The Restored Table
Chapter 19 of 7 Gifts & 7 Letters
The door opened slowly, revealing Tormund silhouetted against the warm light of the cottage interior. For a moment, father and son regarded each other in silence, rain creating a curtain of silver between them. Tormund's expression remained carefully neutral, though his eyes widened slightly at the sight of his son standing drenched on the threshold.
"Elias." Not a question or an exclamation, simply an acknowledgment of presence.
"Father." Elias nodded, the wooden box warm against his side beneath his wet cloak. "May I come in?"
Tormund stepped aside without word, his movements economical as always. Inside, the cottage smelled of woodsmoke and the herbs his mother had once dried in bundles from the ceiling beams—rosemary, sage, lavender. Though years had passed since her death, Tormund had maintained this small tradition, as if preserving her presence through these familiar scents.
Elias stood dripping on the entry mat, suddenly aware of how long he had been gone—not just the weeks of his journey to Lucinda, Darian, and Caedmon, but the years he had been absent even while physically present, retreated into his own silent resignation that mirrored his father's.
"Didn't expect you back so soon," Tormund said, moving to the hearth where a kettle steamed. "Heard you'd left with no word."
"There were things I needed to find," Elias replied, removing his wet cloak and hanging it by the door. "People I needed to see."
Tormund nodded once, accepting this minimal explanation as sufficient. He poured hot water over dried mint leaves, the scent rising to fill the small room. His hands, Elias noticed with fresh perception, trembled slightly with the effort of controlling the heavy kettle—those powerful hands that had shaped stone for decades now betraying the cost of such labor.
"The rain's good," Tormund offered, setting a steaming mug before Elias as he took a seat at the family table. "Fields need it."
The table drew Elias's attention fully now—the solid oak surface scarred by decades of daily use, burns from hot pots, cuts from countless meals prepared, stains from spilled wine and children's experiments. At its center, a hairline crack ran the length of the main board, evidence of wood continuing to live and respond to seasons long after being shaped to human purpose.
This table had been the center of their family life. Here, his mother had served meals that brought them together each evening, insisting on conversation even when both men would have preferred silence. Here, Elias had completed his schoolwork under her guidance, learning figures and letters while his father looked on with quiet pride. Here, after her death, they had retreated into wordless meals that grew briefer with each passing season, until eating together became merely functional rather than communal.
"You've been at the quarry?" Elias asked, though the answer was obvious from the fresh dust in the creases of his father's hands.
"Half day only. Rain sent everyone home." Tormund's gaze was steady but careful, assessing his son as one might evaluate stone for hidden flaws or strengths. "You look... different."
"I am different." Elias wrapped his hands around the warm mug, gathering courage. "Father, I've been on a journey that's difficult to explain."
"Most important ones are," Tormund replied simply, surprising Elias with this philosophical observation.
The wooden box pulsed against Elias's side, urging him forward. With deliberate movements, he placed it on the table between them and opened the latch. Inside, the letter glowed softly, the golden ink embedded with stone dust catching the firelight.
"I've been writing letters," Elias began, his voice steadier than he expected. "Letters of gratitude to people who shaped my life in ways I failed to fully appreciate. Lucinda, who taught me to question. Darian, who challenged me to excel. A shepherd named Caedmon, who showed kindness during the famine year." He paused, meeting his father's eyes directly. "And you."
Tormund's expression remained controlled, but something shifted in his posture—a slight straightening, a focusing of attention. He didn't speak, but his hands, resting on the table, opened slightly from their habitual half-curl.
"I need to read it to you," Elias explained. "Aloud. That's part of the process."
His father nodded once, the gesture containing permission, curiosity, and a hint of apprehension all compressed into the smallest possible movement.
Elias lifted the parchment, its texture both substantial and somehow alive beneath his fingers. The patterns surrounding the text—hands shaped by labor, tools worn to familiarity, the family table both broken and whole—seemed to shift slightly in the firelight, as if breathing with their own subtle life.
"'I am grateful for your callused hands,'" he began, his voice finding strength as the golden words carried their own power. "'They map a lifetime of sacrifice made without complaint or expectation of recognition. When others see only roughness, I now recognize tenderness expressed through provision rather than words.'"
The stone-flecked ink brightened as he read, casting gentle illumination across the table's scarred surface and reflecting in Tormund's eyes. His father remained absolutely still, only the slight rise and fall of his chest indicating he still breathed.
"'Your hands altered stone for shelter, shaped wood for comfort, planted seeds for sustenance. They have given me everything essential while asking nothing in return. Their very form—permanently changed by years of labor—represents love made tangible through daily dedication.'"
Tormund's gaze dropped to his own hands resting on the table, as if seeing them through his son's perspective for the first time—not merely tools for work but expressions of devotion.
"'I am grateful for your quiet integrity,'" Elias continued, the words flowing more easily now. "'In a world that often mistakes volume for value, you have demonstrated worth through consistency rather than declaration. Your word, once given, has never required enforcement or reminder; it simply is, as reliable as stone itself.'"
A muscle tightened in Tormund's jaw, the only outward sign of emotion, but in that small movement Elias saw decades of unspoken values finally acknowledged.
"'You taught not through lectures about character but through the unspoken example of promises kept, obligations honored, and responsibilities shouldered without resentment. This foundation of trustworthiness has shaped my understanding of what it means to be a person of substance rather than merely appearance.'"
