LAZARUS’S BLA BLA BLOG

A Witch, a Wizard, and a Moonlit Spell

lazaruscarpenterauthor

On a night when the moon wore a silver grin and pumpkins carved with patient faces glowed like patient stars, the village of Brackenmere held its breath. Halloween had a hush about it this year, as if the air itself were listening for a whisper. For in Brackenmere, darkness had recently learned a name: Ishmael Blackface. A sorcerer whose shadow lingered long after his footsteps. In a crooked cottage at the edge of the village lived two unlikely guardians: Morgana the Witch, elder as the oldest oak and twice as wise, and Caius the Wizard, with robes that shimmered like a night sky filled with distant comets. They had once traded riddles and recipes for years, but tonight they came together for a single purpose: to heal the children who lay in comas, the victims of Blackface’s lingering curse.
The air grew thick with the scent of elderflowers and rain as Morgana opened her cauldron, not for a brew of curses, but for a salve of light. Candied apples hung from a broomstick like tiny moons, and a circle of chalk traced the shape of a heart around their feet, the village’s heartbeat made visible.

“Caius,” Morgana spoke, her voice a soft chime, “the spell must be sung with two truths: courage and mercy. We call upon the Bright Weave, the thread that binds every living spark.”

Caius nodded, his eyes reflecting constellations. “We need the breath of the brave, the tears of the hopeful, and the vow of the innocent. And we must do this before Ishmael’s dusk crawls back into the world.”

From a hidden pocket within his cloak, Caius drew a scroll etched with runes that glowed faintly with a pale blue light. He whispered a word, and the runes warmed, turning the page transparent enough to read. On it were names of the children, each one a star in Brackenmere’s night, sleeping as if the world itself pressed a gentle lid upon them. The door creaked. A gust of wind flung the candle flames outward, but Morgana steadied the circle. In the doorway stood a figure not seen in years, the ghost of a child who had once thrived in Brackenmere’s lanes, now a wisp of memory named Lora. She drifted closer, her voice like the tinkling of glass bells.

“Morgana, Caius,” Lora whispered, “the illness in the village does not stem from the dark heart alone. Blackface’s shadow feeds on fear. If you heal the bodies without quieting the fear, the light will fade again.”

Morgana smiled, a crescent of moonlight on her lips. “Then we will teach the village to fear less and hope more.” She reached into the cauldron and drew forth a vial that shimmered with the breath of dawn. “This is the Heart Seed Elixir. It blooms only in the presence of true care.”

Caius stepped to the center of the circle and raised his staff, which bore a crystal orb at its tip. “Hear me, Bright Weave. I call upon your threads to braid courage with mercy, to stitch sleep with waking, to lay healing upon the doorsteps of every home.”

Morgana chanted in a language older than the village walls, a melody that sounded like rain on slate. The cauldron answered with a bubbling chorus, sending up a scent of rain-soaked earth and something sweeter, hope. The circle glowed, not with harsh flame but with a soft aurora, as if night itself were wearing a gentle shawl.

Outside, a storm began to tremble in the distance, yet in Brackenmere, the air felt warmer, gentler, as if warmth could be bottled like honey. The two spell casters moved in tandem, their movements a dance learned from centuries of watching seasons change. Morgana poured the Heart Seed Elixir into the cauldron, then poured from it a luminous stream that curled upward like a ribbon of dawn. Caius spoke a chain of syllables that sounded like wind chimes in a quiet grove. The stream collided with the silver moonlight, weaving a tapestry of light that stretched across the village and into every doorway, every window, and every sleeping child. The light did not shove or rush; it eased. It brushed each child’s brow with a gentle warmth, like a lullaby whispered by a grandmother long gone but never forgotten. For a heartbeat, the world held its breath, and then a small, soft sigh rose from the village. One by one, the comatose children began to breathe, slowly at first, then with a rhythm that grew steadier, stronger. Their eyelids fluttered open, not to panic or fear, but to the steady, comforting glow of a night that had chosen kindness over conquest. The gong of the village clock tolled in the distance, yet this was not the sound of warning but the sound of a victory gently won. Lora, the ghost child, drifted closer to Morgana and Caius, her form becoming more solid with each passing moment.

“You did it,” she whispered, a note of awe in her voice. “Blackface’s shadow faltered where light stood its ground.”

Morgana knelt to Lora’s level, smiling with an old, quiet tenderness. “We did not beat him alone, dear one. The village did. Courage lives where people choose to help one another. Mercy is a choice as much as a spell.”

