The music screeched to a halt. And for what felt like five lifetimes in the span of five seconds, the only sound Hariş heard was his own breathing. His hands shook with excitement while his heart sank to the pit of his gut. Joy trumped worry and apprehension trumped relief.

The eyes of every villager in the square were on him. A mix of pity and curiosity. They always looked at him with both. He could see the question churning in their heads: Why wasn't he running home?

Why wasn't he running home? Anyone else in his position would have been half-way there by now. But his feet seemed to be stuck to the floor. Hammered in with a thousand nails and covered with lime, water and sand to make certain he didn't move an inch.

"The Essences have looked down on Elsęr with grace and mercy, Bar Koha!" Farhan Gölhęm exclaimed. He rested his thin, dark hand on Hariş's shoulder. What a peculiar thing that was. The stark difference in build between father and son. Where Köl was tall and large, filling in clothes with walls of muscle, his father was thinner than the thinnest of tree branches, made to snap in half during the coldest of winters and float away on the water once the snow melted. Hariş's brain latched on to that thought as though his life depended on it. He would have sat down and counted the differences that made the villagers speculate about Köl Bar Gölhęm's parentage, if not for the fact that it would have been truly displeasing for the people to see.

"Ahan, I'll accompany him home and bring more news about Haşara Ihan," Köl said.

"I'll go too." He heard Sehęr's voice. And where Köl's had been calm and even, hers was excited.

"Surely, this young man would want to be alone with his mother!" Someone in the crowd protested.

Hariş didn't see how it concerned anyone other than himself and the two people he would have shared the news with first. If not for Nuşrahał's very public announcement, the whole village would have never known until his mother walked out of the house and announced it herself. He wanted to say something. Anything. But the words seemed to fail him as much as the rest of his body.

"It'll do him good to be surrounded with friends," Sehęr said.

"Köl, barrin, will be there, no?" Another person said in the crowd. The other Köls mother.

"Correct, Löara Ihan. But Sehęr said friends." Köl Bar Gölhęm's correction was appreciated, if not unnecessary. Hariş liked that about Köl. He always said what he thought, without much worry about the way people perceived it. Hariş was sure Löara would take those words with the disrespect Köl might have intended to deliver them with, but he was also sure Köl Bar Gölhęm did not care.

But Hariş did not need the whole village knowing he didn't hold Köl Bar Bonłes in the highest of regards –even though no one truly did and held their tongues because of the respect they had for his parents. Though, Hariş liked to think that unlike most, his apprehension wasn't entirely unwarranted. He had seen Köl Bar Bonłes make snow men out of horse manure a few years back. He had even dared to ask what was going on in a feeble attempt to prove his own eyes wrong. The scent did not wash off Köl Bar Bonłes for weeks, making Hariş doubt whether he cleaned himself or not. But ever since, Hariş greeted him with a tight smile and kept him at arm's length.

"I think if my son missed Töfęsłiv for him, he counts as a friend."

"Your son, Löara Ihan, missed Töfęsłiv to spend time with a woman who is already spoken for," Köl Bar Gölhęm quipped.

"Enough, the two of you! My son and Jafret's daughter will go with Hariş. Everyone else, go home. The Essences may have decided to bless us tonight, but only they know how long they intend their blessing to last. Tomorrow, at first light, we will meet here again and thank them for this that they have done."

Köl gave him a nudge forward, prompting his feet into motion His pace was that of a mule carrying tons upon tons of cargo on its back. The pace of the old horse Farhan Gölhęm kept in his stable instead of putting o death. He should have been home by now, instead he still felt the warmth of the Töfęsłiv fire, and still saw its flame.

Sehęr and Köl walked next to him at his pace, never rushing him or urging him to speak in any way. But Sehęr's hand found its way to his, and he neither knew when nor how, but he held on to it with death's grip. Köl walked with his hands in the pockets of the one pair of loose-fitting brown trousers he wore on special occasions, his şamşara draped over his right shoulder, golden and adorned with frost pearls coming all the way from Fredhar. It showed status among the village folk, yet paired with clothing so modest to make him blend in as one of the commons. The son of the village chief, yet their friend.

Hariş thanked the Essences, if they were real and if they listened to his prayers, for giving him two great friends amidst the chaos that was his life, and for sparing his mother from the clutches of death, if not only temporarily. He hated to admit it, but even his heart hardened towards Vinnas and his Essences, he held on to the hope that the faith was real. And if it was, then he could thank them. The Essences, for nothing short of a new chance at life.

The door to his home swung open and he was met with Köl Bar Bonłes and his scowling face. His green eyes held a speckle of wrath, and the hand on his hip made him look like a wife angry at her husband for returning after days of absence. "It took the lot of you long enough. Ihaneriş is waiting for you."

For the first time in years, Hariş was happy to see Köl Bar Bonłes. "Is she still awake?" he asked, shrugging off his cloak.

He still moved slowly, as if he was attempting to stave off the inevitable, to slow the hands of time. And maybe he was trying to do just that. The knowledge that his could be nothing but a temporary miracle gnawed at his bones. He tried to tell himself that nothing could go wrong after this, but something in him also told him that if the Essences were real, this was the beginning of their retribution for his unbelief.

"Evden. She's been asking for you," Köl said moving away from the door. "Bił'hesnö."

Hariş pressed his cloak into Sehęr's awaiting arms. He could do this. There wasn't a world that existed in which he couldn't. He would go, sit by his mother's bedside, as he had all the days before this moment. The only difference is that he would talk to her, and Essences willing, she would answer back to him. His feet dragged him to his mother's bedroom, where a single candle was lit.

