Gilden Reach had the smell of heated brass and morning bread. The stone under Elowen‘s boots was warm already — not from sun but from use, paths worn smooth by handcarts and apprentices in thick aprons. It wasn’t bustling exactly, but it breathed. A quiet, working rhythm.
She breathed with it, or tried to. The letter of apprenticeship was folded in her satchel, worn already at the creases. No one had told her where to be yet — only to arrive. So she walked. Half to get her bearings, half to let the weight of it all settle. She hadn’t expected to feel so small.
She passed a grocer’s with salt-dusted roots stacked in tiers, a tailor’s window hung with half-dressed forms, and a street-seller wiping the rims of glass-lidded jars. Most faces she passed were fae — slim-eared or sharp-eyed — but not all. A human woman swept the threshold of a tiled workshop with practised calm. A child ran past with a carved wooden contraption on wheels.
At the corner where two alleys met, a sculptor was working in the open, hands white with dust.
It wasn’t her field, but the material spoke to her — stone and silver were cousins, both shaped with patience and pressure.
She noticed what was left rough. Where the sculptor stopped short of smoothing every line. That interested her more than the polish. The restraint. The held breath in the surface.
The sculptor didn’t explain what they were carving. Just worked.
A child paused at the edge of the square. A dog barked once, then settled. The wind turned a page on someone’s bench.
Elowen stayed still. She watched how the piece emerged without being chased.
She didn’t sketch it. Didn’t need to. The weight of the moment folded itself into her.
Maybe later, in silver, her hands would echo the pause — not the form, but the hush it left behind.