The chamber is quiet when she enters. She does not announce herself. She simply arrives, the way change arrives — you notice it has already begun.

A fictional character Telling. Meet Belveth.

She sits. The candlelight finds the fractures in her face and fills them gold.

The first figure: "What do you carry into the Lodge?"

"Everything I have not yet put down," she says. "Which is less than it was."

A pause. The scales at her throat catch the light.

The second figure: "What do you want?"

She is quiet for long enough that the question seems to have been absorbed rather than heard.

"To finish," she says at last. "This time."

The third figure says nothing. They have heard this before, from others. They have not heard it from someone who means it this completely.

"Your children came to the door," the first figure says. "Before you arrived."

Something moves across her face. Not softness. Not guilt. Something closer to impatience with a very long inconvenience.

"They always do," she says.

She stands. The gold shifts beneath her skin as she moves — adjusting, pressing, looking for the next crack.

"Let this be the last one," she says, to no one in particular.

She leaves.

The chamber holds the sentence after she goes. The figures do not look at each other. There is nothing useful to say.