Over the next few weeks, the tribe began to notice it.
The searches had been going on for years. Ezra had combed every inch of the settlement with his charms, looking for an Oddity's rule.
Orin had burned through stacks of parchment trying to divine the cause. Misty had layered her hushes over Ashen's room until even the air there felt sleepy. Silas had sent his floating eye through every tunnel and crack within a day's walk. Anastasia had healed him so many times she had lost count.
None of them had found anything.
But now, they didn't have to look as hard.
Because Ashen had stopped staring every time a woman walked past. He had stopped snapping, stopped flinching. His hands had stopped trembling too.
He laughed again at dinner and slept through the night.
The searches slowed down. Then, one by one, they quietly stopped. After all, manpower was always needed somewhere, and if it hadn't been for a matter as urgent as Ashen's, they would never have devoted years solely to this one search.
And something else began to change too.
Ashen had expected the tribe to stay distant, and had braced himself for it.
After everything he had done, whether he had been forced to or not, he had been sure that some cracks would never quite heal.
Women who would never sit in the same room as him again… Brothers who would always watch him from the corner of their eyes…
Oh, how wrong he was…
◉
Dinner on this particular day was strange. At least, from Ashen's perspective.
He was sitting in his usual place, Lapis on one side, Misty on the other, when the sister from the weaving room, the one who had kept as far away from him as possible since that day at the loom, walked past the table carrying a basket of bread.
She stopped right behind him.
Ashen felt his shoulders tense.
"Oh? Look who's finally keeping his eyes on his plate," she said loudly. "Should I be relieved, or offended?"
He turned around slowly. The sister was standing there with one hand on her hip, looking down at him with an expression of exaggerated disapproval.
"...Relieved?" he offered weakly.
"Hmph. Do you have any idea how rude your stare was?" She sniffed. "I didn't know our gentle little farmer was secretly that vulgar. Six years of sneaking looks at my wrists like they were the most scandalous thing he'd ever seen. My wrists, Ashen~"
Someone at the next table choked on their water.
"He did it to me too!" called another sister from across the hall. "I was just bending down to pick up a spool!"
"He stared at my ankles once," said a third, sounding almost offended. "My ankles! What's even interesting about ankles?!"
"Excuse me." Anastasia set her cup down with a sharp clink. The whole hall turned to look at her. The matriarch looked around at all of them with her chin raised. "Do you all think you're special? Even I got the treatment. Me. His own mother. So stop acting like it was some special favor."
For a moment, there was dead silence.
Then the hall exploded.
Ashen put his face in his hands.
"My husband's eyes were only researching!" Lapis shot to her feet, slamming her hand down on the table. "He's a Nurturer! Nurturers have to study things! It's part of his Path!"
"Researching what, exactly?" the weaving sister asked sweetly.
"...Anatomy!"
That only made it worse. The laughter got so loud the children started laughing too, without understanding a single word.
Lapis slowly sat back down, her face bright red, and refused to look at anyone.
"I tried," she muttered to Ashen.
"I noticed. It's the thought that counts. You can rest now, sister…"
"Your reputation is dead, brother."
"I noticed that too."
On the other end of the table, the men had started in as well.
"About damn time he stopped ogling our wives!" Bram roared, slamming his tankard down. "I'm glad, honestly! My hand was getting sore from punching him!"
"Your hand?" An uncle snorted. "I punched him in the face so many times it stopped being fun. The bastard never even dodged! What's the point of hitting a man who just stands there and takes it?"
"It was getting boring," another cousin agreed solemnly. "Like punching a sack of flour."
"Rune says she's going to miss the attention, by the way," Bram added with a grin, glancing sideways at his wife. "Says it was the most exciting thing that happened to her in years."
"I said no such thing!" Rune smacked the back of his head so hard his tankard sloshed.
"Mine says the same!" the uncle laughed, rubbing the back of his own head before his wife could get to it. "Says she didn't know she still had it at her age!"
"At least now we all know," the young cousin from the expedition piped up, the one who had frozen during the ambush, the one Ashen had told to stay home with the women. He had been quiet for years. Now he was leaning forward with a grin on his face that Ashen had never seen before. "The farmer plows more than just fields."
The whole table roared.
"Hey!" Ashen protested, his face burning. "I never plowed anything! I only looked!"
"Even worse!" Bram howled. "All that staring and no follow-through! What a waste!"
The table roared even louder.
"And you still owe me," the young cousin added when the laughter finally died down a little, pointing a finger at Ashen across the table. "For the 'stay home with the women' thing."
Ashen looked at him.
"…I'll carry your pack on the next expedition," he said quietly.
The cousin grinned. "Both ways."
"Don't push your luck!"
◉
Through all of it, Misty had been sitting beside him, eating quietly.
When the noise finally began to die down, she reached across her bowl, plucked a honeyed date from the plate in the middle of the table, and held it out to him.
Ashen looked at it, then at her.
"I'm not deaf," she said softly. "Just slow."
"..."
"So you don't have to look like that every time I take too long to answer you. I was never mad." She pressed the date into his mouth and went back to her stew. "...You looked like you were going to cry, that time. Not me."
Ashen chewed silently on the date.
He didn't trust himself to say anything, so he simply leaned over and rested his head on top of hers for a moment. Misty didn't seem to mind. She just kept eating.
He looked around the hall.
…At Bram, who was arguing with the uncle again, this time over whose wife had gotten the most attention.
…At the weaving sister, who caught his eye and stuck her tongue out at him.
…At his mother, who was laughing so hard that Adam had to steady her cup.
…At Lapis, still red-faced and sulking beside him, her pinky finger hooked into his under the table where no one could see.
…At Cain, smiling shyly at the far end of the table.
Not a single one of them had to do this.
'Seriously…'
They could have kept their distance and quietly held it against him for the rest of his life, and no one would have blamed them.
'I stared at your wives. I stared at your sisters, your daughters, your mothers. I snapped at your children. I nearly killed one of your sons in the training grounds…'
Instead, they were laughing.
They were turning six years of humiliation into a dinner table joke, so that he wouldn't have to carry it alone.
…So that he wouldn't have to sit there every night, wondering if they still saw a beast when they looked at him.
This was how they forgave. With dirty jokes, sore fists and honeyed dates.
Ashen's throat tightened.
He looked down at his bowl, so no one would see his face.
'Ah… really…'
'This is humanity.'
'So beautiful.'
'Thank you… for giving me one more reason to fight for you.'