Work Text:
The Frostmoon Scion's library was not grand. Just a door at the end of a stone corridor, easy to miss if you didn't know it was there. Nicole knew. She had known since her first visit — the smell of old paper, the particular quiet of a room insulated by books on every wall, the way Nod Krai's winter existed outside it without ever quite getting in.
She came here more than she probably needed to.
She pushed the door open.
And stopped.
Lauma was at the far table.
Nicole hadn't expected that. She stood for a moment just inside the threshold, simply looking — Lauma bent over an open journal, pen moving in slow deliberate strokes, her bangs falling forward the way they always did. A column of pale winter light from the narrow window lay across her page. She looked like someone who belonged entirely to the room she was sitting in.
Nicole moved quietly to the shelves. Pulled a book without reading the title. Sat.
Lauma looked up.
"Welcome." Her voice was even, unhurried. A small smile. "You came again today." A pause. "Could it be that you're bored?"
No.
She sent it cleanly, directly — and her face said the same thing, eyebrows lifting, something briefly earnest in her expression. The look of someone who wants to be understood correctly.
Lauma's expression softened.
"Don't worry." She glanced back down at her journal. "I'm happy you came. I'm writing at the moment — please, enjoy your time."
I like books, Nicole sent back, settled. That's why I'm here.
A beat of quiet.
She opened her book.
And then, under that, not sent — kept low, kept still, kept entirely her own:
...There might also be another reason.
She turned a page she wasn't reading.
The feeling had no name yet. She had been carrying it for a while now — patient, unnamed, present the way things are when you can't stay busy enough to miss them. She had tried to find the right word for it more than once. She hadn't found one.
What she had found, instead, was this library. This chair. This particular quality of quiet.
I wonder, she thought, carefully unsent — how she would feel. If she knew.
She kept her eyes on her page.
Miss Lauma.
That one she held close. Didn't let it move.
She glanced up.
Lauma had stopped writing. Head bowed, rereading something, her bangs falling forward — curtaining her expression, leaving only the line of her jaw, the faint press of her lips. The candle between them held its flame without flickering.
Nicole looked at her.
And then — without deciding to, without quite knowing she was doing it — she reached across the small distance between them and brushed Lauma's bangs aside with the tips of her fingers.
Gently. Just enough to see her face.
Please look at me—
She caught it. Pulled it back. Too late or not at all, she wasn't sure.
Her hand stayed there, at the edge of Lauma's hair, having not retreated.
Tell me the name of this. I've been carrying it and I don't know what it is. I think you might.
That one she didn't catch in time.
Lauma's pen had gone still.
She turned her head — slowly, the way someone turns when they already know what they'll find. Nicole's hand still there. Their eyes meeting.
Lauma's eyes were wide. Something moved through them — unguarded, unscripted. And Nicole couldn't name that either, which felt, given everything, deeply unfair.
A beat.
"Ah." Small. Helpless. "...Nicole?"
The blush rose across Lauma's face and stayed. Nicole felt her own answer it, all at once, unstoppable.
Her hand dropped.
She was on her feet.
I'm going home.
Sent before she could stop it. She was already half-turned toward the door —
A hand caught her wrist.
Quiet. Not urgent. Just present.
Nicole stopped.
She stood half-turned, unable to complete either direction. The candle behind her. The open journal. The narrow winter light. The hand, not letting go.
The silence had a particular quality. Not uncomfortable — more like the moment just before something is said that can't be unsaid, and both people know it, and neither is rushing it.
"Nicole."
Her name, said carefully.
She waited.
"...Tomorrow." A pause with something tender in it. "Will you come here again?"
Not certainty. A door left slightly open.
Nicole turned her head. Not fully. Enough.
...Yes.
Quiet. Certain.
A breath.
"I'll wait for you."
The hand released. Two hands came apart.
Nicole walked to the door. She did not look back. She pushed it open and stepped into the stone corridor, and Nod Krai's cold met her, thorough and familiar.
The door swung closed.
She walked with her book still under her arm.
Somewhere in her chest the feeling sat — still without a name, still patient. But different than it had been an hour ago. Not resolved. Not gone.
Just — heard.
She thought she might ask Lauma what it was called.
Tomorrow.