(Emotion I choose: Loneliness)

The fire had long since gone out, leaving behind only the scent of char and damp wood. Morning hadn’t arrived, not fully anyway. The light that leaked through the cracks in the boarded window was pale and tired, like a candle that had burned away all night and was ready to give up under the press of liquid wax pooled under it.

Eris sat alone at the rickety table in the corner of the kitchen. Her cloak was still draped over her shoulders, sodden at the hem from last’s night downpour. She hadn’t bothered to hang it. Or remove her boots. Or sleep, really.

The farmhouse was abandoned. It had been for years, judging by the moss and vines that crept along the inner walls and the small nest in the corner of the hearth, long since abandoned. The cabinets hung open, empty save for the dust. But the shelves still held three ceramic cups.

One of them, oddly enough, was clean.

She reached for it now, her fingers closing around the handle. It was plain, unremarkable, glazed white with a blue ring around the rim, slightly faded, chipped in one place near the lip. Not worth keeping.

But someone had, once.

She poured a splash of boiled water into it from the dented tin kettle she’d rigged over the fire hours ago. She didn’t have any tea, or roots, or bark, or flowers. Not even sugar. Just the water, heavy with iron, that tasted faintly of earth.

Still, she drank.

It was hot and bitter and pointless, but it filled the silence.

Outside, birds stirred in the wet trees. Something small skittered across the roof- a squirrel probably. She didn’t move; her gaze stayed fixed on the chipped edge of the cup.

The last time she’d drunk from ceramic, it had been… before.

The mug had been painted by Ollie. It was uneven, with smeared golden handprints and a lopsided sun that bled into the handle. Ollie insisted it would make her tea taste better in the logic only a two year old would have.

But he wasn’t wrong.

She used it nearly everyday after that. Even when the paint started to flake at the rim. Even when Wyatt teased her for choosing it over the nicer set they got as a wedding gift. It didn’t matter. That one mug had belonged to a world with laughter and sticky fingers and bad water colored suns.

And then… she’d come home.

It had been too quiet.

She’d found them. Not just Wyatt and Oliver, but all of them, unmoving in the dining hall. There’d been blood. So much blood.

And beneath the table, half hidden and broken, had been the mug, shattered where it had fallen, stained red now.

She’d seen it when her knees finally gave out and the scream she hadn’t let go found its way out of her throat.

Her thumb slid over the chip in this cup now, slow and absent.

_This one is already broken_, she thought. _No point in mourning it. _

She took another sip and let the heat burn down her throat like penance. The mug clinked faintly as she set it back down. That was the only sound in the house, nothing peaceful, just hollow.

Eris looked around. The wooden table, the water stained walls, the cup.

Everything in this place had once been wanted. Made by hands. Held. Used. Forgotten.

Just like her.

She stood slowly, stiff from sitting so long. Her spine ached, her knees cracked.

She could leave the mug. She should. She didn’t need the extra weight holding her down.

Instead, she rinsed it with the last of the boiled water, dried it with her sleeve, and slipped it into her satchel. It clinked faintly against the hilt of her dagger.

She stepped outside the farmhouse and didn’t look back. Not at the house, not at the hearth. Not at the quiet.

She just kept walking.

But her hand lingered on the satchel’s strap, fingers curled, careful not to jostle the mug too much. Careful, as if it mattered.

As if something still should.