The Quarry's Depth
Chapter 17 of 7 Gifts & 7 Letters
Morning arrived in Alden Village with unusual brilliance, sunlight streaming through the inn's small window to paint golden rectangles across Elias's bed. He woke gradually, momentarily disoriented by the familiar yet strange surroundings—the simple wooden furniture, the faint scent of pine smoke, the distant sounds of the village coming to life. This was not the remote silence of Caedmon's hills nor the constant bustle of Varlind, but the rhythmic, predictable pulse of the place he had called home for his entire life.
The wooden box waited on the bedside table, glowing with subtle anticipation in the morning light. When Elias placed his hand upon it, the warmth that greeted his touch carried an unspoken urgency. The fourth letter could not be delayed much longer. He ran his fingers over the surface, feeling the patterns that had deepened overnight—hands and stone tools now more defined, like carvings rather than mere suggestions.
Rising, he moved to the window, gazing out at a village transformed by the changing sky. What had been a band of blue surrounded by grayness when he first departed now dominated the heavens, the gray retreating to the furthest horizons like the remnants of a fading dream. The color above seemed almost liquid in its vibrancy, as if the sky itself had become an ocean suspended over their heads.
Villagers paused in their morning routines to look upward, conversations clearly centered on the transformation. Some pointed with expressions of wonder, others gathered in small groups, heads tilted back in shared amazement. Elders gestured emphatically, likely recounting stories passed down from their grandparents about how the sky had appeared before the colors faded. Children spun in circles beneath the blueness, arms outstretched as if to catch its essence. None could ignore the transformation, though Elias doubted any connected it to his journey or the letters he carried.
The silver compass pulled insistently when he checked it, still pointing toward his father's cottage. Yet Elias found himself unable to face that confrontation directly, at least not yet. Better to find his father at the quarry first, to observe him in the element that had defined him for decades. Understanding should precede expression; seeing should come before speaking.
"A slight detour," he told the wooden box as he secured it in his satchel. "But still moving toward the purpose."
The box seemed to accept this decision, settling against his side with neither approval nor discontent. The journey of gratitude could not be forced, even as it could not be abandoned.
The path to the quarry wound along the northern edge of the village before ascending the sloping hillside. Elias walked it slowly, reacquainting himself with landmarks that had become invisible through familiarity. The gnarled oak where children still played as he once had, its branches more vibrant with spring growth than he remembered. The small shrine where villagers left offerings for good fortune, its stones catching the morning light with unexpected warmth. The narrow stream that provided fresh water even in the driest months, its surface now sparkling with reflected blue rather than mirroring endless gray.
All appeared subtly different now, vivid in ways he couldn't quite define. Colors seemed deeper, edges sharper, textures more intricate. Whether the change lay in the quality of light from the transformed sky or in his own perception, Elias couldn't say. Perhaps both had altered together, inner and outer worlds responding to the same restoration.
"Elias!" The call came from Marta, tending her herb garden as he passed. "The sky—have you ever seen anything like it? The elders say it's returning to how it was in the before-times."
"It's beautiful," he agreed, pausing briefly beside her gate.
"They say it started changing the day you left," she continued, eyes narrowing with curious assessment. "First just a touch of blue above the eastern horizon, then spreading day by day. Now you return, and the blue grows stronger. Coincidence, do you think?"
The wooden box warmed against his side, but Elias offered only a noncommittal smile. "The world holds many mysteries, Marta. I'm just grateful to witness this one."
"You're different," she observed, her gaze uncomfortably perceptive. "Something's changed in you too. Your eyes don't look through everything anymore."
Before she could probe further, he continued on his way, aware that such conversations would multiply as villagers noticed both his return and the accelerating changes overhead. Questions would follow him throughout Alden—about where he had gone, what he had seen, why the sky transformed in his absence and intensified upon his return. Explanations would need to come eventually, but not before he completed the fourth letter. Not before he understood its purpose fully himself.
The quarry came into view as he crested the final rise, a great bite taken from the hillside where generations of stonecutters had extracted the pale limestone that built Alden and many surrounding communities. From this vantage point, Elias could observe the entire operation—the carved terraces descending in precise levels, the teams of men working with tools that had changed little over centuries, the ox-drawn carts being loaded with cut blocks for transport.
