"You look like hell."

"Thank you, it's always lovely to see you, too."

Pattick handed over a paper-wrapped bundle with a big pink bow on it.

People always say, "You shouldn't have," so T'zaim said it. He squinted afterward and decided it sounded stupid, then sat down at the table and opened the gift that was very obviously a guitar.

Or, he supposed briefly, something in a guitar case, which would be a clever disguise for a birthday present.

But it was, as anticipated, a guitar. It didn't look like anything special, not particularly fancy, of no remarkable quality or tone. The wood was of a Benden variety, and - after turning it over - he found the mark of the Journeyman that had made it. He swallowed a lump in his throat and said, genuinely, "Thank you. This is the nicest thing I think I've ever been given."

"You're not going to cry, are you? Because, if you are, I'm taking it back and leaving," replied Pattick blandly.

"No," and T'zaim blinked furiously and sniffed stubbornly, hugging the guitar to his chest childishly. "No," he repeated more firmly. "How did you even get this?"

"I'm a Journeyman fucking Harper, how do you think I got it? By commission. How'd your resolution thing go?"

"The window is closed."

"Are you serious?" Pattick rolled his eyes, then did it again when all T'zaim had to say for himself was a shrug. "Sometimes, it's embarrassing to know you."

T'zaim scoffed! "Am I supposed to take a rebuke from someone fucking a seventeen year old?"

"He's not seventeen."

"Eighteen?"

Pattick was silent.

"I rest my case. Here, it's all I've got."

Cue the next two hours of hammering out music, bickering like an old married couple, and finally parting company, job well done.