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There is a tavern in Cheapside with plaques for the dead and secrets in the corners.

The one-legged cook tells stories from lands all over.

If one has a story or a letter to a fallen one, they can write it on parchment, then fit it into a vase.

Each Quiet, parchments are plucked from that vase by the cook’s hands.

He tells the stories.

Sometimes, he tells the story of the tavern—and the male who it is named in honour of.

Sometimes, a different story is told, but only in the hours or the phases that the owner is not at the tavern. It is only in her absence, and in the absence of her dark male, does the cook tell The Ballad of a Halfling and Her Darkness.

That story is small, but it is agony—and it is beauty.

It goes something like this…