Caius closed the circle with a final sweep of his staff, and the runes in the scroll dimmed to a respectful glow. “The children are resting, and the village’s fear has loosened its grip for now. Ishmael Blackface’s power is stubborn, but not invincible.”

The two guardians stepped back from the circle, letting the dawn creep in through the windows like a patient cat, purring softly with relief. The storm outside broke, rain turning to a gentle drizzle that tapped a hopeful rhythm on the rooftops. In the days that followed, the village of Brackenmere woke not to worry but to a new habit: tending to one another. Parents spoke of dreams once interrupted by fear, and the children woke with a memory of a night when the sky opened up and chose to heal. Ishmael Blackface, wherever his shadow lurked, found his influence waning as the Bright Weave sewed bright threads of resilience through the hearts of Brackenmere’s people. He could massage fear and dim hope, but he could not erase the memory of a night when two devoted guardians, a witch and a wizard, stood together and let light do what it does best: heal.

And so, on Halloween and on all days that followed, Morgana and Caius kept watch, not with weapons, but with wells of care, ready to pour healing into any heart that needed it, whenever the world’s night grew too long and a child’s breath grew thin.

Trapped by Secrets.

lazaruscarpenterauthor

The man moved through the city like a shadow wearing a tailored suit. His name wasn’t important; what mattered were the doors he kept shut, the keys he refused to admit he carried. The world saw a man of quiet routines: a morning coffee at the same café, a stroll along the river, a desk lamp that hummed a familiar lullaby as dusk fell. But behind every routine lay a secret that bent the day to its own gravity. In the quiet moments, when the city exhaled and the streets grew thin with fog, his secrets stirred. They wore the faces of extinguished lights in a long-buried attic, the taste of copper on his tongue, and the echo of footsteps that never seemed to belong to anyone alive. He had learned early that some truths, once spoken, could devour the speaker and scatter the pieces across the floor of the world.

There were dark marks in his memory: a name whispered in a corridor, a choice made with a velocity that left no residue of doubt, a door closed on a cry that never quite stopped reverberating. Secrets like these do not simply lie dormant; they gnaw, they coil, they tighten until even the breath in his chest felt borrowed. He wore a mask of civility even as a storm brewed just beneath his ribcage, a storm that carried with it the scent of rain and something far more dangerous.

Yet not all his secrets were reservoirs of ruin. Some housed light, moments when the world revealed its softer facets, when a child’s laughter braided with a grandmother’s quiet counsel, when a neighbour’s simple act of kindness offered a compass in a night of confusion. These were the memories he visited in the evenings, after the city’s clamour settled into a muffled purr. They kept him upright, like a row of unyielding stars that refused to blink away even when clouds gathered.

There was a woman, a rare constellation in the shape of a smile, who believed in him when he believed in nothing but the ache of his own mortality. She spoke to him in the language of ordinary miracles, tea left to steep too long, a book left open on the balcony, a song that somehow threaded its way into the apartment and found the corner of his heart he had sworn off long ago. With her, he learned the texture of gentle forgiveness, the possibility that a life could be stitched back together with patience, not with punishment. Guilt was the concealing cloth behind which all his secrets wore their disguises. It wrapped him in a fabric so thick that even the simplest truth could not push through. He could tell himself the lie that to remain hidden was to preserve the fragile balance of a life others believed he had mastered. But the balance was a lie. The more he moved through the city, the tighter the cloth wound around him, until the silhouette of a man grew almost unrecognizable to himself.

In the quiet hours, when the clock’s hands scraped the wall, he would catch sight of his reflection and see not a well-groomed gentleman but a map of fault lines. The lines led to rooms he refused to open: a warehouse of memories where he kept the sins that refused to die, a cabinet of choices where the echoes of the wrongs he had done sat like dust on glassware, waiting for a gust to shatter them. Secret by secret, the doors to those rooms began to ache, and the hinges sang a tired, metallic hymn. He knew that the only way to release the pressure would be to walk into the darkness with a lantern of truth, to name what tormented him even when the name burned his tongue.

One night, the city’s skyline burned with a pale, indifferent beauty as if the stars themselves were choosing to overlook his confession. He stood at the river’s edge, where the water remembered every raindrop it had ever tasted. He spoke aloud, not to the listening world but to the part of himself that refused to listen. He spoke the names he had buried, one by one, letting the syllables fall into the current like leaves that refused to return to the tree. The words did not cleanse him at once; forgiveness never comes with a trumpet blast. But the act of naming began to loosen the strangling cloth. The air brightened a fraction, and for a heartbeat, the weight on his chest shifted. The darkness did not vanish, but it stopped pressing so relentlessly, as if it paused to witness a man choosing to open doors rather than smash them down.

