The spirit’s expression softened. “Long ago, my kin and your people forged a pact—light for protection, and in return, I would guard the coast from the storms that rage beyond the horizon. The pact was broken when the light went out. I will not flood the town, but I need the light to be whole again.”
Afterward, the girl Tia had trained kept walking. She could not recreate every tiny cure, but she remembered the measurement of mercy: the right shape, the right size, given at the right time. She opened a little shop of her own when the city was ready—sometimes on corners, sometimes in satchels, sometimes nowhere at all but in a hand that needed a small light. Tia Bejean