The rain continued outside, its steady rhythm providing counterpoint to Elias's words. Within the cottage, the air seemed to thicken with meaning long unexpressed, with recognition deferred but never truly absent.
"'I am grateful for your deferred dreams. Only recently have I begun to understand what you set aside to ensure my wellbeing. The books hidden in your trunk speak of interests never pursued. The small carvings discovered in your workshop reveal artistic sensibilities subordinated to practical necessity.'"
At this, Tormund's eyes widened slightly—surprise that his son had found these private evidences of paths not taken, perhaps, or recognition that his sacrifices had not gone entirely unnoticed.
"'You never spoke of these sacrifices, never wielded them as evidence of your devotion, never asked for acknowledgment of what might have been. Instead, you simply redirected your energies toward ensuring I would have choices you never enjoyed. Your dreams, suspended but not abandoned, represent a form of love too profound for casual expression.'"
The golden light pulsed gently, illuminating the cottage interior in ways the fire alone could not achieve. Outside, the rain began to ease, though water still dripped steadily from the eaves.
"'In acknowledging these gifts in you, I recognize the foundation of who I am, even in the years I spent trying to become something different. My capacity for endurance through difficulty—this I inherited from you. My belief that actions reveal character more honestly than words—this too is your legacy.'"
Tormund's hands moved almost imperceptibly on the table's surface, fingers spreading as if to touch the words hanging in the air between them.
"'Even my moments of creative expression emerge not in contradiction to your example but as variations on the theme you established through your own craft. What I once misunderstood as emotional distance, I now recognize as respect for inward experience. What I interpreted as resignation, I now see as acceptance of necessary seasons. The silence between us contains not absence but reverence for feelings too substantial for casual expression.'"
As the final words resonated through the small cottage, Elias carefully lowered the parchment to the table. The golden ink continued to glow, stone dust embedded within it catching the light like stars held in suspension. For several heartbeats, neither man spoke, the letter's truth expanding to fill the space between them.
Then, with movements deliberate yet somehow uncertain, Tormund reached across the table. His calloused hand—the hand that had shaped stone, built their home, provided everything material—came to rest briefly on Elias's forearm. The gesture contained no words, required none, yet communicated more than many eloquent speeches.
It was, perhaps, the most demonstrative act his father had offered since Elias's childhood, and its simple directness carried weight beyond measurement.
"The table," Tormund said finally, removing his hand to trace the crack running along the oak surface. "It's been splitting for years. Never found time to fix it properly."
The statement might have seemed like an abrupt change of subject to anyone who didn't know Tormund, but Elias understood immediately. His father was responding in the language most natural to him—through practical action rather than emotional declaration.
"We could restore it," Elias suggested, feeling the familiar tug that had guided him to create his previous gifts—Lucinda's lighthouse, Darian's harmony sculpture, Caedmon's remembrance bread. "Together."
Tormund nodded, rising with the fluid economy that characterized all his movements. "I have the tools in the workshop. Oak pegs, wood oil, proper clamps." His voice contained a hint of eagerness rarely displayed, a craftsman's anticipation of meaningful work.
For the next several hours, father and son worked side by side, stripping the table of years of accumulated wax and grime, carefully cleaning the central crack, preparing hardwood butterflies to bridge the split from beneath. They worked mostly in silence, but it was a different quality of wordlessness than had characterized their relationship for years—not the absence of communication but its expression through shared purpose.
Tormund demonstrated techniques for matching grain patterns when joining wood, his hands steady when engaged in creation despite their tremor at rest. Elias contributed insights on finish preparation he had learned while carving Lucinda's lighthouse, knowledge his father acknowledged with approving nods.
As evening approached, they applied a final coat of oil to the restored surface, the golden wood gleaming in the lamplight. The crack remained visible—a natural feature of the living material rather than a flaw to be disguised—but it was now stable, reinforced, integrated into the whole rather than threatening its integrity.
"Your mother would approve," Tormund said quietly as they stood back to admire their work. "She always said this table was the heart of our home."
Elias recognized the observation as the emotional acknowledgment it was—perhaps the closest his father could come to expressing the feelings stirred by the letter and their shared labor.
"It's ready for many more years now," Elias replied, understanding passing between them without need for elaborate expression.
Tormund moved to the kitchen area, returning with bread, cheese, and the last of autumn's preserved apples. Without discussion, they set places at the restored table, sitting across from each other as they had countless times before, yet with awareness fundamentally altered by the day's exchange.
As they shared this simple meal, Elias noticed a change in the quality of light entering through the cottage's small windows. The rain had stopped entirely, and outside, darkness was falling—but not the uniform gray that had dominated Alden's nights for generations. Instead, points of light punctured the deepening blue—stars, emerging one by one like distant sentinels, visible now in a sky transformed by three letters delivered, three gifts created, three connections restored. And now a fourth.
Across the table, Tormund's gaze met his son's, a lifetime of unspoken feeling contained in that single look. No dramatic declarations passed between them—neither man was formed for such expression—but in their shared silence lay understanding deeper than words could readily capture.
The wooden box rested nearby, satisfied with this fourth completion, the silver compass within it already beginning to turn toward its next direction. Tomorrow would bring new challenges, the fifth recipient awaiting discovery. But tonight belonged to this moment—father and son sharing bread across a restored table, beneath a sky where stars once more pierced the darkness with patient, ancient light.🦉