And there, on the third level down, the unmistakable figure of his father. Even at a distance, Tormund's form was distinctive—broad-shouldered despite his advancing years, movements economical and precise, his entire being centered in the ancient dialogue between man and stone.
Elias found a sheltered position where he could watch without being immediately noticed. The compass in his pocket vibrated against his thigh, confirming that he moved in the right direction, if not yet to the final destination. The wooden box, too, seemed patient now, as if understanding the necessity of this observation.
For more than an hour, Elias watched his father work. Tormund's expertise was evident in every movement—the way he studied each stone before touching it, fingers tracing invisible fault lines only he could sense. His perfect balance as he positioned himself for maximum leverage with minimum strain. The almost tender precision with which he set chisel to limestone, finding the exact point where the stone would yield to his intention rather than fracture against its own nature.
This was not mere labor but a relationship, a conversation conducted through touch and pressure and understanding accumulated over decades. When Tormund turned a block to examine its newly revealed face, his expression softened momentarily into something close to reverence—as if greeting an old friend rather than an inanimate object.
Such moments of connection had always been there, Elias realized, but he had never truly seen them. He had observed only the outer form of his father's work—the dust, the fatigue, the relentless repetition—without recognizing the depth of communion beneath these surfaces.
Something shifted in Elias's perception as the morning advanced. He had always seen his father's quarry work as a burden, a necessary but joyless task that had consumed him after Elias's mother died. Yet watching now with eyes sharpened by his journey, he recognized something he had missed—a quiet dignity in Tormund's communion with stone, a centered peace in his methodical progress, perhaps even moments of transcendence in the perfect marriage of intention and execution.
More striking was the physical cost visible in his father's body. When had Tormund's hair become so completely gray? When had his shoulders, once seemingly indestructible, begun to round beneath invisible weight? His back now curved slightly from decades of bending to the stone, straightening fully only with visible effort when he paused to wipe sweat from his brow.
His hands, even from this distance, showed the permanent alterations of his craft—enlarged knuckles swollen by inflammation never given time to fully heal. Fingers slightly twisted from fractures imperfectly mended. A barely perceptible tremor when at rest that disappeared entirely when working, as if the stone itself steadied him. The skin, once uniformly callused, now patched with thinner areas where age had begun to reclaim what decades of labor had built.
These were not merely the marks of age but the record of sacrifice written in flesh and bone. Each curve and callus represented years of labor undertaken not for himself but for his family—for Elias, who had benefited from that toil while simultaneously resenting it for claiming so much of his father's life and attention.
The realization struck him with unexpected force. His father had not chosen silence over communication; he had chosen provision over ease. The limited words between them were not absence of feeling but channeling of energy toward what Tormund saw as his primary responsibility—ensuring his son never faced material want, whatever other lacks might exist between them.
The truth of their relationship was written not in conversations they never had but in the body that now moved below him—a testament to decades of faithful service, of showing love through endurance rather than eloquence.
As midday approached and workers began gathering for their meal break, Elias descended partially into the quarry, stopping at an abandoned cutting station on an upper level. Here, fine stone dust covered everything—the cutting bench, the discarded tools, the ground itself. This dust, the most elemental form of the stone that had sustained generations of Alden's families, represented both the village's foundation and its limitation.
Elias knelt, running his fingers through the powder, feeling its texture—neither fully solid nor truly liquid, an intermediate state that seemed appropriate for the transformation he now undertook. He gathered some of the pale powder into a small pouch he drew from his pack, hands moving with unexpected reverence.
Something about this act felt right—using the material of his father's lifelong work to write words that might finally bridge the silence between them. The golden pen had drawn truth from him with Lucinda, Darian, and Caedmon; perhaps with his father, it needed this physical connection to the subject to unlock the deeper gratitude that surely existed beneath years of misunderstanding.
As he collected the dust, memories surfaced of his father teaching him to recognize quality stone—how the sound of a knuckle tapped against its surface revealed hidden flaws, how the faintest variations in color indicated structural differences invisible to untrained eyes. Those rare moments of direct instruction had been Tormund's version of storytelling, passing knowledge rather than emotion, craft rather than sentiment.
The wooden box seemed to approve of the gathering, its warmth increasing as he secured the pouch of stone dust alongside it. The compass, too, adjusted slightly, its needle now pointing directly to where Tormund sat among his fellow workers, sharing a simple meal from a cloth-wrapped package. Even in this brief rest, his father sat slightly apart from the others—present but self-contained, part of the community yet somehow distinct within it.
