"Fine. Enjoy your rock. I’m sure that will feel great when it—"
Footsteps behind me.
I know whose footsteps those are. I know because I'm pathetic and because dirt has a sound and his boots hit different than everyone else's and I amnotturning around. I'm digging. Very busy. Important soil work happening.
"Rhen's going out past the creek tomorrow." Keer's voice at my back. "He'll take you if you want to look for wild herbs."
"What time does he leave?"
"Just after dawn."
"K. I'll be ready."
He doesn't walk away. He's right there. Three feet. Maybe less. The warmth of him at my back and the trowel needs to go deeper into this extremely important dirt right now. My hands have stopped moving. When did my hands stop moving? I shove the trowel down again.
"Your chicken is eating a rock."
"She knows what she's about."
A pause, then he walks away. Footsteps on dirt, then gone.
My fingers ache on the trowel.
The plot is maybe four feet by six feet, which isn't much, but it's something.
Herbs for healing. Herbs for cooking.
Something I built with my own dirt-caked hands in dirt that smells nothing like cedar and I'm not—the comfrey. The comfrey needs partial shade. Focus—
"Okay." I sit back on my heels. "Okay. That's enough digging for now."
Nugget clucks.
"I'm not spiraling. I'm assessing soil composition."
More clucking. I have never met a more judgmental chicken.
"You're a chicken in a sweater. You don't get to haveopinionsabout my mental state."
I push myself up, knees popping loud enough that Nugget startles. My back hurts. My shoulders hurt from digging. My face still aches where the guy hit me—there's a bruise there now, purple-green, and people keep looking at it and not asking questions. Which is fine. I don't want questions. I want to dig a garden and not think about—
"MELORI!"
My head snaps up.
The shout comes from the central clearing—loud, urgent, wrong. I'm already moving—dropping the trowel, leaving Nugget to her rock.
"MELORI!"
The clearing opens up and people are gathering, a tight cluster near the main fire pit. I'm shoving through bodies before I can see what's happening—elbows and shoulders, someone grabs my arm and I yank free, already pushing toward the center where—
Keer.
He's carrying a child. Small body limp against his chest, maybe six years old, blood soaking through a rough bandage on her arm. Her face is wrong.
"Put her down. Now. Right here."
He lowers her to the ground without arguing—and I'm already on my knees beside her, hands reaching for thebandage before he's finished laying her flat.
