Giver's Soft Wood Torch

Giver's Soft Wood Torch sits in my gloved hand, a pale, honeyed cylinder whose surface is sanded to a whisper of satin, the grain curling like a quiet map from a forest long passed. A thin strip of hide wraps the top and bottom, securing a small brass sigil that gleams whenever a flame breathes to life, and the flame itself flickers with a tempered patience, as if it remembers every doorstep it ever warmed. The head is lacquered in a soft amber glow, not harsh but kind, the kind of light that softens worry and makes strangers look more like neighbors. It feels light enough to carry, sturdy enough to be pressed into service, and in the right hands its warmth becomes an argument for staying a little longer in a village doorway rather than rushing on. Lore clings to it like a shared tale at a hearth. It’s said to be carved by a healer who fed a famine with the kindness of strangers, then gifted torches to travelers so no one would walk the dark alone. The Giver’s name on the brass sigil is less a maker’s mark than a promise, a reminder that light is a shared labor. Some say the wood is chosen for its resilience, as if the tree itself agreed to endure rain and wind so that someone else could see their way home. Others whisper that the torch remembers the smile of the first person who lit it, and that smile travels forward each time the flame is reignited, linking borrower and giver across nights and miles. In practice, the torch is more than a simple light source; it’s a portable relic of trust. When the path forks between two villages and the night presses in, a Giver’s torch can turn an alley into a safe corridor, its glow thinning the shadows that might hide a stray wolf or a wary scavenger. It’s used to mark camp for the night, to signal safe routes along a caravan’s line of march, and to ward off the fatigue that settles into shoulders and backs after a long day of winding trails. In the field, it doubles as a quiet invitation: stay a while, share a meal, help a neighbor find their way to the next outpost. I learned its market life the hard way, wandering from camp to wagon and stall to stall, listening to talk as much as coins. At the Saddlebag Exchange, where traders anchor their wares with careful hands and eyes that read wind and weather, a vendor weighed the torch against a handful of cord and a scrap of cloth, the price hovering just shy of a couple of silver in good light. The exchange wasn’t a grand auction but a steady rhythm of value traded for shelter and tales, and the Giver’s torch moved within that rhythm as if it belonged there from the start. The glow it offers is more than warmth; it is a thread that ties a traveler to a village, a story to a street, a night to a morning. By dawn the torch rests once more in a pocket or a hand, waiting to illuminate the next crossing, the next door, the next person who needs a way through the dark.