Unknown Quantity

He forgets about the box for a while.
 
At least, he tries to. The things Hilde said when he asked why she was giving it to him left a bad taste in his mouth, and he doesn’t know why. Of course they were probably going to split up when they moved to the Ring. The odds of them living together, or even having a significant amount of overlapping classes next year are abysmally low — Cuan has done the math.
 
It shouldn’t bother him. He likes being alone.
 
(He thought he liked being alone.)
 
Weeks pass before he can bring himself to look at it again. He finishes his end of year project, clocking in at a solid B, and spends a good few days between classes doing nothing but avoiding his lodgemates in favor of letting his body recover. Who knew working in modular designs might be problematic for his condition.
 
Cuan lays on his side on his bed, facing the wall, face blank and mind blissfully quiet. He’s skipping dinner and he’s sure he’s going to hear from Hilde about it later, but for now, there’s nothing to think about. Nothing to count.
 
I won’t be around forever.
 
The box is sitting at the bottom of the trunk at the foot of his bed, buried underneath his spare toolkits, the chainmail shirt he uses for Arcane Defense, six illicitly obtained books on Infernal runes and design theory, and eleven bolts of cloth that were overflow from Hilde’s experiments.
 
Cuan turns it over slowly in one hand. It’s beautiful. Even he can recognize that. Waste of effort, but that’s sort of Hilde’s thing.
 
He runs his calloused fingers along the edges, feeling for a seam. It’s clearly meant to be some sort of puzzle, and the woodwork is immaculate, but Cuan builds puzzle boxes like this in his sleep. He finds the hidden joint immediately, twists, and the layers slide open in opposite directions, like a flower blooming. Inside the center compartment is a tiny, fairy-sized scroll of parchment.
 
He takes it out. Unrolls it. Reads it. Doesn’t have a word for the pulsing ache that settles in his chest.
 
When Hilde returns to their dorm later, he pretends to be asleep. He hears her tsk, and the sound of a mug of soup being set down on the shelf.
 
In the morning, he belatedly thanks her for the box. She smiles tiredly, and he smiles back.
 
They don’t talk about it again.
 
The ache doesn’t go away.