The days wore on with the quiet rhythm I had grown to trust , the creak of leather straps, the ring of axe on wood, the whisper of wind through the high grass. Eomen stayed. That, in itself, told me more than his words ever could.
He rose with the sun, shoulders stiff with effort, but never failed to meet the day. I watched him split timber, carry stone, mend the worn eaves with hands that were learning to listen. He did what was asked. But the air around him still carried that edge, like a bow strung too tight, always ready to snap.He did not ask again, not about being trained in the way he first imagined, but the wanting never left him. It clung to him like the last of winter's chill in the early thaw.
I said little. A man does not press the earth to bloom faster, not if he means for it to bear fruit.
Eomen was learning. He did not yet know what he was learning, but his hands were remembering things his heart did not understand. That patience is not the absence of action. That labour shapes more than wood. That strength is not in the swing, but in the stillness before it. Some days, he’d glance toward the ridge, where the sky met the hills, and I knew his thoughts wandered toward conflict. Not the kind shouted in council halls or fought in the open, but the kind that waits, shapeless, in a man’s chest. The kind that asks who he will be when the time comes.
That morning, we were hauling a length of ashwood from the southern stand when he let it fall with a sharp grunt. The sound was louder than it needed to be.This work has no end, he muttered. It isn’t leading anywhere.
I turned to him, slowly. Not everything that leads shows its path.
His jaw clenched. It’s not the labour I mind, he said. It’s just… none of it feels like it’s leading anywhere. Like I’m standing still.
Standing still isn’t always the same as being lost, I said.
He frowned. Then what am I waiting for?
To learn what you’ll do when the waiting ends, I answered.
He looked away, frustrated. I want to be ready. That’s all.
I nodded slowly. And I believe you. But readiness doesn’t come all at once, like a rider cresting the hill. It builds in quiet ways, in worn hands, in habits that don’t break, in knowing what matters when no one’s watching. You want to be sharpened like a blade. But some things are shaped more like roots, slow, and deep, and lasting.
That settled over him. Not gently, but like weather settling into stone.
He didn’t speak again that day. And that was just as well. Some thoughts take time to ripen, like fruit that must stay on the branch until the wind decides to loosen it.
That evening, I sat by the fire, its light flickering low across the hearth. Eomen stood near the doorway, his silhouette still against the night. He watched the fields, but I think his mind had turned inward. Conflict would come, as it always does, not just in steel and noise, but in choices, in silence, in the pull of what’s right against what’s easy.
Bancross holds its peace not because it is untouched by struggle, but because there are folk here who hold the line, who mend fences before they fall, who keep watch when there’s nothing to see. The kind who understand that peace isn’t the absence of trouble, but the work done quietly between storms. If Eomen stays long enough, he might come to see that. And if he does, he’ll carry more than any weapon could ever give him.
This story follows The Weight of Peace
