CHAPTER 86: DEAR ASHRING: YOU HAVE MAIL

We’d just finished reattaching the last roof tile (which Splitjaw swore was going to stay up this time, despite the entire right side being propped with a broom and a questionable chunk of resin) when the kid appeared. I say "kid," but he was maybe fourteen, the kind of age where you think a good pair of boots means you’ll never trip again and then immediately do just that, face-first, in front of the entire Ashring team.

He landed at my feet. Dust everywhere. The roof tile wobbled. Embergleam caught it without looking. The rest of the village stopped pretending to work and stared.

I peered down. "You alright?"

He spat out a pebble. "Yeah! Yes. Sorry, um... are you—the Ashring?"

Splitjaw loomed behind me, arms folded. "Depends. Are you here to join, or are you selling potatoes?"

The kid went pink. "Neither! I mean, both? I mean—I have a bag for you. From Elm Hollow. And maybe from Maplebend too. And, uh, somewhere called Bent Row. Everyone said you’d want it."

He hauled a canvas sack from his back. It was almost as big as him and twice as lumpy. He shoved it at me like it was about to bite. I took it. The sack made a suspicious clinking sound.

Embergleam stepped in. "What is it?"

"Letters!" the kid said. "And notes. And, uh... drawings. And a charm bracelet but that might actually belong to my cousin." He shrugged, sheepish.

Splitjaw grinned. "Fan mail? Never got that before."

Quicktongue had already sidled up, claws twitching with curiosity. "Wait, wait—people actually wrote to us? That’s a first. I thought they mostly threw rocks."

Chaos plucked a note from the top and squinted at the loopy handwriting. "No rocks. But possibly rocks painted like us. This one’s titled ’To The Mighty Fire Lizard and Her Friends, from Brackenvale’s Third Best Scribe.’" He read it aloud, and I had to bite back a laugh when it turned out to be a request for help retrieving a missing pig. With a diagram.

The kid bounced on his toes, proud. "Everyone’s been passing stuff along since... well, since you started showing up. We didn’t know where to send them, so we just kept adding to the bag. Guild runners, travelers, anyone going west. Elm Hollow got most of it. But then I heard you were here, so I brought it myself."

I rummaged through the sack. Paper, bark, waxed scraps of cloth, even a chunk of slate with a message scratched in charcoal. Some were neatly folded, others were wadded into little disaster balls.

Splitjaw held up a bundle. "This one smells like onions."

Embergleam plucked a dried flower from another. "This one is a poem. Sort of."

Quicktongue pored over the pile, eyes wide. "Some of these are weeks old. That means... people kept writing. Even when we weren’t here."

That hit me. Not hard, just odd. We’d spent so long running to disasters, I never thought anyone was paying attention in between. Or that anyone would bother to say something after.

The kid looked nervous now, like he’d brought a cursed object. "Sorry, if this is too much. I can just—"

"No," I said. "This is... great. Unexpected, but great. Thank you."

He grinned, relief obvious. "My aunt said if you fix the water pump, she’ll write a real thank you. With her own hands and everything."

Splitjaw knelt down, suddenly gentle. "Kid, tell your aunt that if she can fix that soup recipe, I’ll write her a thank you."

He beamed.

A few villagers hovered nearby, pretending to sweep or sort bundles of straw but really listening in. One of them edged closer and dropped a small pouch on the pile. "Someone from Fernpath sent that yesterday. Said you’d saved their goats."

I blinked. "I’ve never seen a goat in Fernpath."

Quicktongue shrugged. "Might’ve been the rumor patrol. Or a different Ashring."

Chaos examined a woodcut drawing of—presumably—me, except I looked about four feet taller and was riding what appeared to be a bear with a hat. "I vote we make this our new banner."

Embergleam smirked.

We spread the letters out on the sun-warmed stones. Some were only a few words—"Thank you for the fence," "Are you the real Ashring or the fake one?" "Do you want eggs?"—while others told short stories. Once, in the middle of the stack, we found a tightly rolled scrap that just read, "Keep going. We see you."

For a moment, no one said anything.

Then Splitjaw clapped her hands. "Alright, we’re making an answer pile! You don’t leave the square until you write back to at least one."

Groans, protests, laughter.

But nobody left.

We sat, sunlight pooling between us, and read every word. The kid watched, grinning, until someone called him for dinner.

When he left, he waved so hard he tripped over a dog.

I watched him go.

This—this was new. Didn’t know what to do with it.

So I read another letter.

And found myself smiling.

The kid was gone, but the square never emptied.

