An Old Companion

It was Hesper. Of course it was Hesper. Of all the people who might have found Lowmott, it would be the one who had once carried Brindle, bleeding, down a mountain. She looked older. They both did. Hesper sat down at the window table without being asked, the way you sit down somewhere you have decided is safe, and she looked at the teapots and the little painted sign and the baker's boy in the corner, and something in her face came loose. "You actually did it," she said. "You always said the teashop and we always laughed." "You laughed," Brindle corrected, setting down a cup. "I was never joking." She poured. Hesper took honey; Brindle had remembered. "You didn't come all this way for the tea." "No." Hesper wrapped both hands around the cup. "I came because something is wrong, Brindle, and you're the only person I trust to tell me I'm allowed to walk away from it." Brindle sat down across from her old friend, and the morning, gently, stopped being quiet.