The sun was beginning to sink behind the rooftops of Lumaire, turning the canal water a dusky gold.

  The air smelled faintly of baked bread and warm stone.

  Inside The Watcher’s Kitchen, the last customers had left, the shutters were drawn, and the day’s noise had faded into comfortable stillness.

  The table, still cluttered with books, tools, and a few crumbs from dinner, sat at the center of it all —

  the heart of the home they’d come to know so well.

  Eis had gone upstairs a little while ago, her steps quiet, as always.

  For the first time that evening, the children were alone together.

  Elara sat at the window, chin resting on her folded arms, watching the ripples along the water outside.

  She could see the faint reflection of the lantern Eis had left burning — steady, golden, familiar.

  “She’s been quieter since he left,” she said softly.

  Tomm, sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by half-assembled gadgets, didn’t look up.

  “You mean the knight?”

  “Mm.”

  Nia, perched nearby, nodded.

  “Sir Alaric.”

  Elara exhaled slowly.

  “She not sad. Just… different.”

  “Like when someone asks you which toy you want,” Nia said, thinking hard, “and you realize you were already holding your favorite one.”

  Elara smiled faintly at that.

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  She turned slightly, watching the other two — the way Tomm’s brow furrowed in focus,

  the way Nia hummed to herself while sketching little patterns on the table’s edge.

  A year ago, this kind of quiet would have been unbearable.

  Now it felt like peace.

  “We’ve been here a year,” Elara murmured. “Can you believe that?”

  Tomm snorted.

  “Feels longer.”

  “Good longer or bad longer?”

  “The kind where the days blend together. But in a good way.”

  She tilted her head, curious.

  “How so?”

  He shrugged, tightening a screw on one of his inventions.

  “Back then, I used to count days because it told me how long we’d made it.

  Now I don’t need to. I already know we’ll wake up here tomorrow.”

  Elara didn’t answer right away.

  Her throat felt tight in the best way — the kind that came from realizing she’d finally stopped waiting for something to go wrong.

  Tomm’s tools clinked softly as he worked,

  his hands moving with practiced precision that came from months of patience —

  and from Eis’s quiet encouragement.

  He’d taken over one corner of the kitchen for his “inventions,”

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  though most of them were either harmless trinkets or disasters waiting to happen.

  Still, Eis never made him stop.

  “I think she’s proud of us,” Tomm said suddenly.

  Nia glanced up.

  “You think?”

  “She keeps finding new things for us to learn. I think that’s her way of saying she believes we can handle it.”

  Elara hummed thoughtfully.

  “She’s proud, yes. But I think she’s also… happy.”

  Tomm blinked.

  “Happy?”

  “That we’re still here,” Elara said simply. “That we chose to stay.”

  He paused at that —

  because in all the time since they’d arrived,

  he’d never thought of it as their choice.

  But it was.

  And they’d made it, over and over again,

  every morning they woke up under the same roof and called this place home.

  “Guess she chose us first,” he murmured.

  Elara smiled.

  “And we said yes.”

  Nia had been quiet all evening, drawing in her little sketchbook,

  but now she lifted it and turned it toward them.

  On the page was a soft watercolor of the four of them —

  Eis by the counter, Elara with her book, Tomm tinkering, and herself kneeling by the window feeding birds.

  The details were small but unmistakable:

  the warm light spilling across the table, the shimmer of the canal outside,

  the faint smile Eis wore when she thought no one was looking.

  “It’s us,” Nia said proudly.

  Elara leaned closer, studying it.

  “You got her expression right.”

  “I practiced,” Nia said with a grin.

  “She always looks calm, but if you look long enough, you can see the warmth underneath.”

  The room fell quiet after that,

  the kind of silence that wasn’t empty — just full.

  Nia closed her sketchbook and hugged it to her chest.

  “Lucky,” she said softly. “That we found each other.”

  “Yeah,” Elara agreed.

  Just one word—but it was more than enough to hold everything she felt.

  The stairs creaked softly as Eis stepped back into the kitchen.

  Her sleeves were rolled, her hair a little undone from the breeze.

  The light from the hall framed her just as it had that first night she’d brought them in from the storm.

  “You’re all still awake?” she asked, amused.

  “We were talking,” Nia said.

  “About what?”

  “Home,” Elara replied simply.

  Eis paused, looking at them — really looking.

  The three faces that had once been wary, exhausted, untrusting —

  now open, bright, whole.

  “And what did you decide?” she asked.

  Tomm grinned.

  “That we’re not leaving anytime soon.”

  “Good,” Eis said softly. “Neither am I.”

  Nia smiled so brightly it seemed to light the whole room.

  “Then we’re even.”

  Eis walked past them to hang the lantern by the window,

  the same one she’d once carried into the rain to find them.

  Its golden glow filled the kitchen,

  spilling across the floor, across their faces, across the table —

  the same light that had guided them home a year ago.

  That night, the light in The Watcher’s Kitchen stayed on a little longer than usual.

  Laughter drifted through the shutters,

  and the quiet murmur of voices filled the space where loneliness once lived.

  Outside, the canal reflected it all —

  a golden shimmer beneath the dark —

  as if the city itself remembered the night it had first rained,

  and how, since then,

  three lost children and one quiet traveler

  had found a reason to stop running.