In the days that followed, the man found that some secrets could be housed in the open instead of the closet. He learned to tell the smaller truths that mattered to the people who loved him—the apologies to those he had wronged, the promises he kept to those who trusted him, and the careful disclosure of his fears to the woman who stood against the tide of his guilt with a steadiness that felt almost sacred. The light he carried was not a beacon blazing for others; it was a quiet lamp he kept burning to guide himself away from the shallows of cruelty and toward the deeper currents of mercy. Some secrets, he realised, are not meant to be banished but integrated and held with care, acknowledged for what they are, and allowed to coexist with the love that is earned through steadfast, imperfect honesty.

He still walked the city streets, still wore a suit that pressed neatly to his frame, and still bore the weight of the secrets he had learned to carry. Yet the weight felt different now, less like a crushing cage and more like a map. Each step was a choice: to reveal a thread here, to withhold a fear there, to forgive himself a little more with every sunrise. In the end, he understood that being trapped by secrets does not require a single grand release. It asks for patient courage: to name the hurt, to repair what can be repaired, and to let in the light where love is willing to linger, even in the vicinity of the darkest truths.

And so he moved forward, not unscarred but unbroken in the way that matters most: open to the next, uncertain revelation, and capable of choosing love again, even after the shadows have dictated too many of his days. 

‘A Cinema Behind His Eyes’

lazaruscarpenterauthor

The desert was a patient thing, older than the towns that dotted its edge and the rumours that lingered like heat mirages. It did not hurry; it did not worry. It simply breathed in the dawn and exhaled, time tasting grainy, sun-warmed air. And in this vast quiet lived a man named Rafi, whose home was a shack of sun-baked bricks and a roof that sagged like a tired camel. Rafi had no access to the things most people clung to, mobile phones, televisions, and the internet. He did not miss them, exactly, because he had never known them as more than stories told by others with fingers stained by ink and eyes tired from bright screens. Instead, he carried something else, something more intimate: a cinema behind his eyes.

Each morning, the desert woke with a soft hiss of wind over sand. Rafi would rise, stretching like a cat that had slept with its gaze fixed on distant dunes. He kept his world simple: a ledger of days, a small pot of water, a handful of dates, and his memory. The memory was not a collection of dates or numbers, but a living theatre that played whenever he needed it. If he walked to the edge of a cliff where the earth dropped away into a blue heat, his cinema offered him a panorama of the day to come. He could replay the way the sun glowed first on one ridge, then on another, like a celestial painter testing colours. He could hear the crisp whisper of a breeze that would pass through the date palms by the dry riverbed. He could feel the tremor of a distant thunderstorm, even when it stayed far beyond the horizon, a rumour in the air.

If a passer-by stopped by his shack to trade news or water, Rafi would listen with the careful attention of someone who knows how stories travel through footprints, through the way a camel’s knee bends on the sand, through the scent of rain that’s only a rumour until it touches skin. And in his cinema, those stories did not simply exist as words; they became scenes with actors, with light that shifted and trembled, with music that rose and fell like dunes breathing. One evening, a girl named Luma wandered into his life, drawn by the lazy glow of a stubborn desert sunset. She carried a notebook and a bottle of ink, things the city called useless, and yet she believed writing could carry a memory from one place to another. She asked, softly, if he ever forgot. Rafi shook his head, a slow, almost imperceptible movement that mirrored the swaying of a palm tree in a gentle wind.

“I do not forget,” he said, and his voice carried the weight of a man who had learned to listen to the world until it spoke back in its own language. “I remember everything, and between the remembered shadows and the remembered lights, there is a cinema behind my eyes.”

Luma was patient. She asked to see this cinema, not as a trick or a spectacle, but as a companion to the stories they could tell together. So he closed his eyes, and the desert quiet pressed in, and the cinema opened. He saw the first dawn he could recall, not just as a colour but as a sound, the hum of distant bees, the crackle of dry grass as the sun’s first kiss touched it. He saw his mother’s hands, calloused with years of tending oil lamps and whispered prayers. He saw the first spring rain, a gentle curtain of droplets turning the clay of the earth into a mirror. She watched as the images unfurled with a patient grace, a procession of seedlings breaking through hard soil, a caravan moving like a slow river, a child learning to walk and then to run with the light of a whole village inside him. The cinema did not demand attention; it offered it as a gift, a steady tide that washed away the fear that loneliness might someday swallow a person whole.