Elias should approach now, make his presence known, begin the conversation that would inevitably lead to the reading of the letter not yet written. Logic dictated this direct path. Yet he found himself retreating instead, climbing back toward the village, the pouch of stone dust a reassuring weight alongside the wooden box.
Some preparations couldn't be rushed. Some truths required proper soil in which to grow. The letter to his father would emerge not from obligation but from genuine recognition, and that required time to crystallize, just as limestone itself formed through processes that couldn't be hurried.
Elias spent the afternoon in his small room at the inn, the wooden box open before him, the fourth parchment laid out beside the pouch of stone dust. The patterns on the parchment had developed further—images of hands shaped by labor, stone tools worn to perfect fit, a table that seemed somehow both broken and whole simultaneously.
The golden feather pen waited, its subtle glow reflecting off the pale dust he had gathered. Elias lifted it, feeling the now-familiar warmth against his fingers, and tried to begin the letter.
"Dear Father," he thought, directing his intention toward the parchment. Nothing appeared. The pen remained dry against the surface.
"I am grateful for your provision," he tried again. Still nothing.
"Thank you for your years of hard work to support our family." Not even a mark.
Frustration rose within him. This pattern had repeated with each letter—the initial inability to transcribe superficial sentiment, the requirement to find deeper, more genuine appreciation. But with Lucinda, Darian, and Caedmon, he had begun with clear feelings, however complex. With his father, he faced a relationship defined by what remained unspoken, by emotions never given voice.
How could he find genuine gratitude within that silence?
Elias set the pen down and closed his eyes, searching for truth beneath layers of habitual thought. Images came—not the grand gestures of typical parental mythology, but smaller moments he had overlooked or misinterpreted for years.
His father's hands, raw from a day's cutting, carefully splinting Elias's broken wrist after a childhood fall. Those powerful fingers, capable of breaking stone, working with improbable gentleness to ease his pain. No words of comfort had been spoken, but the touch itself had communicated care beyond language.
The extra portion of meat that somehow always appeared on Elias's plate during lean seasons, though he never saw his father reduce his own. The way Tormund would claim to have eaten earlier when supplies ran low, the hollowness in his cheeks belying the casual assertion.
The night after his mother's funeral, when Elias had woken to find Tormund sitting silently beside his bed, not speaking but simply present, maintaining watch until dawn. His father's face in the faint moonlight had revealed grief too profound for words, yet he had remained upright, vigilant, refusing to burden his son with the weight of his own sorrow.
The collection of his childhood drawings kept in a box beneath his father's bed, discovered by accident while searching for an extra blanket—creations Elias himself had forgotten, preserved with surprising care. Little sketches of imagined buildings, fanciful creatures, stories illustrated in crude lines—evidence that Tormund had valued expressions his son had assumed went unnoticed.
The way Tormund had never voiced objection to Elias's dreams of writing and creation, even while the practical demands of village life had eventually worn those aspirations away. No encouragement had been offered, but neither had there been disparagement—a significant restraint in a community that generally viewed artistic pursuits as impractical indulgence.
None of these memories contained spoken affirmation or demonstrated emotional fluency. Yet each, viewed now through eyes no longer clouded by expectation of what love should look like, revealed care expressed through action rather than words, commitment manifested in presence rather than declaration.
"Your love was in your callused hands," Elias whispered, opening his eyes to find the pen glowing more brightly in response to this recognition. "Your devotion was in your bent back. Your hopes for me were in the limitations you accepted for yourself."
This was the beginning of genuine gratitude—not for the father he had wished for, who might have spoken the words his heart craved to hear, but for the father he actually had, who had shown love through the constancy of his provision, the reliability of his presence, the quiet dignity with which he bore responsibilities that never eased.
The wooden box pulsed with what felt like approval, the patterns on the parchment growing more distinct. Not yet ready for writing, but closer now. The understanding had begun to form, like stone dust mixed with water, taking shape beneath careful hands.
Tomorrow, Elias would seek his father not at the quarry but at home, the place where their most significant silences had accumulated. There, with new perception, he would find the words the golden pen would accept—words of gratitude for a love expressed not through eloquence but endurance, not through verbal affirmation but faithful presence.
The most difficult letter was taking shape within him, carved slowly but with growing purpose, like stone revealing its essential nature beneath a craftsman's patient hands.🦉