Page 53 of Beyond Protection
"How often do you get to be real?"
I laughed—sharp and humorless. "You're standing in it."
"Come on," he said. "Let's keep moving."
He positioned himself between me and the thickest part of the crowd, and the gesture said everything his hands couldn't.
We walked deeper into the market. My pulse still hadn't settled. I still had my smile carved into my face. My muscle memory wouldn't let it release.
In the lower arcade, the market shifted. Less fish and flowers, more antiques and oddities. Used bookstores with titles I'd never heard of stacked in the windows. A shop sold vintage records. Something that might've been a head shop, a candle store, or both appeared on the right, with a cloud of patchouli thick enough to taste.
The tourist crush thinned. Families headed back up toward the main level, slouching toward dinner reservations and hotel lobbies. The people who remained moved more slowly, browsing instead of snapping photos. Locals, maybe. Or travelers who sought weird over picturesque.
We turned into Post Alley—a narrow brick corridor strung with Edison bulbs that glowed amber in the twilight. Music drifted from somewhere, an acoustic guitar and a voice performing something slow and off-season. It wasn't a Christmas song. Something quieter.
The vendors began packing up. A woman folded jewelry into velvet-lined cases. A man stacked watercolor prints of the Sound. My shoulders relaxed.
We passed a stall I'd walked by a hundred times—ceramics, hand-thrown, the kind my mother would pause over and touch. The vendor was older, gray braid over one shoulder, wrapping pieces in newspaper with the efficiency of someone who'd done it ten thousand times. She wrapped mugs and bowls and yunomi tea cups, glazes in blues and greens, and that iron-oxide orange that looked like rust and fire.
I stopped. Eamon stopped near me and waited.
One of the mugs caught light wrong. The glaze had crackled in the kiln, lines running through blue like fractures in ice, and the handle sat slightly off-center. Imperfect. Honest. The kind of piece my mother would call alive because it showed the maker's hand.
She'd love it.
The vendor caught my eye. "Help you?"
"How much?" I pointed at the mug.
"Thirty-five."
I pulled out my wallet.
"Gift?" the vendor asked, already reaching for tissue paper.
"My mom."
"Good taste. Does she do ceramics?"
"Teaches it. Community college."
"Then she'll see the crackle. That's manganese in the glaze. Happens when you fire too hot, but some of us do it on purpose." She smiled, handing over the package. "Controlled accident."
"She'd like that." I took the bundle—surprisingly heavy, solid, and real. "Thank you."
The vendor nodded and went back to packing.
When I turned, Eamon was staring. Not at the alley. At me.
His throat moved. A flush climbed his neck.
"What?"
He touched his beard. "Nothing. Just—" He stopped. Started again. "Your mom will love it."
His voice had dropped half an octave. And he was looking at me the way he had in the training facility, like he'd found something he hadn't known he was looking for.
Like the man buying a cracked mug was more complicated to resist than the one who'd made history.