News spreads fast when you’re the fire-bringers, the monster-chasers, the ones whose names travel further than your feet ever will. I don’t know who sent word, but soon people from three villages out were trickling in. Not all at once. In twos, in fives. Some carried bundles of what looked like payment—old cheese, dried fish, the world’s saddest cabbage. Others just came to look.

They came with stories.

A woman from Maplebend pressed a hand-stitched square into Splitjaw’s palm and burst into tears about her daughter’s fever, how Ashring’s runner brought the right leaf bundle in the night. A little girl from Bent Row tugged on Quicktongue’s sleeve and whispered that her grandpa said the "ash kobolds" scared off bandits just by walking down the road.

An old man in a patched vest pushed a basket of chestnuts into Embergleam’s hands and told her, seriously, that he’d seen a fake Ashring squad try to set up a fort, but "they didn’t have the eyes for it." He looked at us like we were supposed to understand.

Embergleam just smiled, soft around the edges, and I swear the old man’s back straightened an inch.

By sunset, the square looked less like a relief camp and more like a festival nobody had planned. There was singing. Someone passed around soup so thin it was basically a dare, and Splitjaw declared it a "soulful broth" and downed it in one gulp. Kids circled Chaos, asking for stories about the "monster with three knees and a pinecone for a head."

Quicktongue read every letter aloud that looked like it might make someone laugh. The ones that didn’t, she folded carefully and slid into a pouch for "later, when the night gets cold."

I sat against a fence post, legs stretched out, just watching. It felt... impossible, almost. We were Ashring. Survivors, builders, trouble magnets. Most days it felt like every new problem was just a sequel to the last disaster.

Villagers kept coming up, offering thanks that made no sense. "You saved our wheat." "You fixed the bell." "You taught the kids to make rope." Half the time I didn’t even remember doing it. Maybe I hadn’t. Maybe someone had borrowed our name.

Did it matter? I didn’t think so.

Splitjaw was collecting bribes. "Eggs for a roof patch. Chestnuts for a wrestling demonstration. Who’s next?" Embergleam sat nearby, her smile calm, letting children braid tiny wildflowers into her sleeves.

Quicktongue drifted over, her arms full of folded notes. "Did you see this one?" She handed me a slip of bark, small, writing almost too faint to see.

I squinted. The message was short.

"Ashring is a seed. The roots spread."

I frowned. "Who sent this?"

She shook her head. "Anonymous. Found it in the bottom of the bag."

Chaos wandered up, arms full of soup bowls. "Somebody just traded me a carrot for my shoes. Do I look like a person with spare shoes?"

Splitjaw wandered over, arms loaded with so many "thank you" baskets he looked like a one-man market. He dumped them at my feet, sat, and let out a sigh that could have cracked stone. "This is weird," he said. "I like it. But it’s weird."

Quicktongue smirked. "Don’t get used to it. By sunrise, half of these people will think we caused the last monster attack just so we could look good fixing it."

We all laughed, and for a long minute, there was only that—no fear, no orders, no waiting for the next emergency.

Someone set a lantern at the edge of the square. The light was warm, gentle. Kids threw pebbles at the fence post, missing more often than not. The old man with the chestnuts asked Chaos to tell one more story, and like always, he didn’t refuse.

I looked down at the bark slip again. "Ashring is a seed. The roots spread."

That sounded... ok.

Not dramatic. Not heroic.

Just true.

There was a sound—soft, not urgent—at the edge of the crowd. A woman from Elm Hollow, the one with the stitched hands, offered us a last bundle of dried herbs. "For the road," she said. "So you come back."

Embergleam took it, voice quiet. "We will."

Quicktongue nudged me, half-whispered, "You’re smiling."

I shook my head, but didn’t argue.

Splitjaw leaned back, arms behind his head, and stared at the sky. "Hey, boss. What do you do with all this?"

I didn’t answer right away. There was too much—too many names, too many faces, too much noise and hope all tangled together.

The last stragglers left at dusk. The soup was gone. The letters were packed away. We built a small fire and sat close, as if the night would ask us for proof of who we were.

Quicktongue was already writing back to someone—her script quick and messy. Embergleam sorted through the pouches, finding treats to stash for later. Chaos snored, already half-asleep against a basket of onions. Splitjaw kept talking about wrestling the "mayor’s goat" for next year’s harvest rights.

And me? I read the last letter. The anonymous one. The writing was... strange. Familiar and not. I couldn’t tell if it was meant for us or for anyone. But it said something simple:

If you’re reading this, you kept going. So will we.

I tucked it away with the others.

Let the fire burn low.

Tomorrow, there’d be another crisis. Another monster, another mimic, another broken roof.

But tonight? Tonight we can rest.

Ashring, in letters. In soup. In roots.

And in us.