Ressa is sitting on the low table by the window with her legs folded under her, a cup of something warm in both hands, and Kerra is occupying the large chair beside the fire with her boots off and her feet on the footrest, looking entirely at home. Falla is at the workbench with his back to me, doing something methodical with small clay jars.
All three of them look at me.
"Ursik," Ressa says, with a carefully neutral expression.
"You're back," Kerra says. "You look odd."
"I don't look odd." I step fully into the room and pull the door behind me and attempt to look like myself. "Falla, I need a tincture."
"For what." He doesn't turn around.
"Soreness. Uh, muscle soreness." There's a pause in which I can feel both Ressa and Kerra looking at me. I keep my eyes on Falla's back. "And possibly a chill. From the rain."
Another pause.
"You went through the storm," Ressa says slowly.
"Everyone in the hunt went through the storm. I'm being responsible." I cross my arms. "Do you have something or not?"
Falla turns around and looks at me the way he looks at everything — a flat, comprehensive, diagnostic look that takes everything in at once — and then he goes back to his jars without saying a single word. Which is fine. That's fine.
"Who's it for?" Kerra raises a brow.
"It's for me."
"You just said soreness."
"I said possibly a chill?—"
"Ursik." She points at me with devastating accuracy. "You have come in here looking completely shaken and asked for a remedy you clearly don't need for yourself. Who is it for?"
I look at the ceiling. It is a very normal ceiling. "I need two, actually. One for each."
The room is very quiet.
"Ursik," Ressa says, and there is something in her voice that is careful and warm in equal measure. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," I say, to the ceiling. "I'm completely fine. I just need the tinctures."
Kerra stands up from the chair, abandoning the footrest, and comes to stand in front of me with her arms crossed. She isnearly as tall as me. She has known me most of my life, which means she has exactly zero capacity for my deflections and uses it.
"You got caught in the storm," she says.
"Yes."
"With Aislin."
"We were partners for the hunt. You were there when we left, you argued with me about it for twenty minutes?—"
"You'redifferent," she says, and the flatness in it is not unkind, it's just accurate, and she looks at me with that look that sees straight past whatever I think I'm doing. Her eyes narrow. "You're completely gone, aren't you."
"I am not?—"
"You came in here with that face?—"
Why does everyone keep saying that? "I don'thavea face?—"
"That isabsolutelya face, Ursik, I have known your face for twenty-five years—" She turns to Ressa. "He has a face."
