Uma woke up in her own bed.
The familiar soreness of yesterday's forge work had settled into her body overnight, curdling into a deep, dull ache that made the idea of any physical movement feel like a personal insult. She lay there for a moment, blinking at the ceiling, and let the situation resolve.
She was in her room.
She was in her bed.
Someone had carried her.
She didn't know who. She didn't know when. She didn't know why the thought made her chest feel fluttery and a little stupid.
...Okay. I think I can say with confidence I hit the jackpot.
She rolled onto her side and groaned silently at the protest from every muscle she owned.
Eventually she got up and hobbled over to the closet, pulling out a black dress.
Dresses aren't exactly my style. But showing up in a hoodie and jeans around here feels like cause for burning at the stake.
She wrestled it on and made her way downstairs.
The house was quiet.
Too quiet, for a house that contained Hamaron. She opened a window near the stairs and the smell of dew on grass hit her — along with the soft gold of a sun that had just barely decided to get to work.
Guess everyone's still asleep.
She drifted around for a bit, uncertain of what to do with herself. Eventually she found herself in the library, opened a book on the local language, and attempted to study.
Attempted.
After thirty minutes she'd made peace with the fact that she was not, in this specific moment, Shakespeare — though she felt pretty solid on the basics — and set the book aside.
She scanned the library for something to do. Her eyes landed on a feather duster tucked beside what she assumed was the checkout counter.
God, look at me. I'm basically a little house servant.
She considered it, though. These people had fed her, clothed her, saved her life, and by now she was fairly certain they'd quietly adopted her without telling her. The least she could do was dust a shelf.
She started on one shelf.
One shelf became two.
Two became the entire library.
The entire library became shelves no one was ever going to check, because at some point the activity had crossed from gratitude into compulsion. She only stopped when her legs reminded her she was a broken woman recovering from forge trauma, and she dropped into a chair, drumming her fingers on her thighs.
I don't want to read again. And if I clean any more I'll develop a disorder.
Her eyes drifted toward the kitchen doorway.
...Hmm.
The kitchen was, as she suspected, like a medieval version of a modern kitchen.
The coolest part was the stove — a flat black stone slab with a controlled fire burning steadily underneath it, feeding heat up through the surface. No burners. No dials. Just hot stone and the vague threat of injury.
Alright. Let's get cracking.
Uma cracked her knuckles and got to work.
Work, for Uma, meant being covered in flour within ten minutes with grease stains running up both arms, while a strip of bacon slowly caught fire on the stone.
How did I get flour on me. There is literally no flour in this recipe.
She pushed past the ghost flour and moved on to the eggs. Beat them. Somehow ended up with a full egg's worth of yolk smeared across her face.
I am not made for this.
She sighed. Kept going. She was already too deep in to abandon ship. She was briefly startled by the bacon actually catching fire, which was when she heard footsteps and the familiar morning yawn.
Serosa appeared in the doorway, hair loose, robe pulled haphazardly closed, looking like a painting.
She took one look at the kitchen. Then at Uma. Then at the burning bacon.
"...Smells good," she offered diplomatically.
Uma gave her a thumbs up and watched a second bacon strip start to smolder.
Serosa laughed softly.
"Need help?"
Uma shook her head. I'm a grown woman. I can cook bacon and eggs.
She gave another thumbs up.
Serosa chuckled, said something along the lines of call if you need me, and sat down at the table with a book that was way out of Uma's weight class
Uma did not notice this. Uma was locked in.
By the time she was done, the bacon had moderate char marks. The yolks were only slightly broken. The eggs were mostly yellow.
She plated it carefully and set it in front of Serosa like she was presenting the crown jewels.
Serosa looked up at her. At the flour on her face. At the yolk in her hair. At the plate of burned bacon and lopsided eggs.
She smiled.
And in a voice that made Uma want to go back upstairs and clean the whole house all over again, she said:
"Thank you, dear."
Then she leaned forward and kissed Uma's forehead.
I could get used to this. Uma turned away fast to hide the smug smile spreading across her face.
"Any for Hamaron?" Serosa asked, poking at the food with her fork. The flour-bacon was doing something ambitious, flavor-wise.
As if his name had summoned him —
"HELL—"
Serosa threw a chair at him.
Seriously. Where are all these chairs coming from. Uma ducked behind the counter and came back up cautiously.
Hamaron — wholly undeterred by the chair that had just struck him in the chest — walked over to Serosa, leaned over her shoulder, and said something Uma couldn't fully parse. Something about the food. He reached down and picked up a bacon strip.
Uma swore she saw Serosa's hand twitch toward the nearest object, undecided between another chair and her own fist.
Instead, she let him take it.
"Uma made."
Hamaron took a bite. Paused. Looked at the strip of bacon. Looked at Uma. Looked at Serosa. Let out a booming, good-natured laugh.
Uma pieced together enough of the follow-up to get the general gist.
"That's why it tastes like that."
...I completely understand why she throws chairs at him.
Uma eyed the nearest chair.
She considered it.
She seriously, genuinely considered it.
Her arms reminded her she couldn't currently lift a five-pound book, let alone a whole chair, so she sat back down at the table instead and started practicing her spelling on the chalkboard. With extreme aggression.
Serosa got up, poured both of them proper plates of actual food, and sat back down.
The three of them ate together. Hamaron stole bites off Uma's plate with the casualness of a man who had been stealing food from people all his life. Serosa fixed Uma's hair at one point without breaking stride from her conversation. Uma sketched her alphabet on the chalkboard between bites and got most of it right, though Z and A had swapped places for reasons she could not explain and refused to accept.
She stared at the swapped letters for a long moment.
Fuck this stupid language and its stupid alphabet.
She clipped the chalkboard back to her belt and slumped against the table.
A hand appeared in her hair. Serosa — not breaking her conversation with Hamaron for a single second — gently smoothed it back into place.
"You can do it, dear."
Uma groaned silently and ate her eggs with the energy of a woman being personally victimized by vowels.
She took another swing at the alphabet. Z and A swapped again.
She ruffled her own hair.
Across the table, Hamaron and Serosa were in the middle of a conversation Uma couldn't fully follow. Bits and pieces floated through — something about the market, something about the mayor, something that made Serosa press her lips into a thin line and Hamaron let out a rumbling sound of disapproval that wasn't a laugh.
Then both of them stood up.
Hamaron cracked his neck.
Serosa tapped the table next to Uma gently.
"Come. Up, up."
...A what.
Uma stood.
Serosa gestured for her to follow and led her toward the front door.
"...Going to run some errands."
Oh. Okay. Errands. Sure.
Uma hustled into her shoes and caught up to her at the threshold.
For a second — standing in the morning light, about to walk through the door next to a woman whose name she'd only learned the day before — Uma looked up at Serosa and felt something settle into place in her chest.
She smiled to herself and mentally checked something off a list she hadn't known she'd been keeping.
Errands with Mom.