Small Mercies — five windows into warband life. Nothing heroic. Just home.
The warband house was warm from the outside.
Yreneese had noticed this. The way light pooled differently in windows that held people who chose each other. She’d catalogued it across years and cities—the particular amber glow of rooms where someone had bothered to light candles because others were coming home.
She sat on the rooftop ledge across the narrow street. Witness floated at her shoulder, its great central eye tracking the same window with the same quiet patience it tracked everything.
Through spectral sight the house blazed gentle gold.
Inside: Reyneese and Brasskeese were disagreeing about something at the kitchen table, animated, warm, the specific argument-that-is-not-really-an-argument of people too comfortable to bother with politeness. Lulureese had attached herself to Vyrneese’s arm and Vyrneese stood with the rigid posture of someone whose protocols had not yet fully processed hug but whose feet had not moved away. Avelreese laughed at something. The sound didn’t reach the street but Yreneese could see it in her shoulders.
She could knock.
The thought arrived the same way it always did. Patient. Persistent.
She knew where the door was. She’d memorized it. She’d stood in front of it once at three in the morning and pressed her palm flat against the wood and felt the warmth of people sleeping on the other side and then walked away before her hand could betray her and knock without permission from the rest of her.
That was seven months ago.
Soon, she’d told herself then.
She pulled her cloak tighter.
Witness nudged her hand gently with one of its smaller eye-stalks. A gesture it had developed over years that meant something between I see you and I’m here and you don’t have to explain.
She didn’t pull away.
Below, Lulureese said something that made the whole room laugh at once. The amber glow surged briefly brighter.
“Soon,” Yreneese said softly to nobody.
Witness stayed.