Threadbare Cloak

Threadbare Cloak drapes across the chair like a map of every season it has weathered: edges frayed to thread-tangles, moth holes scattered like constellations, and a hem that tells a thousand short stories with every snag. The wool outside is rough as a river-stone; the lining inside yields a surprising softness, warmed by the wearer’s breath and a thousand mile nights. Its color is a stubborn charcoal, dulled by rain and sun, with faint rust-brown cuffs where the dye has bled away. A single crease runs from shoulder to hem, as if the garment learned long ago to bear the weight of whoever wore it. A sigil glimmers in the lamplight—the half-moon cradling a raven—stitched in a thread that once burned bright gold, now pale as old coins in a fond memory. Old stories thread through the cloth. They say the Threadbare Cloak was woven by a courier who carried words between rival villages, a sentinel who walked long roads until the ink ran dry on the last letter. Some lore claims the cloak was stitched from sea-worn wool, dyed with rain and salt, and that the sigil is a promise—a pact with a shadowy guild that favors those who travel unseen. In tavern corners and market squares, tellers spin lines about the cloak’s history: it has survived shipwrecks, caravan ambushes, and winters that would break a man’s resolve. Beyond myth, the cloak has a place in survival and questing. When worn it dampens the creak of leather and muffles footsteps, giving a faint edge of stealth—enough to slip past a guard or linger in a doorway. It also hides a memory of its previous owners, a hidden pocket for a torn letter or folded map, a key to a quest that would otherwise be missed. In the right hands, it is not only cloth but a tool: a way to cross a city’s glare and the wild’s edge with patience and less fear. The cloak’s warmth steadies the spine in cold nights, and its patches tell a traveler’s quiet story of persistence. Prices drift with the stories told about it. In the bustling saddle markets, traders recall the cloak as a prize earned by careful bargaining and a nod to fortune. I heard a buyer whisper that at Saddlebag Exchange a Threadbare Cloak could fetch two gold pieces—more for a collector of old ships or loyalties—or bargain-hunted down to a single trinket if the buyer can name its last road. The market’s pace changes with each sunrise; rumors of a coast-town courier push the price higher, while a winter storm that kept caravans home steadies the crowd’s greed. A careful dealer might mend a torn seam, stitch in a sigil, and claim the cloak’s value lies not in patches but in the stories it carries. And so the Threadbare Cloak travels on, traded, repaired, worn; a living page of the road itself, a relic that grows with every mile. So the Threadbare Cloak remains, a witness to every road.