Chadwick Rye

Theron Goldvoice settled into the curved alcove of the Singing Swan’s upper gallery, his weathered fingers tracing the smooth grain of his ironwood harp. Below, the tavern hummed with its usual evening symphony—merchants haggling over the last dregs of wine, traveling performers tuning their instruments, and in the far corner, a cluster of young scribes engaged in animated debate about the merits of various words.

At seventy-three, Theron had performed in courts from the Crystal Spires of Lumen Vale to the wandering halls of Aethermoor. His voice, once strong enough to carry across castle courtyards, now required the intimate setting of tavern corners and noble drawing rooms. But his mind remained sharp, and his passion for the craft that had sustained him through five decades had only deepened with age.

The scribes’ conversation drifted upward through the warm air thick with pipe smoke and the aroma of spiced cider. They were playing that eternal game of wordsmiths—debating favorite words, dissecting the power of syllables, exploring the weight different sounds carried in the mouth and heart.

“Serendipity,” declared one, a young woman with ink-stained fingers. “It contains entire worlds of possibility.”

“Mellifluous,” countered another. “The word itself demonstrates its meaning—honey-smooth, flowing like music.”

Theron smiled, remembering similar conversations from his own youth at the Bardic Academy in the Scholar’s Quarter. How seriously they took their craft, these young ones, as if the perfect word might unlock secrets of the universe. Perhaps it could.

A serving girl approached with practiced quiet. “Master Goldvoice? The table by the hearth wonders if you might share your thoughts on their debate. They’re discussing favorite words, and someone mentioned you’ve traveled more roads and heard more languages than anyone in Lumen Vale.”

Theron glanced down at the expectant faces. The scribes had been joined by a few other patrons—a merchant with the weather-beaten look of someone who’d sailed beyond the known maps, a hedge witch whose fingers sparked with residual magic from her day’s work, and an elderly seamstress whose careful stitches had likely clothed half the city’s nobility.

“Tell them I’ll be down shortly,” he said, carefully lifting his harp. “And ask Mallory to prepare another pot of that cardamom tea. This conversation deserves proper accompaniment.”

Minutes later, Theron found himself seated in the tavern’s warmest corner, surrounded by faces lit with curiosity and the generous glow of good drink. The scribes had made space for him at their table, though he noted how they sat straighter in his presence, suddenly aware they were in the company of a master of their craft.

“So,” said the ink-fingered young woman, whose name was Cordelia, “we’ve been debating favorite words. Master Goldvoice, in all your travels and all your stories, surely you must have one that rises above the rest?”

Theron accepted his tea with a nod of thanks, inhaling the complex aroma while considering the question. Through the diamond-paned windows, he could see the Crystal Spires beginning their nightly light-show, refracting the last rays of sunset into cascading rainbows that danced across Lumen Vale’s terraced streets.

“Action,” he said finally, the word carrying the particular resonance he brought to all his speech. “Of all the words in all the languages I’ve encountered, that one holds the greatest power.”

The table fell silent. Several patrons leaned closer, drawn by something in his tone that suggested deeper currents beneath the simple response.

“Action?” The merchant looked puzzled. “Not something more… poetic? More elevated?”

Theron chuckled, a sound like aged whiskey warming the throat. “My friend, what word could be more poetic than the one that encompasses all of existence itself?” He set down his tea and spread his hands as if encompassing the entire tavern. “Consider what that word contains.”

His voice took on the cadence of performance, the rhythm that had held courts spellbound and made children lean forward in wonder around countless fireside circles. “Action is not merely movement—though it includes every step taken, every wing beat, every dance. It is the spark between intention and manifestation. It is the bridge between dream and reality.”

The seamstress nodded slowly. “In my work, I know this. The thread remains thread until action makes it stitch. The pattern stays only possibility until action makes it garment.”

“Precisely,” Theron smiled, pleased by her understanding. “But consider deeper layers. Every story I’ve told in fifty years of wandering—every epic, every ballad, every whispered tale by dying firelight—what are they but chronicles of action? Not the grand gestures alone, but the small choices that reshape the world.”

He lifted his tea cup, holding it so the crystal-light from outside caught the amber liquid within. “The moment someone chooses to offer hospitality to a stranger. The instant a heart decides to trust when trust seems dangerous. The breath before someone speaks truth that might cost them everything.”

The hedge witch’s fingers had stopped their unconscious sparking. “Action as transformation,” she murmured. “Every spell is action choosing to alter what is.”

“Every word spoken changes the silence that came before,” added Cordelia, her scholarly mind grasping the concept’s implications. “Every story told creates new possibility in the listener’s heart.”

Theron nodded, warming to his theme. Around them, the tavern’s noise had dimmed as other patrons unconsciously strained to hear. There was something magnetic about the old bard when he spoke of his craft—as if his words carried the accumulated weight of all the stages he’d graced, all the audiences he’d moved.

“I have sat with dying kings,” he continued, his voice dropping to an intimate register that somehow carried clearly through the smoky air, “and watched them grapple with their final actions. Will they choose reconciliation or revenge? Forgiveness or condemnation? In their last moments, they understood what perhaps they’d never grasped in all their years of power—that we are the sum of our actions, not our intentions, not our words, not our titles or possessions.”

