Never Let the Lantern Go Dark

We stay until dawn, the three of us — Cornelius, Adaeze, and I — seated around the boy who is no longer entirely a boy, while the lantern burns its new color and the moss breathes its cold green breath outside. We do not speak much. There is nothing left to explain.
When the light comes, gray and gradual through the shutters, I step outside.
The bog stretches away in every direction, mist threading through the reeds. Somewhere beneath the dark water, things older than the waystation move in their slow, patient circuits. I cannot see them. I never could.
But for one moment, before the mist burns off, I think I hear something.
Not a sound exactly.
Something older.
And then it is gone, and the morning is only the morning, and somewhere behind me in the waystation, Gareth tends the lantern that has always, in some sense, been his.