"The pink chicken."
"Before that."
"Six wolves this week. One with a bad leg, two with bites. Might be territorial fights happening out there."
"Wolves fighting wolves?"
"Probably. They get vicious sometimes." I shrug. "Not my problem. I just fix the damage."
Kestria watches me for a moment, her mouth opening and then closing again. Then she shakes her head.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just thinking." She picks at the edge of my table. "Don't you ever wonder about them? Where they come from?"
"The forest."
"You know what I mean."
"Not really." I get up to check the rabbit—good size, cleanly killed.
Except.
Teeth did this. Big ones.
I turn the rabbit over. The killing bite's at the throat, but the body's intact. No feeding. Whatever caught this didn't eat it.
"Kestria." I hold up the rabbit. "Did you just grab this off the ground somewhere? There are teeth marks all over it. Big ones. This is the fish all over again."
"The fish was fine!"
"The fish had bite marks in it, Kes."
She's not wrong. I did eat the fish.
I set the rabbit on the cutting board. Wolves catch rabbits all the time. Maybe she found it fresh-killed.
Maybe she traded for it and whoever traded it to her got it from a wolf kill.
Kestria's already moved on—something about the road, or Sarveil, or a cursed saddle—
I glance at the marks one more time before I reach for the knife.
"—and then he tried to sell me the cursed saddle, Mel, an actually cursed saddle, and when I pointed out that the leather was rotting and also there was definitely blood on it—"
"Why was there blood on it?"
"That's what I asked! He said it was 'character.'"
"Did you buy it?"
"What? No. Obviously not."
"Just checking."
Kestria grabs a handful of yarrow from the drying rack and starts bundling it without being asked.
"I'm offended you had to check." She ties off a bundle with more force than necessary.
