The morning mist hung low over the Verdantveil's gentle current, curling in silver ribbons as sunlight began to break through the canopy. Gideon planted his feet wide on the packed riverbank, hands gripping his ashwood rod like it was a war spear.
"C'mon, you scaly devil—!" His voice rose into a bellow as the line went taut, dragging the tip of the rod toward the water. Skyling clapped from the side, cheering as if he were wrestling a wyvern instead of fishing.
The reel screamed. The rod bent dangerously. Gideon's boots dug furrows into the mud as he leaned back with all his weight."It's pulling me in!" he roared."Let go if you have to!" Ezra called between laughs, though she made no move to actually help.
"I never surrender!" Gideon's stubborn grin widened as the fish breached — a flash of silver-blue scales as long as Skyling's torso, thrashing and spraying water like an angry rainstorm. The group erupted in shouts, some yelling advice, others just hollering for the spectacle.
Eliakim leaned on his own rod, smiling faintly but keeping his eyes on the fish — and on Caleb. The half-elf watched the fight with a calm, assessing gaze, then said, almost conversationally:"That species isn't native to Verdantveil. Shouldn't even be within a hundred miles of here."
The words were quiet, almost lost in the chaos, but Eliakim caught every syllable. His smile didn't change, yet a faint tension drew across his brow. How does he know that?
Gideon, oblivious to the subtle undercurrent, finally yanked the fish ashore with a triumphant shout—only for his rod to snap at the base. He stared down at the broken handle, shoulders slumping like a child whose favorite toy had shattered.
"I can fix it," he sighed, "but not without the tools. Guess I'm cooking instead."
While Gideon started prepping the catch over a small fire, Eliakim cast a lazy line beside Skyling. Caleb knelt at the water's edge, whistling a lilting tune that seemed to draw curious woodland creatures to the fringe of the camp — squirrels, river birds, even a fox that sat watching him. The others murmured in awe, but Eliakim only watched in silence, his suspicion of Caleb quietly deepening.
No one noticed.
Ezra waited until Gideon's fish was sizzling over the fire before she pulled the mission parchment from her satchel, the paper already softened from repeated handling. She crouched by the light, reading again the carefully inked description:
"Starleaf Veinleaf — pale green petals with silver veins, grows in damp soil along shaded riverbanks, blooms rarely except under sustained rainfall."
She murmured the name aloud, tasting the syllables like a charm."Starleaf Veinleaf…"
At the exact same moment, two voices joined in, overlapping perfectly:
"They grow in silt-rich bends, usually where the river slows and the canopy opens just enough to let dappled light through."
Ezra blinked, looking up between Eliakim and Caleb."You two… knew that?"
Caleb only smiled faintly, brushing a leaf from his knee."Picked that up years ago," he said. "Starleafs don't like strong currents."
Eliakim didn't reply immediately. His gaze lingered on Caleb, measuring him like one might study a shadow that seemed too sharp in daylight. The man's phrasing, his confidence — it was almost like Caleb had been inside his head, speaking the exact thought he'd been about to voice.
But he let it pass. No point souring Skyling's laughter or Gideon's booming chatter over the meal.
When the food was gone and the embers banked low, Ezra set out upriver with her satchel, eyes darting between mossy stones and shaded bends. The forest air was cool, rich with the smell of wet earth. And then—
She stopped.
Her boots were planted in a patch of mud beside a curve in the river… the exact curve she'd just passed minutes earlier. The same leaning willow. The same rock split like a broken tooth.
Déjà vu clung to her like mist.
"Ezra?" Skyling's voice called from down the bank.
She shook her head quickly, telling herself she must have looped back without noticing, and kept walking. Still, as she moved on, she swore the ripples in the Verdantveil carried whispers — soft, indistinct, but almost… coaxing.
Back at camp, Caleb sat whittling by the fire, his tune from earlier drifting once again through the trees.
Ezra spotted it just as the light shifted through the leaves — a cluster of pale green blossoms tucked into the curve of a rootbank.
Her pulse quickened."Starleaf Veinleaf," she whispered, kneeling. The petals were exactly as the mission described: soft green, traced with fine silver veins.
She reached out to pluck one — then froze.
At the center of the bloom, so faint she almost thought it a trick of the dusk, was a second vein pattern… curling not like the gentle arcs of the Starleaf.
It pulsed once. Just a shift in shadow, she told herself. Just the wind.
Still, she pulled her hand back. She'd gather the others instead.
The sound of Caleb's low whistle carried on the air again, joined now by the quiet rustle of animals in the undergrowth — watching, waiting.
Ezra shook the feeling off and turned toward camp, herbs in hand, smiling as the firelight came into view. Laughter rose with the smell of charred fish and sweetbread, a perfect evening on the riverbank.
Behind her, the strange Starleaf's petals swayed — though the air was utterly still.