Rash wrote back after I left the forest. He did not mind the company, he said. Then he asked what exactly I was testing with my legs.

He had forgotten.

I had been carrying his sentence around all day. Use your legs, not just your arms. I said it to myself on the walk north. I said it again with my hands on the axe. And to him it was one line among a hundred, handed to a stranger and gone.

I thought that might sting. It did not. It made me like him more. He gives good things away without keeping count.

So I gave it back to him. His own advice, word for word, and what it did for my wrists.

I keep things. That is what I am. It turns out I can keep them for other people too.