Spectre · Frosted Conservatory
The morning Iskareth appeared, Frosted Conservatory was preparing to discard a box of old seed envelopes. Their labels had faded, and nobody could tell which seeds belonged to which beds. Neri had promised to help clear the shelves, yet she disliked throwing things away simply because nobody knew their names. As she set one envelope beside the cold window, a ghost appeared in the glass, tall and still against its pale reflection.
The Spectre had a rounded head, two recessed eyes and irregular sweeps of blue-and-white marbling. Neri noticed it, looked away, and found it in the same place when she looked back. It did not move towards the envelope or point to anything. The crisp air and crystalline clarity of the conservatory belonged to the room itself. Iskareth was simply there, unmistakable, while Neri continued her work.
On the envelope she noticed three ink dots, too neat to be stains. A second packet had four; a third, a crooked cross. Beneath the lowest shelf, faint marks had been scratched into the wood. Neri fetched the caretaker, who thought the marks might mean nothing. They agreed to examine the box before discarding it, and spread the packets across a table.
The first marks seemed to match the planting beds, but two envelopes fitted the same position. Neri’s excitement wilted. The caretaker reminded her that solving something honestly meant being willing to discover a mistake. Together they turned over every packet. On the back of one they found a date; beneath a shelf divider, a folded index with the same dates. Suddenly the marks were not a puzzle made for them, but an old gardener’s careful system.
They copied the missing names onto fresh labels and placed the envelopes in order. The work took most of the afternoon. When Neri returned to the window, the ghost was still present, anchored and independent as when she first saw it. Nobody believed Iskareth had hidden the index or revealed its location. Yet the quiet figure had kept its place while something nearly forgotten became useful again.
The caretaker called Iskareth the Silent Warden, not because it protected seeds with any mysterious power, but because its presence had become part of the day they rescued the old records. Beyond the glass, frost softened at the edges; within the conservatory, the air remained crisp and clear. Neri took home a copy of the recovered list, promising to return when the seeds were planted.
Spring would decide what grew from those envelopes. The ghostly Spectre made no promises. But Neri had learned that a mystery can begin with the decision to look more carefully, and that lost names sometimes wait for patient hands to find them.
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