Things Too Common to Notice
A waterskin, half-full. A vial with a single sip left. Crumbs in a cloth bundle, a candle stub, a key with no door. These are not relics or weapons. They carry no enchantments, no prophecies. And yet, they are the things most touched, most used, most needed. The mundane. The overlooked. The quietly vital.
These objects fill the space between great deeds. They keep the hungry fed, the lost moving, and the desperate just barely alive. A worn map, a lucky charm, a copper coin smoothed by countless hands. Simple things, but ask any survivor what mattered—and these are what they name.
He stumbled behind the fallen tree, clutching the stone tight. Blood soaked his shirt. "It’s not enough," he muttered, teeth clenched. The gem pulsed in his hand—warm, almost eager. He pressed it to the wound. It hissed, then melted, flooding his body with heat. His breath caught. The pain vanished. Then a voice whispered, low and wrong:* "You owe me that."
She crouched beside the root, breath misting in the night air. It pulsed faintly, glowing against the moss. "It’s real," she whispered, fingertips brushing its surface. Warm. Alive.
She bit into it before she could change her mind. The taste was sweet—too sweet. Her back arched. Something shifted. "Oh," she gasped, hand trembling. "Oh gods… it’s happening."
Ordinary tools for extraordinary days.