Hariş sat down on his chair next to her bed. Chair he had sat on before on much grimmer occasions, when her getting better seemed so far away. He took her thin, pale hand into his much larger one and brought it to his lips with a sigh of relief. There, in the fickle glow of the solitary candle, his life seemed to slowly fall back into place. Surely, the Essences would have mercy on him and grant him one last wish. If not, he would find a way to do the impossible himself. Until then, he would say one-off prayers to a God that may or may not exist and hope He did.

"Ihan? It's me." He was holding back tears. He could feel them now, dampening his eyes. Whether In joy, fear or both, was a question he couldn't answer yet.

"Barrin?" Haşara stuttered through her words. Her voice so familiar yet foreign at the same time. It was the voice of the woman who raised it, yet it held nothing of the strength it once had. It wasn't the voice of his mother telling him to stop climbing trees or ordering him to get back inside and out of the rain. That voice had power to it. It had life. This one. The one gracing his ears. The one he was so happy to hear. This one was defeated. Long ago, his mother had taught him not to fear death, but to welcome it as much as he could. Haşara always led by example.

"Evden, Ihan."

Her green eyes raked over his face, as if capturing the moment in time. Her smile was weak, and so was her hand on his cheek. Hariş had to hold it there. He reveled in the cold touch. "Open your father's chest, Hariş."

He furrowed his eyebrows. His mother never asked him to look for anything in that chest. She owned two of those things. One held her clothes, and his father's chest, tucked away safely under her bed. He wasn't allowed to rummage through either of them, though he knew that even if he could, he would have gone out of his way to make sure he never had to look through his late father's belongings. Hariş grew up without a father, and he figured it was easier to pretend the man never existed to start with. He refused to listen to stories about the kind of man Huşęk Koha was, and he avoided conversations where his father's name was mentioned. Hariş didn't want to look through the chest, and why his mother would want to at the edge of death escaped him. But he was a good son. He prided himself in it. And he refused to not fulfill every one of his mother's wishes, so he got down to his knees on the gold hard ground and pulled the large wooden chest out.

He ran his hand over the smooth surface. If he knew anything about woodworking, he would have admired the craftsmanship. Instead, he focused on how light it was. "What am I looking for, Ihan?"

"Open it."

He unclasped the latches on both ends and lifted the top. He didn't know what he was expecting, maybe a few clothing items, and some items, but it had none of that. Instead, there was a piece of paper –a letter perhaps –and what looked like a fragment of a something broken –maybe a vase. He picked up the paper with shaky hands before standing up and moving closer to the candle.

"Read it, abasęn."

Hariş cleared his throat.

"Yęsęlrin, I am sending this letter before commencing my return, so that it may reach you before I do. I hope it finds you well and alive. Though, I suppose if the worst had come to pass, Farhan would have found a way to let me know already. He would have come on his own, all the way to the King's City and dragged me back by the ear.

"I did find what I was looking for, and I will be sending it back to you with this letter, so it can get to you before me. Hopefully, it will buy us time until I find a more permanent solution. Until then, this is the best I can do. But Atęċ did assure me that it will buy you some time, if not years then enough months for you to have the baby you so desperately prayed to the Essences for. I, myself, am quite excited to meet our boy. And it is a boy. You know, because Sureya says that is what your lopsided gait means. That all your offspring will be men. If true, we could name him Hariş, after your father. If not, then Męhęk would make a beautiful name for a daughter.

"I forget myself, Haşara. Anyway. I am sending back another item which Atęċ has entrusted to me. I'm not sure what it is, but he insisted on the need for it to be kept safe. And you and I both know I would lose my own head if I could. So, I'm sending it to you, for safekeeping, entrusting you with this peculiar thing and the even more peculiar demand to keep it safe and away from prying eyes until the time comes. I admit, I don't know what time he is talking about, but as I like to say, one must accept their friends with all their oddities.

"Also with this letter is a blanket for the baby. I saw it at the market while wandering around and thought you might like it. The vendor said it was crafted by the Essences themselves. And where it's not any truer than the stories Samaha tells, I reckon it should be a funny story to tell our child when we meet him? I will be back very soon. In four, maybe five, days after you've received my letter. Until then, I only ask that you take care of yourself in my absence. And if I'm not there by sunset, then sleep and I'll be there in the morning. Yęsęlris, Huşęk."

Hariş folded the paper and clutched it into his hand. He kept his baby blanket with him, tucked under his hay mattress. For the longest time he thought it was something his mother picked up at the day market, but it wasn't. His father handpicked it for him before he passed. How long before he passed? This letter. Huşęk's words on paper made him long for a father he tried so hard to erase. It had never fazed him before. Farhan Gölhęm and Jafret Revani were good enough for him growing up. But Huşęk would have been better.

"Ahanęrişā never came back," Haşara said. He never came back. He sent the letter and never followed it. "He died on the way back. Bandits."

It was one thing to think Huşęk had died of natural causes all those years back, and another to know he was taken away from his family by greed. Red hot anger swelled in him at the thought. Death was to be served by the hands of time, not those of men who thought life was theirs to take when they didn't have the power to give it.

Hariş nodded. His mother didn't need to say it. Whatever that fragment was in there was one of the three things his father sent back to them before his death. He would do what his mother was asking of him and keep it safe. At the cost of his own life, it came to it –though it most likely would not. And then he would also find whatever it was that bough his mother more time back then.

He made his way back to her bedside and kissed the top of her head. "I'll go tell Köl Bar Gölhęm and Sehęr how you're fairing and then I'll be back. If you're still awake, I would like for you to tell me about father."