches in colors that shouldn't exist, thread that seemed to be spun from precious metals.
He'd gathered materials not just to repair but to improve, to make her better than she'd ever been.
His concentration was complete. The tip of his tongue showed between his lips as he worked a particularly delicate section where Mica's arm joined her body.
That joint had always been weak, threatening to tear every time I hugged her too hard in the night.
But under his hands, it was being reinforced with stitches so small they were almost invisible, creating a framework that would hold forever.
When he finished with that section, he did something that made my breath catch.
He carefully opened a seam at Mica's chest, creating a hidden pocket where her heart would be if she had one.
From beside him, he picked up a river stone—smooth, oval, still warm from some underground stream.
He tucked it inside, then stitched the pocket closed with thread that matched her fabric so perfectly the opening vanished.
Now she would have weight there, warmth there. A heart of stone given by stone hands.
He started humming.
It wasn't quite a song but something deeper, a resonance that made the walls pulse gently in response.
The crystalline veins brightened and dimmed in rhythm with the sound, as if the mountain itself was listening, approving, participating in this small act of care.
The melody was ancient—I could feel its age the way you could feel the depth of a cave by the echo.
A lullaby in frequencies that human ears could barely catch, that vibrated through stone and bone alike.
"I know you're there," he said without looking up, hands never pausing in their work.
I stayed frozen in the doorway, caught between embarrassment at being discovered and wonder at what I was witnessing. Through the bond, I felt his awareness of me—had felt it, I realized, from the moment I'd left my room. He'd known I was coming, had maybe even guided my steps here.
"She's almost done," he continued, tying off a stitch with movements so practiced they were automatic. "Just need to add one more thing."
He turned Mica's foot toward the light, and with thread that seemed to glow with its own inner fire, he worked a tiny pattern into the fabric.
It was delicate, almost invisible unless you knew to look, but I recognized it immediately—the same crystalline pattern as his bond marks, the same design that decorated his skin when the dragon showed through.
A maker's mark. A sign of protection. A way to always find her if she was lost.
"There," he said softly, examining his work with the critical eye of a master craftsman. Every stitch was perfect, every repair invisible, every improvement subtle enough to enhance without changing her essential Mica-ness. "She's safe now."
He looked up at me finally, and in the thermal vent's light I saw his eyes were wet. Not crying, but holding tears that wouldn't fall, couldn't fall, that he'd probably been holding for centuries.
"Couldn't sleep either," he said, voice rough with emotion the bond let me feel—old grief, older loneliness, and something new and fragile that might have been hope. "Edda had a doll once."
The words hung between us, heavy with meaning I was only beginning to understand.
"From childhood. Her mother made it before she died, the last gift.
" He stood in one fluid motion, Mica still cradled carefully.
"I kept it perfect for fifty years after .
. ." He stopped, muscles in his jaw working as he fought for control.
"After she died. Maintained every stitch, replaced fabric as it aged, wouldn't let time touch it.
It was all I had left of her that still felt . . . human."
"What happened to it?"
"I burned it." The words came out flat, emotionless, but the bond screamed with the agony behind them. "In a moment of rage, of grief, of . . . I burned many things that day. Things I couldn't replace. Things that deserved better than my anger."
He held Mica out to me, and I took her with shaking hands.
She was perfect—better than perfect. She was loved.
The weight of the heart stone, the strength of the reinforced joints, the subtle improvements that made her more herself than she'd ever been.
She even smelled different, like deep earth and safety instead of the must and mold of the culverts.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“That you have to live with my grief.”
The rawness of it, the honesty, took me aback.
“I—it’s . . . you don’t need to apologize.”
He looked at me with such intensity, then nodded.
"Go back to sleep, Lark." His voice was gentle but firm, the voice of someone used to being obeyed. "Tomorrow we'll discuss your choice."
But I couldn't move. Something held me there, looking at this ancient, powerful being who had taken such care with a rag doll simply because she mattered to me.
This Dragon Lord who had admitted to rage, to mistakes, to burning precious things and regretting it for centuries.
Who had spent his sleepless night not plotting or brooding but carefully, tenderly fixing something broken.
Who had apologized to me.
"Garruk?" My voice came out small, uncertain.
He paused in turning away. "Yes?"
"No one's ever . . ." I stopped, started again. "Thank you. Not just for Mica. For caring that she mattered."
Through the bond I felt something crack in him, some wall he'd built centuries ago developing its first real fissure.
He wanted to reach for me—I felt the want like a physical thing, his hand half-lifting before he forced it back down.
He wanted to pull me against him, to tell me I mattered, that everything about me mattered, that he would fix every broken thing in my life if I'd let him.
Instead, he just nodded and stepped back, giving me space to leave. "Sleep, little one. You're safe here."
The endearment slipped out without his permission—I felt his surprise at saying it, his worry that it was too much too soon. But I was already turning away, Mica clutched to my chest, her new stone heart warm against mine.
I made it three steps before the tears started.
Silent ones that came from somewhere so deep I hadn't known it existed.
Not tears of sadness but of something more complicated—recognition maybe, or relief, or the terrifying realization that I was starting to want this, want him, want the impossible life he was offering.
Behind me, I heard him sit back down on the floor, heard the whisper of thread through fabric resume. He was fixing something else now, mending other broken things with the same patience, the same care. The humming started again, that ancient lullaby that made the mountain pulse with contentment.
I walked back to my room on trembling legs, Mica's weight familiar but different, better. In the darkness, I pressed my face into her cloth body and breathed in the scent of deep earth, of safety, of home I'd never had but suddenly, desperately wanted.
Tomorrow I would have to choose. But tonight, for the first time in eight years, I fell asleep feeling protected. Feeling tended to. Feeling like maybe, possibly, I was worth the kind of care that spent sleepless hours fixing broken dolls just because they mattered to broken girls.
The stone heart he'd given Mica was still warm against my chest when morning came.