The Crossroads Market
Guruk
I woke to the scent of jasmine.
The sweet aroma of my mate, close and tender, reached me before anything else did.
Before the birdsong, before the morning breeze on my face, before the gurgle of the spring’s overflow channel threading its patient way downhill.
Just her. It was my favorite way to start the day.
Although I had begun many days this way now, the privilege of it had not once felt ordinary.
Sammy slept beside me on her back, one arm flung above her head in the unguarded manner she had when she felt safe.
Her brown hair spread across the folded blanket beneath her, catching the early light in golden threads.
The worry that lived in the lines of her face during waking hours was now gone.
She looked rested at last, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since before we left the village.
The peace of Syrena Spring, or perhaps simply the unburdening of the conversation we had shared in the water, kept her brow in repose.
Whatever the cause, I was grateful for it.
I did not wake her.
I lay there a while longer, listening to the forest settle into morning, watching the light shift through the canopy in slow degrees.
Berry was already awake. I could hear the soft pat of their paws on the flat rock nearby, their small morning routine of stretching each tail in sequence before shaking out their ears.
The fire had burned to coals overnight. I rebuilt it quietly, setting water to heat without clanging the pot.
“I’m awake,” Sammy said, without opening her eyes.
I continued with the morning tea. “You are not.”
“I am.” She pulled the blanket edge over her chin. “I’m just also still horizontal.”
“That is called sleeping.”
“It’s called resting with awareness.” She cracked one eye open, found me crouched over the fire, and closed it again. She sniffed the air. “Is there tea?”
The water boiled. “There will be soon.”
A small, satisfied sound. Then, after a moment, she added, “Fine. It was a good plan.”
I glanced over at her. She still had her eyes closed, but her mouth had curved into the smile she used when she was conceding a point and finding it mildly annoying.
I had cataloged every version of that smile over the past year.
Not quite the same method my little human used to catalog our world, but more so committing each moment with my mate to memory.
This smile was one of my favorites.
“I know,” I said.
She huffed. “You’re insufferable.”
“I am an excellent planner.”
Sammy pulled the blanket over her face entirely.
I poured the tea.
We were not, as it turned out, quick to leave.
There was the tea, which Sammy drank slowly, sitting cross-legged on the blanket with both hands wrapped around the cup.
Then breakfast, comprising bread and soft cheese from the canvas pack, was received with her renewed and deeply resigned appreciation.
Then Berry, who had opinions about the order in which the bags should be repacked and expressed them at length.
By the time we were properly ready, the morning had moved along without us.
Sammy stood at the spring’s edge and looked back at it once. After a breath, she turned toward the road and started pulling her hair into its tie, fingers quick and practiced. I was watching her and not pretending otherwise.
“You’re staring,” she said without turning around.
“I’m admiring.”
She finished the tie and spun, one eyebrow raised. “Is there a difference?”
“Staring implies I intend to stop at some point.” I shouldered the canvas pack and then her bag onto my back. “I do not.”
The color that rose to her cheeks was worth all the treasures in Havenlore. She opened her mouth, closed it, pointed at me with her pen — where she had produced it from, I genuinely could not say — and turned back to the road.
“Insufferable,” she said. But a smile played on her lips.
Berry sailed from their rock to my shoulder with an air of great purposefulness, as if they had been waiting for us to finish and had decided we had used up our allocated time.
“Market today,” Sammy said, notebook already open as we walked. A page dense with planning notes, descriptions, questions, her friends’ names listed in her cramped, precise hand. She had been building the list since before we left home. “I have a system.”
Glancing over her shoulder, I agreed, “I know you have a system.”
“Eastern stalls first since that’s our direction, then work back toward the center, then—“
“Sammy.”
She looked up.
“I carry the bags,” I said. “You work your system. We will cover more ground that way.”
She stared at me. Then the pen came up again. “I see. You are an excellent planner.”
I smiled and fell into step beside her, watching the trees without appearing to, and watching her with no pretense of doing otherwise.
Berry’s tail pressed lightly against my neck as we walked. Pay attention, they said without words.
Always.
Sammy
The path curved through a last stand of trees, and then the canopy simply ended, opening onto a flat crossroads where four paths met at a packed-earth square easily three times the size of Havenlore’s town center.
