The Handkerchief of Weeping Roads

by Frazer 👁 24 views

This square of impossibly fine ivory linen is edged with silver thread and folded into a neat triangle. Its surface is embroidered with a sprawling map in blue, gray, and gold silk: coastlines curl around tiny mountains, roads cross vanished kingdoms, and minute compass roses turn when viewed from different angles. Each place where the handkerchief has absorbed tears is marked by a glistening pearl-colored stitch. The cloth is always cool, smells faintly of rain, and never stains.

Map of Tears The handkerchief bears an ever-changing embroidered map showing every location where it has absorbed a creature's tears. When a creature sheds a genuine tear onto the handkerchief, the place where that tear was shed appears on the map as a new embroidered landmark.

A Road Taken Once A creature can use an action to press the handkerchief to its face and choose one location depicted on its map. The creature is immediately teleported to an unoccupied space of its choice within 10 feet of that location, provided the destination is on the same plane of existence. The teleportation is exact and cannot be prevented by mundane distance, but it fails if the chosen location no longer exists or is inside a warded area that blocks teleportation. The creature can activate this property exactly once in its existence. Afterward, the handkerchief remains usable by other creatures, but it never functions for that creature again, even if it loses its memories, changes its body, or is restored to life.

Unshared Passage Only the creature that activates A Road Taken Once is transported. Equipment worn or carried by that creature travels with it, but no other creature or unattended object does. A creature cannot activate the handkerchief on behalf of another creature.

Merciful Absorption While held, the handkerchief dries tears instantly and leaves the creature emotionally comforted. A creature that sheds tears onto it can choose whether the tears are absorbed; tears shed unwillingly or created by magic do not add a location to the map.

Lore

The handkerchief is said to have been made by a celestial cartographer who could not bear to forget the places where mortals had wept. Every tear became a thread, every farewell a road, and every grief a landmark. Some legends claim that the map includes battlefields, sickrooms, wedding altars, prison cells, and the quiet corners where children cried themselves to sleep. Others insist that the handkerchief does not merely record sorrow, but remembers the place where each person most needed to be heard.

History

The first recorded owner was Queen Ilyra of the Seven Harbors, who used the handkerchief to return to her dying father's bedside after being stranded across the sea. It later passed through the hands of pilgrims, exiles, spies, and desperate lovers. During the Ashen Succession, an entire royal family used it one by one to escape a besieged palace, leaving a trail of new silver stitches across the map. The handkerchief disappeared after the last surviving prince used it in a place no surviving map can identify.

Created by Frazer 👁 24 views