The third stone had already sunk beneath the earth by the time anyone found their voice.
The mist closed over where it had been, folding back into the same undisturbed grey it had held before the crossing began, and the stranger was gone with it, leaving behind nothing but the suggestion of a face that had never fully resolved. Nobody moved for several long moments.
The silence that settled over the group wasn't disappointment, exactly — it was closer to the specific stillness that follows witnessing something that had never been meant to last any longer than it had.
The woven bracelet remained in Grace's hands.
Everything else about the encounter had vanished the instant the stone withdrew. The bracelet had not.
She turned it over carefully, her fingers tracing the pattern of the weave. The style was unmistakably hers — she recognized her own hand in it immediately, the particular twist she had always favored, a technique she hadn't used in longer than she wanted to consider.
