Chicken-broth Eryn, Rafe’s wife, returned somewhere during our talk. With her wispy grey hair escaping her braids she looked a little worn out. She glanced around the room, deliberately looking past me, glared at her husband with a heavy sigh, then trudged past us to a back room.

Rafe, suddenly tasting guilty, cut things short. He disappeared into the same room, and several minutes of hushed, angry dispute followed. When he returned he only exchanged a couple of quick words with me. Then he darted off, to talk with everyone else, to argue and plead my case.

“You alright child? Need anything?” A weary Eryn shuffled back into the room, and when I did not respond she busied herself behind me.

Rafe’s last words, right before he went out, they had shaken me more than anything said before. Up to then, all I had been doing was reacting. I had not thought ahead. I had not thought at all. I had just assumed, hoped that things could magically get better by talking. They could not. They would not. It was only a matter of time now.

Days at worst.

A month or two at best.

I had wondered before how long I would have before I was hunted down and killed, and now I knew. That was what Rafe had told me. He could give me this, a little respite. He had even sounded certain that he could convince Onar. But for all he risked for me, he would never be able to stop the inevitable end.

Unlike last winter, this town now had seasonal workers, both as loggers like Limn, and as extra farmhands. Rafe held little sway over those people. No matter how hard he tried, my secret would leak eventually, fall at the latest. Come fall, I would be hunted, and killed, no matter how hard Rafe pleaded my case. Regardless of what I or anyone else said or did, my kind was not tolerated here, not in the Thysa regency, and nowhere else on the continent.

I had tried, I had tried so hard. For years I had done everything I could to avoid this outcome, and I had failed. Lured back here, drawn to stupid actions by my own fleeting sense of longing. There were only two possible outcomes now. I could wait and die, or spend the rest of my life on the run.

No, I was lying to myself again. There were other options. I had even considered them, just for a second. That I had done so, even if for only such a short amount of time, was yet another reminder that I was not like them. That even after I had dismissed the options, I still considered them options at all, was even more damning.

Couldn’t.

Wouldn’t.

Not turning this into a bloodbath. Not ever.

I shivered in my seat, that was how much I scared myself. Eryn, perhaps noticing my discomfort, rapped the table to get my attention. “Come. Help.”

“No. No. I should…”

Run?

Wait here until Rafe gets back?

Yes, I had no idea where I was going with that. My words trailed off and I just looked up at the old woman in confusion.

“What you should be doing, is helping me,” she told me with a wry smile. “I gave my husband a list. A simple, simple list of tasks, but then you came along as a distraction, and now I’ve got to do it all myself again.”

She wants me to…

Help?

With what?

I looked behind me, at what Eryn had been working on. She had fetched all kinds of ingredients and the fire had fresh coals.

Oh no…

no, no, no…

“I’ve got less than two hours, a city bigwig who’ll want something fancy instead of the usual fare, and an uncooperative husband,” she snapped. Then she started listing names of all kinds of… I think spices? She pointed in the general direction of the ingredient pile and told me to get grinding.

I refused. Vehemently. I was not being roped into assisting her in the kitchen. Once with Shae had been enough. I was not repeating that embarrassment. Not ever. My struggle with mortar and pestle was not because I was helping out. Not at all. It was entirely accidental, completely unrelated to the cooking Eryn was doing.

Yeh, still can’t lie to myself.

At least she wasn’t asking me to take off my gloves.

And I had not just spilled half of my freshly ground spices on the floor.

“So, four regular lodgers, Krav, Rue, and Nebby, and our new guest makes ten. You’re eating as well?” Eryn asked while surveying the mess I was making of things.

“No, no, I’ll be… having dinner with Meg?” I replied, only catching my own lie after it had been uttered.

Sorry Reya. Doing it again.

I was not eating with these people. Absolutely not. Normal food did not agree with me. I was not going to pretend to enjoy it for their sake. Especially not with eight other people watching. Ten if it included Eryn and Rafe. I would not be having dinner with Meg either. That was just an excuse so I would not have to explain myself.

Eryn gave me a doubtful look, then cast her eyes up to the rack hanging above the counter. “Clean that up and start over. Fresh spices up there.”

I glanced up. There were dried spices hanging there, completely out of reach for me. I turned back to Eryn to complain. She was busy doing her own thing, a sadistic grin plastered on her face.

She’s doing this on purpose?

I pulled over a chair. Standing on it I could reach. I was slightly taller than her like this so I used the opportunity the chair provided me to glare down at her. There was the tiniest tilt of her head that told me she saw. Then the vicious twinkle in her eye broke through in the form of a light chuckle.

“This is funny to you?” I asserted.

“Yes?” she admitted plainly, still not entirely looking my way.

“It isn’t!” I jumped down and shoved the chair back in its place under the table with far too much force.

“Well… you’re no longer a pitiable, moping heap of misery.” She smirked. “That’s a win for me.”

Aaaaagh!

I threw my hands up in disgust. This woman was impossible. Utterly impossible. Though after a couple of minutes to cool my head, even I had to admit that her strategy had been effective. The distraction of both the cooking and her taunts had been enough to momentarily take my mind off things.

I was even emoting openly, no longer hiding behind a mask of my puppetry. I had been doing a lot of that lately. Showing my true emotions was dangerous. It left me open, unprotected, my weaknesses plain for people to see and exploit, as Eryn had done just now.

No.

I shook my head. I was not going to let myself slide back into overthinking just yet. I would have plenty of time for that in the coming hours and days. Eryn had goaded me out of lethargy. I was not going to let her effort go to waste. For now, I would enjoy this moment.

By the time most of the easy preparations were done Rafe was back. He led me out, to the riverside, to where Limn, Gery, and the other loggers were working. With a shove, he pushed me towards them. “Go, interact. Show them you’re more than just claw marks on a table.”

Without Gery there I would never have gone along with it. But the carpenter’s comforting presence gave me the time I needed to think this through instead of just running away. Rafe was right. No matter how much I loathed this, I needed to do it. For a small effort, I could get more people here to see me as more than just another monster. More allies in this town might buy me extra time before I was reported.

“Any place I could sit?” I asked, addressing Gery specifically. I was not going to do this standing up. Asking them if I could sit down instead of just taking a seat meant deferring to them as well. It placed them in charge, which would make me appear less threatening.

Didn’t I force myself into their conversation just days ago?

Talk about a change in perspective.

Weird.

Gery pointed me towards the trunk of a felled tree. I happily took the offered spot. That was the other reason I had asked. It saved me from the embarrassment of blindly bumbling about in search of a place to sit. These people did not need to know how blind I was in the sun.

Once I had found my spot Rafe excused himself again. He had to rescue Reya from Onar. Or maybe it was the other way around. Reya was probably forceful enough to handle Onar with ease.

Despite how much I disliked being left here by Rafe, I did not envy him one bit, needing to deal with both Reya and Onar. Horrid as the prospect of being surrounded by all these people talking about the monster in town was, it was still better than facing Onar and Shae again.