“Why tell stories to the sand when you can tell them to the wind?” Luma asked, half-jest, half-wonder.

Rafi smiled, a quiet widening of lips that had learned generosity from years of listening.

“Because the wind forgets, sometimes. The sand remains, but the shapes it remembers fade with the sun. My cinema remembers more than a handful of days; it remembers a lifetime.”

In his cinema, he did not simply relive memories; he reinterpreted them. He learned to see the world through a sun-drenched lens where even misfortune became a scene with a turning point. A drought did not merely dry the wells; it set the stage for a decision to stay, to walk, to share a bloom of resilience with those who would listen. And people did come, beggars, merchants, and shepherds, a traveller with a cracked flute who claimed the desert had stolen his tune. They came not for news, but for a glimpse of the man whose eyes could render a full life as if it were a screen playing on a wall of air and memory. Rafi never spoke much about the cinema; he allowed it to show itself in actions, how he would mend a broken jar with wax and patience, how he would guide a wayward goat back to its penned friends, how he shared the last of his water with a stranger who asked for nothing in return. The cinema behind Rafi’s eyes was more than nostalgia. It was a compass, pointing toward moments when courage is just a decision you make while the world murmurs around you. It was a map of choices: to endure a hardship with quiet grace, to give when you have little, to remember when everyone else forgets. It was a chorus of tiny, intimate revolutions, the way a day can be survived by knowing exactly how it begins and ends, and what happens in between.

One day, a storm rolled in with the ferocity of a hundred drums. The desert weathered the night with a raw, unfiltered rage. The rain that followed was a rare confession, a memory poured into the earth until it remembered to drink again. In those hours, Rafi’s cinema did not merely show him what had happened; it rehearsed what could happen next. He saw, with crystal clarity, the steps necessary to salvage a family’s store of water and to keep their wells from going dry. He saw the faces of the neighbours who would lend their hands, the children who would gather wild grasses to feed the herd, the old man who would tell stories that stitched the community back together. When dawn finally arrived, pale and forgiving, the desert smelled of wet stone and green growth where it had never dared to show such life before. Rafi rose, not with triumph, but with a quiet resolve. He had learned that the cinema behind his eyes was not a prison of memory, but a living collaborator always ready to illuminate the path forward.

Luma stayed with him for a time, writing in her notebook the sentences the desert whispered when no one else was listening. She copied one line into her pages, a single, luminous truth: a man who lived where there were no screens could still see more clearly than most, because he did not merely observe; he remembered, and his memory became a cinema, a sanctuary where the past and future met and chose to walk hand in hand. In the end, the desert did not change Rafi’s world, and Rafi did not save the desert in any grand way. He did something quieter: he kept the space between people alive with memory. He showed that a life without modern contraptions could still be rich with connection not through notifications, but through the art of noticing, of listening, of turning a barren landscape into a stage where human warmth could perform its daily miracle: the simple act of being present.

And when the wind rose again, carrying the sigh of the dunes and the faint strains of a distant flute, Rafi would close his eyes, let the cinema behind them open, and smile at the living film of the world, clear, intimate, and forever unfolding before him. 

The Day After Halloween

lazaruscarpenterauthor

The morning after Halloween arrived with a soft, pale light that belonged to no season and all seasons at once. The town lay in a curious hush, as if the world itself was letting out a sigh after a long, wild party. There were candy wrappers like fallen confetti strewn along the sidewalks, and a faint scent of cinnamon and rain lingered in the air. Beyond the old clock tower, where the town’s gears creaked and sighed, a seam of pale frost appeared along the cobblestones. It wasn’t ice but the beginning of a doorway, thin and shimmering, like a heat mirage that had learned to whisper. The creatures of the night, who had danced under the streetlamps and stirred the shadows with laughter that tasted of danger and delight, began to drift toward it.
The goblins, still wearing their impish grins and pockets full of trinkets, counted the last of their glittering loot and tucked it away. Their hands, stained with chalky dust and moonlight, moved with surprising tenderness as they tied small knots in their little satchels, ensuring nothing spilled into the waking world. Werewolves, who had sung to the moon in a chorus of howls that could shake windows, paused at the threshold of the mist. Their fur still carried the scent of the night, earth, rain, and pine yet their eyes held something softer now, a lineage of loyalty to a world that no longer needed guardians in a hunt. They offered a wary nod to the town, as if to say: we leave the hunt to the dark and return to the dark’s house. Spirits drifted with a measured ease, their forms wavering like candle smoke. They carried with them the memory of laughter that tasted like autumn sugar and the ache of goodbyes spoken in a language older than stone. They glided past alleyways and gardens, leaving behind a delicate frost that sparkled with tiny, unspoken promises. Some wore expressions of mischief that would have frightened a mortal, but the day’s calm offered them a moment of pause rather than a boast.

