CHAPTER 86: 86: A NEW BEGINNING PART XI

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He folded his map and put it in a leather sleeve he had stitched himself when he arrived at the village.

Fizz hovered by the door, too excited to land. "Travel clothes," he said. "A small banner for the road. A war song for when the cabbage knight appears uninvited. A pancake fund for me."

"There will be no war song," John said. "There will be quiet, questions, and a willingness to turn back if the road smells wrong."

Fizz tilted his head. "What does a wrong road smell like?"

"Like someone else’s plan," John said. "A trap maybe. We still had a lot of work to do, Fizz."

Later that day...

The flag found the afternoon breeze and learned how to move. People in the lane slowed without meaning to. A child copied the whiskers into dust with a stick and, on his second try, got the spark right.

Mara came by with a basket on her hip and a look that said she had already heard five versions of a story that hadn’t finished happening. She tipped her chin up at the banner. "Bold," she said.

"It is ours," John answered.

"It is also easy to find," she said, which for an innkeeper counted as both compliment and warning.

Fizz hovered proudly. "We are worth finding."

"I got news for you." Mara’s mouth tugged. "Temple caravan cleared the east road before dawn," she added, businesslike. "Three horses, one cart, a paladin in front, a man in a neat cloak pretending not to be angry, and a priestess who looked straight ahead. If you were wondering."

"I was," John said. The words landed in him like pebbles thrown into a deep well — ripples, then quiet.

The village watch sergeant stopped under the sign a little later, hands linked behind his back the way men stand when they’ve promised themselves not to buy anything. He studied the cloth, then the stamped crate by the door, then the men inside whose laughter sounded less careful than yesterday.

"What do you call it," he asked.

"A face," Fizz said gravely.

The sergeant snorted. "So it is. Keep your flag high and your books tidy. Folks trust a shop that knows what it is."

"We do," John said.

"Good," the sergeant replied, and went on with his rounds, the kind of man who wrote reports in his head and only put ink to the ones that mattered.

No paladins came. No temple man appeared to practice his tone. Only village feet, village errands, and the occasional glance that said the forge had stepped forward and the lane had taken note.

"Show me the small stamp again," John told Fizz, because there are days you answer the world by making your mark clearer.

Fizz thumped the die into leather with both paws and a flourish. The whiskers pressed true. The spark sat bright. The ring kept its perfect round.

"We exist," Fizz whispered.

"We do," John said, and let the afternoon return to work.

A few hours later...

When the lamps were lit and the first respectable shadows gathered in corners to talk about the day, the forge looked like a ship ready to sail. Crates marked. Orders sorted. Tools in their places. Men fed and proud and only a little afraid of the new mark because everything worth keeping scares you at the beginning.

John rolled the flag and put it in the case Gael had built from scrap and stubbornness. He wrapped the small stamp in cloth and tucked it into a drawer reserved for things that mattered enough to be forgotten if you were foolish.

He drew the map one more time. Cross Birch. East Hollow. River Gate. He wrote ’Rettan Vale’ in the margin and drew a small box around the name, not to honor it but to trap it. Fizz watched him and said nothing, which was its own kind of care.

They banked the coals. They checked the latches. John stood in the doorway and listened to the village settle its bones.

"Tomorrow we will ask Mara if the wind changed," he said.

"Tomorrow we buy rope that does not sulk," Fizz said.

"Tomorrow we may be fools," John said, calm as stating the weight of a bar.

"Then we will be clever fools," Fizz replied. "I have experience."

John nodded. He did not know that a boy with a torn sleeve had chosen the wrong man to trust and the right coins to take. He did not know that the name he had boxed on the margin was useless information borrowed from someone else’s story. He did not know that Lark’s lie had already taught three men in a quiet room to stop watching the road that mattered and light a lantern on a gate that did not.

He only knew this: a flag had been born, a mark had been cut into steel, a shop had found its face, and a plan had been drawn on a map that would either carry him forward or turn him back with useful pain.

He could work with any of those.

Fizz drifted close enough to put his forehead to John’s wrist for the span of one breath. "We will find her," he said, not caring whether the road ahead was right yet. "Or the truth about her. And we will teach cabbages to be afraid of our flag."

John laughed, quiet and real, the laugh you keep for yourself and one other person. "Sleep," he said. "In the morning our journey will begin."

They did, the flag rolled beside the door like a promise with a pole, the die cooling on the bench with its face to the wood, and the map folded under the weight of a small pouch of coin that had already forgiven the boy who would be paid again for the same lie.

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The morning chose their road without omens or strangers; it chose them with simple things finished properly. Benches were wiped and dry. Pans cooled in tidy ranks.