Uma woke up bright and early — apparent by the sun shining directly into her eyes.
She stretched, cracked her neck, and sat up.
It was the same library. Same bed. Same bare room. But it felt different now. More inviting. Like she could walk around it without a purpose and not get side-eyed for existing.
She padded downstairs and pushed open the door to the kitchen.
Ms. Red was there, cooking in a morning gown.
God. I want to be her when I'm old. Hot even in an old-lady gown. Unfair.
Uma made a small noise to announce herself. Ms. Red turned and smiled.
"...Morning."
Uma was fairly sure she'd said more than just that — something warmer, probably — but morning was all she could make out. She nodded and waved.
Ms. Red pulled out a chair and set down a plate of eggs and sausage that glistened like they'd been drawn by a professional cartoonist. Uma's mouth watered instantly. She looked up with her best can I? expression.
Ms. Red nodded, slid a cup of tea and a book over, and went back to the stove.
"Read. Eat."
The book was a sign language guide — Uma could tell from the illustrated hand gestures on every page. Nothing like anything she'd seen before. Completely foreign shapes.
But Ms. Red had saved her life, fed her, given her a room. Uma was going to learn this damn language if it killed her.
They spent breakfast like that. Quiet. Present in each other's lives.
It was nice.
Which was soon cut short.
"HELLO!!!!!"
The library door exploded open.
Uma's entire tea went onto her lap.
Mr. Blacksmith came barreling through the doorway with his customary HELLO!!!!! at the volume of an avalanche, and Ms. Red — without looking up, without pausing, without so much as a breath — threw a chair at him.
I genuinely don't know what's more impressive. That she threw it hard enough to break it, or that he just laughed it off.
Uma held her tea-soaked shirt away from her skin and tried very hard not to exist for a moment.
Ms. Red smacked Mr. Blacksmith on the forehead with a pan on her way past — this appeared to be routine — and guided Uma upstairs to change.
They came back down in dresses. Ms. Red in her usual red. Uma in a blue gown that was way too rich for the type of girl she was.
Mr. Blacksmith was already at the table with roughly eight empty plates stacked beside him, working on his ninth.
He said something to Ms. Red that got a cup thrown at him.
Uma caught the faint blush on Ms. Red's cheeks before she could hide it, and lit up like a Christmas tree.
Oh. Oh my god. She likes him. She LIKES him.
Uma sat down at the table trying very hard to keep her face neutral.
Mr. Blacksmith led the conversation, most of which Uma couldn't follow, but she had an excellent view of the crumbs flying from his mouth as he talked.
Ms. Red noticed too. She leaned over and brushed them out of his beard.
"...Mouth. Closed. Brute."
He just laughed.
Then his eyes landed on Uma, and something lit up behind them. He reached into his pocket and produced —
Oh.
Oh.
A chalkboard. A genuinely beautiful one — polished wood, smooth edges, with a small gleaming gem attached by a thin string. Uma picked up the gem, pressed it to the board, and a crisp white line appeared.
It writes. It actually writes.
Her eyes filled before she understood why.
Not just because it was a gift — though she couldn't remember getting one of those before, not ever. Not even on her birthdays.
It was because it was her voice back.
She blinked hard. Grabbed the gem. Bent over the board and wrote, as carefully as she could, the first thing she'd said to anyone in this world without her hands:
Thearnk qou.
She held it up proudly.
Ms. Red read it.
Mr. Blacksmith read it.
They looked at each other.
Mr. Blacksmith erupted into laughter. Ms. Red turned her face away, one hand clapped over her mouth, shoulders shaking.
...What. What's so — oh.
Oh, you're kidding me.
Uma re-read her own handwriting. Felt heat crawl up her entire face. She picked up an empty cup and chucked it at Mr. Blacksmith, which only made both of them laugh harder, Ms. Red fully breaking now, actual tears in her eyes.
Fuck BOTH of you.
Uma buried her face in the sign language book.
A warm hand closed over hers a moment later. She peeked out.
Ms. Red, still suppressing laughter, was gently guiding Uma's hand across the board.
Thank you.
The letters came out clean and even.
"...Your turn, dear." Ms. Red pushed the board toward her. "Write anything."
Uma stared at the blank board.
Anything?
God, don't screw this up. Don't screw this up. Don't screw this up.
After a long moment, she figured it out.
Back to old reliable.
In big, wobbly letters — handwriting that would genuinely have made an English teacher weep — she wrote:
U M A.
She held it up. Pointed to herself. Pointed to the board. Pointed to herself again.
She could tell they were both squinting to read her hieroglyphics, which made her want to throw the entire table.
But after a moment of clear struggle, Ms. Red's face softened into a smile.
She took the board. Wiped it clean. Wrote slowly, carefully:
Se-ro-sa.
She held it up. Pointed to herself.
Then she pointed to Mr. Blacksmith and wrote underneath it:
Ha-ma-ron.
Uma looked at the board.
Then at them.
Then at the board again.
Serosa. Hamaron.
Their names hung above their heads in her mind like banners, and suddenly Uma couldn't look at either of them without something in her chest going very, very soft.
So that's what I call you.
The tears started before she could stop them. Not the hurt kind — not the kind she'd cried yesterday. Something closer to relief. Like someone finally exhaling after holding their breath for eighteen years.
Her body moved on its own.
She slid out of her chair and hugged them. Both of them. All at once.
Serosa's arms came around her immediately. Hamaron's came around the both of them a half-second later, and he was so big that Uma could barely feel the kitchen existing outside of him.
They held her tighter.
No one said anything for a long moment.
Then Hamaron said something Uma caught the rhythm of but not the meaning — something enthusiastic, something celebratory — and abruptly stood up, marched out of the kitchen, and came back carrying what looked like an entire barrel of beer.
Serosa's tea flew at his face before he finished setting it down.
"Young. No beer."
Hamaron took this as more beer for me and began chugging directly from the barrel. Serosa let out a sound of pure disgust, herded him toward the door, and kicked him out with the barrel still attached to his face.
Geez. That man.
Uma silently giggled — just her shoulders shaking — and a stray thought drifted through.
They give total situationship vibes.
It made her shoulders shake harder.
Serosa bent down next to her. Uma caught one word.
"...Cake?"
Uma nodded fast enough to give herself whiplash.
The rest of the day passed slowly.
Uma stuffed her face with a cake that had no business being as good as it was. Hamaron was eventually re-admitted to the kitchen on the condition that the barrel was not. He bickered with Serosa about everything and nothing, and Serosa bickered back, and Uma watched them both like they were a sitcom that had been playing before she'd walked into the room.
The man who'd given her a home. The woman who'd saved her life. Fighting about crumbs.
When the sun finally set and Uma was guided back upstairs to the guest room — her room, she realized — she tucked herself in and lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling.
There was a warmth in her chest that didn't seem to want to leave.
Or — maybe it wasn't new at all. Maybe it had always been meant for her, and it had just taken eighteen years and one very loud blacksmith to deliver it.
The warmth of family.
She closed her eyes.
For the first time in her life, she didn't dread waking up tomorrow.