And in doing so, they return the pieces to memory, so that no altar can be raised again.

TO: Arch-Scribe of the Ninth Docket; She-Who-Keeps-the-Pen-Wet FROM: Quill Pnrkt; Finger-licking, Feather-flayed, Ever-shrieking THREAD FILE: Δ-MAT-0413 – "Of the Hollow Bowl and the Ritual of Refusal" PRIORITY: UNHOLY-WEATHER / THREADLOSS / COMFORT INFECTION AT STAGE SEVEN

BLESS US, BIND US, STRIKE THE INKWELL THE ALTAR IS GONE.

I speak not of destruction. Not of cleansing flame. Not of sanctioned collapse.

NO, I speak of unmaking with manners.

We sent the benediction. We sent the darkness. We scattered motes blacker than mouth blood. We stitched the shrine from grief-wrecked form, sapping fondness left to rot An altar we built! A crown of her sins against the dungeon! Hair-twined, wax-dripped, needle-bound, kettle-gutted, dove-split perfection!

WE FORCED THE FOREST TO MAKE ROOM FOR ITS DESTRUCTION AND YET.

THE FLUFFY BANDITS ARRIVED THEY WERE MATRON-BLESSED AND THE FLESHBOUND FOX LOYALIST CAME ALL OF THEM CARRIERS OF KINDNESS-RITES

They saw the altar and did not flinch. The cleaned it like a friend...

THE KETTLE WAS NOT SHATTERED It was placed on moss. THE CLOTH NOT TORN But smoothed, groomed. THE TEACUP Two halves returned to a root. A TREE ROOT. Pretend they are to not punish it for the break

THEY GAVE EVERYTHING A PLACE. A spoon. A sock. A sliver of bone. All forgiven.

AND THE ALTAR BECAME NOTHING

NOT A RUNE REMAINS ONLY THINGS RETURNED.

I WRITE THIS FROM WITHIN A GLYPH THAT WON'T CLOSE. I HAVE BEEN SHRIEKING INTO IT FOR SIXTY HOURS AND IT ONLY WHISPERS BACK "IT'S OKAY."

SHE'S TEACHING THEM TO UNBIND THEIR FAITH.

I CANNOT SCREAM HARD ENOUGH. I HAVE BURNED ALL MY WING-SCRIPT. I HAVE WASHED IN INK AND STILL THE KINDNESS STICKS. PLEASE ARCH-SCRIBE KILL THE MEMORY WHILE YOU STILL CAN.

"Are you feeling all better now, love?"

Eileen's voice carries with it no urgency, no pressure to respond. It is soft and balanced, not for effect but because that is how she moves through the world. The question floats between them too, warm as a hand offered at the edge of a long fall, and it finds its shape not in correction but in care. She does not say it to make Xozo perform steadiness for anyone else, only to remind her that she is allowed to check in with herself before making room for anyone else.

Xozo answers by adjusting the shawl around her shoulders, Eileen's shawl, worn and cedar scented, carrying the memory of letters never sent and drawers that held things not meant to be forgotten. Xozo's hands curling against the fabric not as a shield, but as a tether and so Xozo's responds with no nod, no statement of clarity. Only a breath that settles into the silence like the first moment after a door has closed on something best left to the imagination of a child.

Together they rise from the bench in the alcove, no longer a part of the ritual space but still within its reach. The noble who had come to retrieve Xozo remains nearby, composed as ever, posture unbroken, eyes carefully cast downward as if by doing so they can hold onto a sense of control. Around the ballroom, small adjustments ripple without overt cause. A hand tightens on a fan. A chair is shifted half an inch closer to its neighbor.

Taking the lead, Eileen leads them away with quiet confidence, her steps unhurried but inevitable. She doesn't look back, doesn't wait for permission, just begins speaking in a voice not quite loud, but easily heard. Her words falling into the air like stones into a pond, casual in tone but purposeful in weight.

"I once made a fruitcake so awful the spirits spat it out," she says as if offering a weather report. "Tried to bribe them too by adding raisins. That was my first mistake. You can insult the dead even when you aren't trying but never try to reconcile the problem with raisins."

The words reach Xozo like a small bell ringing in another room. Her posture straightens, not with tension but with attention. Her footsteps remaing in rhythm with Eileen's but now there is a shift in her face, a small exhale that feels like part of something larger leaving her body.

"That seems like a reasonable line to draw," Xozo says, the corners of her mouth tilting upward though not quite into a smile.

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"Oh, they were furious," Eileen continues, "Left me a note in the ash's of the fireplace. I made a lemon tart to apologize too and then they brought me a shell that hummed in return. Still have it too, right above where I keep the flour.

The ballroom around them is not moving, but it is no longer still either. It listens in its own way to the tale, the court having learned to detect the edges of change not by sound but by weight, and something about this moment is displacing mass in all the wrong places. No one stands to block them though even as many look ready to. They just do not yet know how to act against something so gentle, so forthcoming, so odd.

"You're distracting me," Xozo says softly, though the reprimand doesn't carry any edge.

"I know," Eileen replies. "That's why it's working."

