"Nothing."
"You growled—"
"I didn't growl."
"—you said it smelled wrong, and you stood there looking ready to kill it for the entire treatment. That's not nothing."
"I just don't trust strange wolves." She drops into the chair. "Neither should you, by the way. You let anything walk through that door."
"Injured anything. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Wolves get hurt. I can help. Why wouldn't I?"
"Because you don't know where they come from. You don't know what they've done. You don't know—" She stops. "Forget it."
"You can't say all that and then say forget it."
"Watch me." She rubs her face with both hands. "I'm tired. I'm being weird. Can we talk about the boots again?"
I watch her. Hands steady. But something's still there—around her eyes, in her mouth, somewhere.
"Fine," I tell her. "But for the record, you growled."
"I will throw your stew pot at your head."
"It's full."
"I don't care."
We finish up together, and by the time we're done, the stew is ready. We eat outside on the bench I built last spring, the evening cool but not cold, the sky going orange and pink through the trees. The chickens have put themselves to bed in the coop—I can see Nugget through the slats, still aggressively pink, settled on the highest roost. Naturally.
"This is good," Kestria tells me around a mouthful of rabbit.
"You brought the rabbit."
"And you made it edible. I'd have just burned it over a fire."
"You—no. No! That's a tragedy. That's an insult to the rabbit."
"That's also edible."
"Barely."
She scrapes the bottom of her bowl. "Seriously. I'm a terrible cook. Everything comes out either raw or charcoal."
"There's a middle ground."
"Not for me there isn't."
I laugh, and Kestria grins at me. I bump my shoulder against hers.
We sit there as the stars come out, not talking, just eating and watching the sky darken. Kestria tells me more about Sarveil—a street musician she liked, a blacksmith who made her a new knife—and I tell her about the wolves from earlier in the week. Normal conversation. Normal evening.
I set my empty bowl aside. "Where are you headed next?"
"South again, probably. Heading home for a bit, actually."
