Strong Soft Wood Torch of Air

Strong Soft Wood Torch of Air rests in my palm, its shaft a pale, perfectly smooth piece of soft wood that gleams with a thin sheen of beeswax and resin. The grain runs like a map of wind-swept rivers, and the carved runes along the handle spiral in and out of focus, little gusts of sign language that promise what the flame might do. The head is wrapped in a narrow braid of hemp, a small bronze cap where the wick sits, and the whole thing feels surprisingly hefty for something designed to burn with such ease. When you lift it, the texture shifts—smooth where your fingertips press, slightly tacky where the oil and resin gather—and you sense a quiet confidence, as if the wood itself has learned to stand up to a storm. The flame that cheers from the wick is not a ferocious blaze but a steady, breathing glow. It glows with the cool, pale warmth of dawn over a quiet hillside, the kind that makes shadows step back rather than swallow light. The air here seems to carry a soft rumor of pressure changes, and the torch’s glow hangs in the air like a small, sentient thing, giving you a sense of guidance more than illumination. The Strong Soft Wood Torch of Air carries, in its name and its feel, a promise: light when you need it, and a wind at your back when you don’t. lore says it was gifted to scouts by a wind priest who believed light should never abandon a traveler to dark alleys or cliff-sides, and that a flame so tempered by air would not be easily snuffed by a careless gust. In practice, the torch feels like a companion on a larger journey. In damp caves where water trade routes cross, the flame’s breath can coax a draft to clear smoke from a hidden tunnel’s mouth, revealing a barely visible seam in the stone or a slivered passage behind a waterfall. It isn’t just about seeing; it’s about listening to the world. The flame seems to tilt toward the path it wants you to take, the air around it swerving to guide your steps. When the caravan camps beneath a storm-laden sky, the torch doubles as a small beacon for distant sentries, its glow a thread that others can follow through rain and mud. And when you need to dry a soaked map or warm cold fingers, the resin-leaf scent of the wood fills the air with an old, homely memory of hearth-light and shared bread. Pricing, of course, belongs to markets and the careful exchanges of travelers. I learned this the hard way among stacks of wagons and crates at Saddlebag Exchange, where prices drift like dust in a sunbeam. A near-new Strong Soft Wood Torch of Air could fetch a silver coin or two, depending on its wear and the vendor’s mood; a scarred but still faithful torch went for less, perhaps copper coins and a cautious nod. The stallkeeper spoke of a steady demand from scouts and river pilots, people who trust wind and light in equal measure. It felt fitting—the world trade of wind and flame, economies built on the promise that a single torch can bend a night into a corridor of possibility. So I carried it onward, this quiet, wind-tinged thing, the air around it lifting slightly as if in approval. The night opened, and with it the map of the world grew a little more reachable, one breath, one flame, one step at a time.