Page 45 of Built Orc Tough
CHAPTER 20
GORRAN
There’s a weight to silence that no amount of herbal dust or boiling kettle water can steam away. It’s not the quiet of morning peace, or even the hush that falls after the shop closes and the candles flicker low. No, this silence has claws. It scratches at the inside of my chest, a low drag across bone and breath that I can’t shake, no matter how many tinctures I grind down into obedient vials.
I bury myself in potion work like it owes me something. Elbow-deep in sage and blue bark, my fingers stained green and silver, I let the rhythm of repetition take me under. Grind, pour, stir. Cap, label, repeat. The work doesn’t talk back. Doesn’t frown or flinch or fill a room with words that say everything and nothing all at once. The work, at least, knows its place.
She’s still here, of course. Ivy. Her scent lingers in the shop like stubborn perfume, citrus and clove and the kind of sweetness that comes with sharp edges. I hear her sometimes, moving in the front room, her steps clipped, her voice carefully leveled when she greets customers. Like nothing happened. Like she didn’t look at me with pity in her eyes that last night and still walk away.
I don’t answer when she knocks on the workroom door.
I keep my back turned when she leaves tea on my counter—no notes now, no flowers. Just the drink. And even that, I let go cold.
Terra shows up on the third morning of my self-imposed exile. She stomps in like a storm made of sawdust and sarcasm, her boots loud, her arms full of firewood that she drops onto the floor of the workroom without ceremony.
“Well,” she says, brushing her hands off on her pants, “you look like a man who lost a war with a bundle of rosemary.”
I don’t look up. “I’m busy.”
“You’re sulking.”
“Still busy.”
She walks over, picks up one of my newest vials, sniffs it, and wrinkles her nose. “This smells like emotional constipation.”
“It’s feverroot and dandelion for stomach flu.”
“Close enough.”
I finally meet her eyes. Hers are sharp as ever, copper-colored and unflinching, like she’s trying to read the part of me I’ve nailed shut.
“You want something?” I ask, wiping my hands on a cloth already stiff with dried herbs.
“I want you to stop acting like the shop’s going to fall into a sinkhole just because you and Ivy had a fight.”
My jaw tightens. “It wasn’t a fight.”
“Oh right. You just emotionally slammed a door with your silence and walked into your cave like a wounded bear. Much more evolved.”
I go back to stirring the potion. “It doesn’t matter.”
“She hurt you,” Terra says, softer now, not a tease anymore. “But you’re acting like that means you deserved it.”
I don’t answer.
She moves closer, pulls up a stool, and sits like she’s settling in for a long standoff.
“You think she doesn’t care,” she says. “But I’ve seen her face, Gorran. I’ve seen the way she looks at you when you’re not watching.”
“She’s from the city,” I mutter. “She’ll go back. She’ll marry someone with polished shoes and gallery memberships and a life that doesn’t include patching roofs and grinding bark.”
Terra’s quiet for a beat. Then, “You really think a woman who labeled your ingredients ‘Toad Slime, Probably Not Poisonous’ wants a polished life?”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“She looked at me like I was broken,” I say finally. “And I know I am. I’ve made peace with that. But I can’t—I won’t—give someone a half-life just because they’re too kind to leave.”
“Maybe she’s staying because she sees something you don’t.”
