~ * ~ * ~

The next morning, she was in the middle of rinsing her and her mother's breakfast dishes when her Aunt Catalina came for a visit. The two women chatted in the adjacent room, their conversation too heated for them to keep their voices down. Aunt Catalina was her father's sister, and Stockbrunn's Intendant of Internal Affairs. She handled crime and other legal matters concerning the city. They weren't talking about anything to do with that, though. It sounded more like they were talking about Vicente's treatment.

"How can you stand to let them do this to him? He's not a toy for them to play around with," Catalina shouted. "Why wouldn't you talk to me about this first? Why did I have to hear about this secondhand from the doctor?!"

"He's in my care. What happens to him is my decision."

"Hilda, this isn't right!"

"Dr. Cuthberht said this was the best thing to do for him."

"I'm not talking about... No. Do you think keeping him like this is the best thing for him? It's been ten years. He's not coming back, Hilda." Catalina's voice lowered. Ellie halted her dishwashing to hear better.

"It's possible. It's happened. I've read studies. Ask Dr. Cuthberht for them. She knows about these experimental treatments where—"

Henrik came into the kitchen. His presence pulled Ellie out of her mother and aunt's conversation. She went back to scrubbing an already clean plate, just to make herself look too busy to bother with him.

But since he was the type to never get a hint, Ellie asked him in an annoyed tone, "you're still here?" She glanced at him over her shoulder, then refocused her attention back on the plate she held. "It's past the end of your shift, isn't it?"

"I wanted to stay longer," he said. "I'm only going home now because Bodil's forcing me to get some sleep."

"Yes, you should do that." Ellie fit the plate on the dish rack.

"Have you seen Zinnia? Is she okay? She's missed school a couple days in a row now... It isn't like her."

Ellie whirled around. "If you care so damn much, why don't you ask her yourself?"

Henrik didn't look taken aback. "I know what you're going through must be stressful," he said. He used the same tone he used with her father: light and delicate, like she could break from his words. "You know, with Chief Vicente and everything else... You should talk to someone. The clinic has nurses trained in talk therapy."

Nurses trained in talk therapy who would no doubt take whatever she'd tell them and reveal it all to her mother. Ultimately, they were all extra ears for the Chieftess. Information gatherers, pretending like they cared. No, there was no way Ellie would tell them a single thing about what was going on in her head. There was no trust there to be found.

"Go home, Henrik."

"I'm sorry."

"I don't want to hear it."

"Excuse me," Henrik said. He bowed his head, then left the room. Ellie let out a big breath in relief.

The other women had gone quiet. Whatever conversation Hildegarde and Catalina had been having seemed to have finished. Ellie sat down at the kitchen table, trying to do her best not to let any of the cracks in the wood remind her of the feeding tube. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Boots padded into the room. Catalina and Hildegarde. Ellie kept her head down on the table, not looking at them.

"Taking a nap?" Catalina teased. Ellie peeked through one eye at her. Her mid-brown skin had a golden tan to it. She had long hair in loose curls spilling over her backs and shoulders, something that Ellie would've killed to have inherited from Vicente's side of the family.

"Something like that," Ellie mumbled. She didn't bother with any formalities when it came to her aunt. Aunt Catalina was too cool for that.

"Wake up," Hilda said, sounding as bossy as ever. "You're going to be spending the day with Aunt Catalina hunting."

Ellie sat up in her chair. "What about this?" She pointed to her bandaged hand. "I can't hunt like this."

Catalina tsked at her. "What is that, a papercut? I've hunted with much worse."

"It was a sickle. Aunt Una said it was bad."

"Una overreacts," Hilda said without so much of a smidgen of sympathy. "Go upstairs and change into something better for hiking through the woods."

"I'm supposed to be with Zinnia today, though," Ellie tried. "We've got school work to catch up on together."

"You're going, Ellie. This is important for you to learn."

Ellie bit her bottom lip. All of her plans, everything that she'd been looking forward to...gone in the blink of the eye.

"That look's not going to work on me," Hilda said. "You can let Zinnia know you can't hang out with her today before you leave, so she knows that you didn't abandon her."

Ellie wished she could do the same for Shreya. Being friends with a woods dweller made simple things like that difficult.

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A/N: Next update on RRL will be Chapter 17.3: Bolt.