Ghouls and shadows, silk-wrapped phantoms and lantern-eyed wraiths all moved toward the seam with a surprising uniformity. It was as if a tide of night had been receded, leaving behind an ocean of memory and the soft thump of real-world feet resuming their everyday rhythms: a dog’s eager bark, a kettle singing to itself, a bicycle bell that rang in the distance.
In the center of town, Mrs Alderney, who ran the little bakery that baked more dreams than bread, stood on the last step of her shop, watching the pale seam. Her chalk white apron fluttered in the dawn breeze, dusted with flour and something like starlight. She had spent the night listening to the stories of the day after, the stories told by those creatures who had wrapped the night in their own form of poetry and menace.

“Until next year,” she whispered, as if addressing both the town and the departing travellers. Her voice carried not fear but a gentle familiarity, the way an old grandmother’s voice carries a soft warning and a warm joke in the same breath.

The goblins paused, counting their steps back toward the seam, and the werewolves tilted their heads in a rare gesture of gratitude. The spirits, who often forgot to speak in anything but sighs and chimes, paused to tilt their translucent faces toward the bakery’s warm light. It was as if a single, unspoken agreement passed between them: we visit, we feast, and we fade until the next turning of the calendar when the door will open again. When the last of the wanderers stepped through the seam, the frost dissolved into dew that clung to leaves and ribbon spun spider webs. The town woke in a careful way, as if waking from a dream in which you were sure you’d forgotten something important, and then remembered you’d forgotten all the wrong things. Children who had chased their shadows the night before woke to find their costumes still clinging to the corners of their rooms like friendly ghosts who had not quite finished telling their stories. They traded their masks for crayons and notebooks, their pockets for clean hands, and their mouths for the first sincere “please” and “thank you” of the day. The mayor, who always kept a pocket watch for emergencies, found himself with a moment of unusual clarity. The city might forget the exact shape of a goblin or the echo of a howl, but it would not forget the lesson etched into its heart by their brief presence: difference is a kind of magic, and magic loves a world brave enough to let it pass in and out like breath.

As the sun climbed higher, painting the town in gold and the soft green of early fall, something in the air carried a note of promise. Not a vow of fear, but a vow of wonder: that the world is large enough to hold both the ordinary and the extraordinary, and that, come next Halloween, the door might open again, not for chaos, but for a shared moment of awe.
And so, with the day after Halloween spreading calm like a quilt over the town, the spirits, ghosts, werewolves, goblins, and creatures of the dark world returned to their own realm, content that they had kept a delicate balance between mischief and mercy. Peace settled into the streets, like a lullaby hummed at dusk, until the next year when the music would play again and the seam would glow once more with the soft light of a world that believes in magic even for just one night a year.

The Lanterns of Dan-yr-Ogof on Halloween

lazaruscarpenterauthor

On Halloween night, when the world wore a cloak of mist and the caverns of Dan y Ogof whispered with ancient secrets, a goblin named Gril, a dwarf named Thoren, and a dragon named Emberth awoke from their long, stony slumber. Dan y Ogof, the Ogof Caves, stretched underground like a sleeping beast. Torch-lit passages curled into black mouths, and the air smelled of coal, damp earth, and something sweeter that no map could name. It was here, in a deep amphitheatre carved by rivers of time, which the trio found themselves drawn to a rumour carried by the echoes: a pot of imaginary gold.

Gril the goblin scampered first, quick as a spark among wet stones. His eyes, pale and mischievous, watched the walls for pockets of air where the cave might hum a tune only goblins could hear. He wore a hat pitched too far back on his head, a patchwork coat that never kept out the chill, and a grin that suggested a clever plan for any situation so long as that situation involved mischief. Thoren the dwarf followed, his beard braided with tiny bells that tinkled with each careful step. He carried a pickaxe that glittered with runes and a lantern that burned with a blue flame, steady as a heartbeat. Thoren was a keeper of things: maps, stones, stories, and the stubborn certainty that every problem has a creatable solution, even one as slippery as a ghost’s whisper.