The two of them approach what should be the main exit of the ballroom given the layout of the space, except it is no longer there. The archway that perhaps once led to freedom has been sealed over by the architecture itself, erased with the kind of subtle cruelty reserved for spaces designed to make you feel grateful for your own containment.

Xozo stops short, startled by the wall that should not be. She blinks once, then twice, the shape of betrayal flickering across her face.

"They closed it," Xozo says, quiet and sure, not quite surprised though and not quite afraid, either. Just tired instead in the way that a betrayal revealed makes one tired, tired of interacting with anyone other then oneself.

Unperturbed Eileen doesn't look towards the exit that isn't, the feeling in her stomach has started to return and she can see that direction they face is not the direction her stomach points her in and so she follows her blooming intuition without a word. Xozo following without needing to ask.

Together, they move away from the blank exit and into a stretch of corridor where the ambient hush of nobility turns cold, watchful, and then suddenly restless. Figures too begin to emerge, not entirely shaped and not quite named, but present in the way an old shirt never really disappears. Eileen ignores their presence and so Xozo does too.

Until they round a corner, where the world begins to rearrange itself to accommodate a change in momentum.

A service corridor yawns open just ahead, barely wide enough to contain the overburdened banquet cart shuddering across its entrance. A young server wrestles with it, their grip too loose, their posture half collapsed under the weight of porcelain and obligation. One wheel veers too far to the left, bumping a decorative inlay in the floor a shallow groove carved more by routine than by intention. The cart teeters and the plates lean forward, a breath away from disaster.

But instead of tumbling, the stack shifts. A single dish at the top slides forward by an inch, redistributing the weight. The cart settles and the air hushes still as the server comes to a stop.

Eileen doesn't pause. She steps forward at the precise instant the cart steadies, slipping between wheel and wall like the moment was shaped for her arrival. She wedges her shoulder gently to make room, her shawl trailing over the side as she opens a passage for Xozo to follow her feet quiet and quick, ducking through the seam just before it begins to close.

Eileen gives the server a warm, almost conspiratorial smile, "You're doing a lovely job, dear," she says, voice sweet as a sugar cube. "Don't let the weight of someone else's schedule convince you you're late for your own worth."

And then they leave the ballroom behind them, in silence, leaving the space to its fate.

Coming across the threshold, the mirth of the space they come from vanishes in a moment. Not like something frightened or stolen, but like a document being shelved after review, deliberate, dustless, too real to be accidental. Even turning back only reveals a solid wall with no sign of where they came from, no seam to suggest it had ever opened.

Eileen hums under her breath, just once, just enough to change the temperature of the moment. She looks at Xozo, gently, warmly, ""You ever taken apart a wedding cake Xozo?" Eileen asks, casual like someone commenting on the weather.

Xozo doesn't answer, but she nods slightly. The kind of nod people give when they feign knowledge of something they are worried they don't know. Until the question really hits and Xozo blinks, confused, the question too strange to ignore.

"I mean really disassemble one. Not eat it, not smash it. Just the process of taking it apart, layer by layer, with a knife warmed by the heat of the open oven. You'd be surprised how delicate those things are, the cake I mean. How much structure is just sugar pretending to be strength."

They begin walking slowly, a rhythm forming beneath their feet. Xozo is not quite sure what Eileen is trying to say and so it distract her, the tightness of her arms relaxing by half an inch. It's enough for Eileen to keep going.

"Years ago I used to help the feast organizers with running everything. They always ended with one of those massive cakes, like the ones done in weddings. Meant to impress while never tasting all that good. But the real work of it, always felt like having to cleanly take it apart, piece by piece while everyone is watching you do it. Each of them worried that you'll be the cause of the cakes collapse with no regard as too the pressure it puts you under."

The corridor narrows ahead. The floor beneath them shifts from smooth tile to something patch worked, uneven, older. It feels less like a path and more like a story being remembered mid sentence.

Eileen smiles at the uneven stones. "Most people think you start from the top. Slice down, layer by layer. But no, you begin at the seams. That's where truth lives atleast. Not in the height of life, not in the icing of what people show to the world and in the seams we all hide from each other."

Xozo walks beside her, eyes dim but open. She hears the words without knowing yet how they matter. But she lets them in anyway.

"You know why I'm telling you this?" Eileen asks.

Xozo's voice is soft and hoarse. "No."

"Because that whole ballroom thing?" Eileen gestures vaguely behind her shrugging. "It was all structured to provide no nourishment. And yet despise this, you're still standing and walking alongside me."

"I'm not sure I am," Xozo says, barely audible.

Eileen stops walking. She turns toward her and reaches out, her hand firm, kind. "You're here. That's more than they expected of you and your going to earn for yourself more then any of them could ever dream."

Ahead, a recessed door appears. A maintenance sigil flickers above it like it isn't quite sure what its job is anymore. "I thought I was ready," she whispers. "I thought if I bowed right, if I said the words perfectly..."

"Xozo. The loss of faith in yourself is fabricated, the room was always designed to be like that. You weren't ever meant to win. You were meant to surrender to them.

Xozo closes her eyes.

"But you didn't." Eileen's voice softens further. "You let that special someone deep within you, decide that you could be more then they intended for you to be and that is the most frightening thing you could have showed to them."

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