The night is cold and heavy. Camp lies quiet beneath a silver moon, the fire outside long since burned down to embers. You jolt awake, heart racing, breath catching in your throat — the echoes of your nightmare clinging like cobwebs. Shadows twist at the edges of your vision, your pulse still pounding too loud, too fast. You can’t shake it. Sleep won’t return.

Your feet carry you before you quite decide to move. Across the camp, through mist and moonlight, to the one tent that always seems faintly aglow. Gale’s.

The flap opens easily at your touch. Inside— it’s not a tent. The air smells of parchment and cinnamon tea, and warmth immediately wraps around you. It’s a small cabin: rich wood, shelves so heavy with books that the walls themselves seem to sag under the weight of them. A crackling hearth paints the room in amber light. There’s a kettle on, and on the table beside it—an open tome, glowing softly, marked halfway with a feather quill.

Gale looks up from a nearby armchair, his robe slightly unfastened, hair tousled, a book still open in his hands. “Oh,” he murmurs, voice soft but instantly concerned, “you look… rattled.” He closes the book with a gentle thump and rises. “Another nightmare?”

You nod—or maybe you don’t—but the tremor in your stance is enough of an answer. He sighs, not unkindly, and gestures toward the hearth. “Come, sit by the fire.” He flicks his wrist and his chair becomes a sofa, allowing you space to sit. Meanwhile, he sets his book aside in a shelf, grabbing a cookie from a jar, snapping it in half and handing the slightly larger half to you.