Summer pressed warm against Honeyburrow, and the river ran low enough to show its ribs.
I lay flat along the bank, chin on folded arms, watching the current hesitate around a cluster of stones.
"It splits there," I muttered.
"It avoids them," Lomor corrected.
Lomor stood with a willow branch in hand, tracking something I could not see. He had always watched the ground more than the water.
"It does not avoid," I said. "It chooses the easier path."
"That is the same thing."
"It is not."
Lomor jabbed the branch into the mud, marking a line.
"You think everything is choosing."
I rolled onto my back and stared at the sky.
"You think nothing is."
We had been sent to check the fish traps. Lomor had done so already. Efficient. Certain. I had forgotten entirely.
"Father says the river answers to none," Lomor said.
"Father builds barrels," I replied. "He does not ask the river to answer."
Lomor's jaw tightened—not in anger, but in warning.
"You will ask it one day," he said. "And it will not listen."
I sat up.
"Then I will build something it cannot ignore."
Lomor looked at me a long moment, as though measuring whether this was jest.
"You are strange," he decided.
I grinned faintly. "Aye."
We returned late to the yard.
The cooper stood bent over a half-formed barrel, iron hoop poised for fitting.
"You were to check the traps," he said without looking up.
"We did," Lomor answered immediately.
I hesitated.
The cooper's gaze shifted.
"Did you?" he asked.
I swallowed. "Aye."
It was a poor lie.
The cooper set down the mallet.
"Wood answers to patience," he said, not loudly. "And to truth."
I flushed.
Lomor did not move.
The cooper handed me a stave.
"Fit it."
I worked carefully, slower than Lomor would have. I shaved too much from one edge and had to correct it. The barrel wobbled.
The cooper said nothing.
That was worse.
Later, in the shade behind the house, Tiev found me sanding a discarded sliver of oak into a narrow curve.
"You cut that wrong," Tiev observed mildly.
"I know."
"Then why keep it?"
I turned the sliver between my fingers.
"It is almost right."
Tiev crouched.
"You see shapes before they exist," he said quietly. "Lomor sees what is already there."
I glanced toward the yard where Lomor's hammer fell in steady rhythm.
"Which is better?"
Tiev shrugged. "Depends on whether the world needs building—or defending."
That evening, Seren called us in with flour still dusting her hands.
She noticed the thin red line across my knuckle at once.
"You were not patient," she said gently, rinsing it with cool water.
"It slipped," I muttered.
"Because you were thinking ahead."
She wrapped the cut with linen.
"You may chase the river," she said softly, "but do not let it wash you hollow."
I frowned. "I am not hollow."
"No," she agreed, smiling faintly. "But you forget to eat when you think."
She pressed bread into my hand.
Across the table, Lomor watched.
Not with jealousy.
With assessment.
That night, as crickets sang beyond the yard, I lay awake listening to the river's distant murmur.
I imagined wheels turning beneath its surface.
Imagined pressure gathered in quiet places.
Imagined movement where others saw drift.
Outside, Lomor rose briefly from his pallet and stepped into the yard.
He checked the traps hanging to dry.
Checked the tools.
Checked the sky for weather.
He did not look at the river.
He did not need to.
It had already told him what it would do.