"That's a low bar."
"It is." His mouth curves.
"Human."
Tovar. Big one from yesterday. Arms folded, permanent scowl. "Nobody asked you to do this."
"Nobody was doing it."
"We feed ourselves fine."
"You eat raw meat and stale bread. That's not fine, that's giving up."
His weight shifts forward. "How do we know you haven't put something in it?"
"I've been eating it for the last ten minutes. Still alive. Want me to prove it again or can I get back to serving people who are actually hungry?"
Dara appears beside me, holding out a bowl. "Stew."
I fill it. She settles onto a stump. Tovar stares at me. Stares at Rhen, who's on his second bowl. Turns and walks away.
Kestria appears from the larger dwellings. Still pale, but grinning. "You made breakfast?"
"Everyone needs to eat."
"You've been here one night and you've already taken over the food area."
"There was no kitchen. There were cold fire pits and despair."
She laughs—grabs her ribs. "Don't—ow."
"Eat. Then go back to resting."
"Yes, mother." But she takes the bowl.
My neck goes warm. Keer is standing near one of thelarger structures, not approaching, not eating. His eye on the fire. On me.
I stir the porridge with aggressive focus because porridge is fascinating and the thyme ratio is very important and did I add salt, I don't think I added salt—
"She just started cooking?" Axan's voice carries, amused.
"Apparently."
"Food's good, though."
No response.
The morning burns off. People drift through the clearing—eating, working, talking. I scrub the pots. Reorganize the cooking area because whoever set it up put the woodpile downwind of the fire, which means sparks, which means burned firewood, which means—
I stop.
The food storage catches my eye on my way back.
Stone-lined, partially underground, cool. Someone built this right. Someone thought about temperature. Someone cared—and then apparently left, because from the doorway I can see grain in open bins with no lids, root vegetables piled on the dirt floor, and in the corner, three bushels turning soft and dark.
Oh no.
I step inside. The spoiling grain first—salvage what I can, toss the rest, and who leaves grain uncovered, rodents are a thing, moisture is a thing, the whole point of oh this is containment—the vegetables need to come off the floor, a rack would fix it, scrap wood and four stones would fix it, this is a fifteen-minute problem that's been a fifteen-minute problem for weeks—
