Justice died on a Tuesday.
That's not the kind of thing you usually note, but Tuesdays have a way of pretending they're ordinary until they're not.
We were a week past the edge of anywhere, halfway to the edge of nothing. The desert sprawled ahead like a sunburned promise, and behind us the last hill with grass had given up trying to be green. The world was thinning out, peeling away names and directions until all that was left was wind and stubbornness.
He didn't make a sound. Just stopped walking.
One minute he was there, dusty and grumpy and flicking his tail at jokes he didn't approve of.
The next—he wasn't.
I stood there for a long time. Long enough that the sun had to check twice to see if I'd moved.
"Stubborn to the last," I finally said, crouching beside him. "You knew I was going to make you carry that broken stove, didn't you?"
No reply. Mules are wise like that.
I dug a small cairn. Not because he needed it—he was far too proud to haunt anyone—but because I did.
Three flat stones, one chipped coin, and the tin bell from that winter festival in Ahrim.
It jingled once in the wind, then fell silent.
Afterward, I stood between decisions.
Forward was heat and sand and the kind of silence that gets inside your thoughts and starts decorating.
Backward was memory and grass pretending to be memory.
So I sat down and made a third choice.
Maybe it was time for a break.
I found a hill. Not a grand one—just tall enough to notice a sunrise, and sloped enough to trick the wind into thinking it was clever.
Built a cottage there. Took me a week. Another three days to convince it not to fall over when I sneezed.
Stone walls. Thick windows. A roof with ambition.
I let the chimney lean a bit. Too many straight lines and you start attracting people who want answers.
The well dug itself.
Literally. I started poking around with a stick, muttering about water, and the ground sighed like it was tired of being ignored and gave me a spring.
I named it Apology.
Seemed fitting.
For the first month, I didn't speak aloud.
Not for any dramatic reason. Just… no one to talk to.
The wind and I had an understanding: I wouldn't ask questions, and it wouldn't answer with riddles.
I planted a garden.
Carrots, mostly. Carrots always forgive you for getting things wrong.
Occasionally, someone passed by.
A trader lost his map and his mule—offered me two smoked eels for directions. I pointed him at the stars and wished him luck.
He gave me one eel anyway. Said I looked like someone who missed company but wouldn't admit it.
Another time, a girl with silver eyes and a sword made of coral showed up, asking if I was the Oracle of the Wastes.
"Only on Thursdays," I said.
She left a lemon and never came back.
I dried it, hung it above the door. For protection. Or seasoning.
Years passed like they were trying not to wake me.
I wrote stories on bark, folded maps out of spider silk, argued with the rain about metaphors.
The garden became a jungle. I let it. The rabbits were polite enough to knock before eating anything important.
Once, a boy knocked on my door
He wore a cloak too big for him.
It dragged in the dust and caught thorns. The fabric was dyed a blue I hadn't seen before—like riverwater just after lightning strikes. He said it had belonged to his mother. Or maybe his mother's dream. He wasn't sure.
He asked, "Do you have any spare days?"
I thought he meant food. Or coin. I gave him both. He smiled, took neither.
"No," he said. "I mean days. Ones you didn't like. Ones you'd rather forget."
He held out his hand.
I laughed. Then I stopped laughing. I thought of a day.
The one with the avalanche.
The one where my ribs cracked and I counted a hundred years of nothing.
I gave him that.
He nodded like a priest and handed me a pebble. Smooth. Cold. It smelled faintly of flowers I hadn't smelled in ages.
He said he collected them.
Each pebble was a day someone didn't want. He kept them in a pouch stitched from beeskin and gut-string. When it rattled, the sound made dogs howl.
"Why do you want them?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Because someone should."
We lived together for a while. He told me stories he didn't live. Things that sounded like half-memories. A grandmother who remembered sunlight before it had color. A goat that spoke in rhyme. A village that didn't age until someone brought a clock.
He said none of them were his.
"I only borrowed them," he said. "Traded for dull days. Fair deal."
We walked to a hill where the wind remembered things better than people. At the top, he knelt. Opened the pouch. Poured the pebbles out like they were bones.
Each one rolled to a stop facing the sun.
He sat still.
"They hum sometimes," he said. "When it's quiet enough."
I listened.
I swear I heard laughter.
Later, he asked me, "What would you do if you couldn't die, but time still forgot you?"
I didn't answer. He stared at me like he already knew.
One night, I woke up and he was gone.
His cloak remained, folded by the fire. The pouch too. But the pebbles were gone.
In its place was a small note:"You gave me a cracked day. I gave you back a smooth one.
"Try again."
After a while, I began to dream again.
Not the old kind, where flames walk and stars whisper your name in the dark.
These were soft dreams.
Of warm bread, creaky chairs, the smell of books just before they lie to you.
One dream had Justice in it.
He was sitting by the fire, chewing on a slipper I didn't own.
When I looked at him, he snorted and said, "You finally rested."
I woke up with tears on my cheeks and a plum in my hand.
I hadn't grown plums.
Ten years, give or take.
That's how long it took for the restlessness to find me again.
It came on a morning when the wind brought someone else's song.
A note of longing.
A flicker of maybe.
I packed my bag.
Left the garden wild, the well humming, the door unlocked.
The cottage didn't say goodbye.
But I swear I heard the chimney exhale—just once—as if to say, "Don't take too long."
And so I walked, alone again, toward whatever waited past the edge of the desert.
The world spun slowly underfoot.
And somewhere, in the soil beneath my boots, the old bell jingled once more.