The smell hit my nose: roasted nuts, spiced meat, something sweet and floral I couldn’t name, woodsmoke from a dozen different fires, and underneath all of it the earthy scents of a lot of different species gathered in one place.
From every direction, we could see it. The market was alive.
Stalls crowded every edge of the square in cheerful disorder, their canopies in a rainbow of colors, their proprietors ranging in size from a gnome barely reaching my knee to a broad-shouldered creature with a neck like a tree trunk who appeared to be selling large hats.
Customers of a dozen species moved between the stalls in overlapping currents.
A group of fae children chased something small and fast around the fountain at the square’s center.
A pair of elderly naga coiled companionably on a wide bench, sharing something wrapped in leaves.
Somewhere deep in the market, someone was playing an instrument I had no name for.
A high and silvery note wove through the noise like a thread.
“Oh,” I breathed.
“The crossroads market,” Guruk said simply beside me. “It runs on the third day of every week. Traders come from the settlements in all four directions.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Not often. But a handful of times for lumber negotiations.” He scanned the square. “It is larger than I remembered. Perhaps, it has grown.”
I already had my notebook out. “Okay. System. Eastern stalls first.” I looked up at him. “Do not let me get distracted by anything before I've done at least one full pass.”
He nodded solemnly. “Understood.”
“I mean it. No food stops until I’ve inquired about my friends for at least six stalls.” I tapped my pen against his chest, where his shirt opened in a tempting V-shape.
“Of course.”
“Guruk,” I warned.
“Sammy,” he said with perfect patience, “I will not let you get distracted.”
I studied him for a moment. He had mischief in his eyes. I sighed. “Fine. Let’s go.”
The eastern stalls housed traders from the low valley, mostly comprising fabric, tools, and preserved food in neat, waxed parcels.
I worked my way through them methodically, describing my friends in turn, watching faces for any flicker of recognition.
Most shook their heads with genuine regret.
A few asked clarifying questions. “Human, you said? From another realm entirely?”
I grew tired of answering the same curiosities over and over with no positive leads.
Guruk followed half a pace behind, hands in his pockets, unhurried. I was vaguely aware of him stopping at a nut vendor two stalls back. Then, a bread stall. Then, something involving small wrapped parcels he tucked into the canvas bag without commentary.
“You’re provisioning,” I said, not looking up from my notebook.
“I am browsing,” he corrected.
“You have been browsing at exclusively food stalls.”
“The food stalls are very interesting.”
I turned to look at him. He was holding a small parcel of something that smelled of cinnamon and honey and looked deeply, irredeemably like a snack.
“One,” I said, pen held at the ready to scold my unrepentant orc. “I will accept one snack before the six-stall mark.”
He produced a second parcel from the canvas bag and handed it to me without a word.
It was still warm.
I ate it in three bites, made a mental note to never admit how good it was, and kept walking.
Guruk
The market had its own rhythm, and I found mine in it quickly, trailing Sammy at the precise distance that allowed her to work without feeling followed, yet close enough to appear at her elbow if anything required it.
She had a method that I recognized as deeply her own: a specific sequence of questions, building from broad to narrow, with her notebook open and her pen moving in quick shorthand between answers.
Several stall owners leaned forward as she spoke.
Her earnestness had that quality, and it made people want to help her.
I kept one eye on her. The other I let roam.
The market was busy enough to offer good concealment if someone wanted it. That was the thought I had been carrying since the gnome village, and it settled heavier in the noise and press of the crossroads square. I scanned as I walked. Not conspicuously, but with purpose.
The nut vendor had a good vantage point. I bought a bag I did not need and stood there longer than the transaction required, watching the crowd.
Nothing.
The bread stall was set slightly back from the main flow, which meant its proprietor—an ancient tortoise being of great dignity and slow speech—could see most of the square without being in the thick of it.
I engaged him about his grain source for several unhurried minutes and scanned the market shoppers from his angle.
Still nothing.
I was finding the word nothing less reassuring than it should have been.
Then Sammy called from four stalls ahead, “Guruk, come look at this.”
I went to her at once, the sense of unease still prickling at my neck.