Emberth the dragon did not fly here for gold or glory. Dragons in this region learned not to crave the glitter of coins but the quiet of ancient places where silence was a treasure too heavy to carry. Emberth’s scales sang soft emeralds and coal, and his breath smelled faintly of pine sap and old parchment. He had come to listen, to hear the cave tell its story, as dragons often did when their kind wandered far from the roar of mountains.
As they descended, the cave opened like a mouth that remembered names. Stalactites hung from above, each a slender reminder of a long-forgotten calving of rock. Stalagmites rose like patient guardians, and the floor bore a river’s memory, a dry bed that kept the scent of the water that once carved the world.

“A pot of imaginary gold,” Gril announced with a bow that nearly toppled him, “is the finest sort of treasure to chase on a night like this. If you catch it, you own nothing and everything at once.”

Thoren grunted, a sound half amusement, half caution.

“Imaginary or not, we must be clever enough to find the place first, and stubborn enough to leave before the cave decides we are not welcome.” He tapped the pick on his boots, a rhythm that felt like a heartbeat inside the earth.

Emberth lifted his head, listening. The cave, old as stars and patient as a dragon’s memory, offered a slow, rolling murmur, like distant thunder wrapped in velvet. “If the gold exists here,” the dragon said, “it will reveal itself as a story rather than a coin. We must learn the cave’s tale to claim our prize.”

They pressed deeper, following a corridor that breathed in a wave-like pattern, as if the rock itself exhaled and inhaled with a step. The air grew cool, and the walls glowed faintly with mineral sheen, as though the cave wore a lullaby in its minerals. At the heart of the cavern, the trio arrived at a vast chamber, a theatre of stone. In the center stood a pedestal, and upon it rested a pot, not of metal or clay, but of glassy darkness that reflected the three travellers more clearly than any mirror could. Inside the pot shimmered nothingness, a void that hummed with potential, the imaginary gold that Gril had described, a gold that could become any worth you imagined, yet would vanish the moment you held it too tightly.

Gril leaned in, eyes glittering. “The pot is a trap for want,” he whispered. “It feeds on the hunger for more, turning desire into a loop.”

Thoren scanned the chamber, tapping the floor with his pick. “If we are meant to claim it, the cave will test us with a riddle or a challenge that reveals our true intent.”

Emberth circled the pot, wings folding with a soft sigh. “To hold it is to acknowledge that you can never own what you cannot truly see. Imaginary gold is a moral more than a treasure.”

They stood before the pot, the moment stretching, a thread pulled tight between old legends and the present. The cave seemed to lean closer, listening as if the walls themselves had opinions about goblins, dwarves, and dragons who walked in search of something that was not a thing but a choice.

Gril spoke first, his voice a spark flickering to life. “We came for something that doesn’t rust or rot, something that can be shared in stories and kept in memory. If we take it, we must be careful not to let it turn us into what we fear most: those who forget the world outside their desires.”

Thoren added, “Sometimes the best treasure is the wisdom to know when to leave well enough alone. If the pot contains imaginary gold, perhaps the real treasure is the companionship we’ve found along the way.”

Emberth nodded, scales gleaming. “Then our choice is not to possess but to protect: this cave, this moment, and the promise to tell its tale.”

The pot trembled as if a heartbeat passed through it, then settled, losing a shade of darkness. A voice, soft and ancient, drifted from the stone itself: “The true gold is the light you carry when you walk back into the world. Take your memory, not your want, and return with gratitude.”

The three friends exchanged glances, a pact formed in quiet understanding. They stepped back, letting the pot’s glow halo the chamber with a gentle warmth. Gril bowed low, Thoren touched the walls with reverence, and Emberth exhaled a thread of smoke that spiralled into the air like a blessing. When they finally turned to leave, the cave seemed to exhale in relief, as though it had held its breath for centuries and released it in a sigh of gratitude. The lantern’s blue flame flickered in approval, and the echo of their footsteps became a musical note, guiding them back toward the world above. As they emerged from the cave’s mouth, Halloween night stretched out like a black velvet curtain dotted with distant stars. The goblin grinned with the satisfaction of a plan well played, the dwarf’s shoulders settled in newfound ease, and the dragon’s eyes reflected a sky that promised stories enough to fill many lifetimes. They carried with them no pot, no coins, no chests of gold, only a memory of a chamber where desire was tempered by wisdom, and a choice that would outlast any treasure. And in the quiet between heartbeats, the tale of Gril, Thoren, and Emberth drifted into the wind, a legend that would be told again whenever the Halloween moon rose over Dan y Ogof.