The merchant shifted uncomfortably. “But surely some actions matter more than others? A king’s choices affect thousands. A beggar’s choices affect only themselves.”

“Do they?” Theron’s eyes held the gleam of someone about to share a treasured story. “Let me tell you of Pip Brightwater, a halfling bread-seller I knew in Millhaven. Every morning for forty years, she gave away the day’s first loaf to whoever seemed to need it most. Just that—one action, repeated daily, apparently insignificant.”

He paused to sip his tea, letting anticipation build. This was mastery—knowing exactly how long to hold silence, how to use pace as an instrument.

“When plague struck Millhaven, it was Pip’s network of connections—the beggars who’d eaten her bread, the widows who’d been fed by her kindness, the children who’d grown up knowing someone cared whether they ate—it was this web of small actions that created the infrastructure of care that saved the town. Not the lord’s gold or the guard’s swords, but forty years of one woman choosing daily kindness.”

The table sat in contemplative silence, each person perhaps examining their own daily choices through this new lens.

“But action without thought can be destructive,” the hedge witch observed. “I’ve seen spells cast in haste, words spoken in anger that couldn’t be recalled.”

“Ah,” Theron smiled, “but even those are still action—the action of choosing impulse over reflection. We cannot escape the reality that we are always acting, even when we choose stillness. Inaction is itself an action with consequences. The choice not to speak is as powerful as the choice to raise one’s voice.”

He gestured toward the Crystal Spires visible through the window, their evening dance now reaching its crescendo. “Those towers stand because countless masons chose to place stone upon stone. They glow because generations of light-weavers chose to embed their magic in crystal matrix. Every element of beauty in our city exists because someone, at some moment, chose to act rather than merely dream.”

Cordelia leaned forward, her eyes bright with new understanding. “So when you tell stories, you’re not just recounting events—you’re celebrating the moment when possibility became reality through action.”

“Every hero’s journey is a sequence of choices,” Theron confirmed. “The call to adventure, the crossing of the threshold, the moment of supreme trial—these are all actions that transform not only the hero, but everyone their story touches. And here’s the deeper magic: every time I tell such a tale, every time someone hears it and feels their heart quicken with recognition or hope, new action is being born.”

The serving girl had approached again, but seemed reluctant to interrupt. The other conversations in the tavern had quieted, and Theron realized he’d acquired a larger audience than he’d intended. Faces turned toward their corner, people leaning in to catch his words.

“Stories don’t end when the telling stops,” he continued, his voice now carrying to every corner of the room. “They live in the listener’s choices going forward. The merchant who hears of honest dealing might think twice before shortchanging a customer. The soldier who hears of mercy might stay his hand at a crucial moment. The child who hears of courage might find strength to speak truth when it matters most.”

He rose slowly, his joints protesting the long sitting but his dignity intact. The harp in his hands caught the crystal-light as he adjusted its position. “You ask for my favorite word. I choose ‘action’ because it is the only word that truly matters. Every other word—love, beauty, justice, truth—remains mere concept until action gives it form in the world.”

His fingers found the harp strings, drawing forth a gentle melody that seemed to carry the weight of all his years and all his stories. “We are not here to be perfect. We are here to act, to choose, to transform what is into what might be. Every day brings countless opportunities to author small pieces of the grand story that is existence itself.”

The music deepened, and several patrons found themselves humming along to melodies that seemed familiar though they’d never heard them before. This too was action—the choice to create harmony from discord, to find unity in diversity.

“So tomorrow,” Theron concluded, his voice weaving through the gentle harp notes, “when you wake and wonder what word might guide your day, remember this: you carry within yourself the power to change the world through your actions. Not grand gestures necessarily, but the accumulated weight of choices made with intention and heart.”

He let the final notes fade into the tavern’s warmth, then carefully placed his harp beside his chair. The silence that followed was not empty but full—pregnant with the possibilities that lived in each listener’s heart.

Finally, old Mallory behind the bar began to clap, and the applause that followed was not the vigorous appreciation of entertainment well-delivered, but the deeper acknowledgment of truth well-spoken. People didn’t just clap; they nodded, they smiled at one another, they seemed to sit straighter as if remembering their own capacity for meaningful choice.

As the evening wound toward its close and patrons began to drift toward their homes, Cordelia lingered at Theron’s elbow. “Master Goldvoice, thank you. I understand now why you’ve spent your life telling stories. You’re not just a keeper of tales—you’re a keeper of possibilities.”

Theron smiled, gathering his harp case with the careful movements of age. “We all are, young scholar. Every person in this room, every soul in this city, every being who draws breath and makes choices. We are all authors of the great story, all keepers of possibility.”

He paused at the tavern’s threshold, looking back at the warm light spilling from windows, hearing the continued conversations his words had sparked. Tomorrow, some of these people would choose differently because of tonight. Small actions, perhaps—a kinder word, a moment of patience, a choice to help rather than harm.

“Action,” he murmured to the night air, watching his breath mist in the cool evening. Even now, even in this simple moment of reflection, he was choosing how to end his day, how to carry this experience forward into tomorrow’s possibilities.

Above him, the Crystal Spires completed their nightly performance with a final cascade of rainbow light. Beautiful, certainly—but only because generations of craftspeople had acted to make such beauty possible.

Theron Goldvoice smiled and chose his path toward home, each step an action that carried him forward into whatever story tomorrow might bring.