Kana talked. Hana didn't.
Over the next two days, Yuki and Lira pieced together what had happened. Kana told it in fragments — between meals, during walks, in the quiet moments before sleep. Never all at once. Never without checking that Hana was out of earshot first.
They were from a small beastkin settlement north of the Amber Plains. Fox-kin. Their village had been raided by goblins — a large warband, bigger than anything the settlement's hunters could handle. The adults had fought. The adults had lost. Kana and Hana had been taken.
How long they'd been in the pit, Kana couldn't say precisely. Days blurred together. Long enough for Hana to stop talking.
When Kana finished, Yuki didn't press for more. Lira held the girl's hand and said nothing, which was exactly the right thing to do.
They have nobody. No home. No family.
They have us.
On the third day, Yuki took them hunting.
"Both of them?" Lira asked, strapping on her quiver.
"They need to move. They need to feel useful. And they need to learn that the world isn't just pits and goblins."
"They're five and six."
"Beastkin five and six. Kana's faster than most adults I've seen and Hana can hear a grasshopper from fifty metres."
Lira considered this. "Fine. But if anything bigger than a rabbit shows up, they're behind me."
They set out from the caravan at midmorning. The grassland rolled in every direction — golden, open, safe enough for a training exercise. Yuki carried a bag of throwing daggers he'd forged the night before. Small, balanced, weighted for small hands.
He handed three to Kana. Three to Hana.
Kana took hers with the seriousness of a soldier receiving orders. She tested the weight, shifted her grip, and threw one at a grass clump ten metres away. It missed by a wide margin but the form wasn't bad.
Hana held hers like they might bite.
"Here." Yuki knelt beside her and adjusted her grip. "Hold it by the blade end. Light fingers. Then flick your wrist — like throwing a ball."
Hana looked at the dagger. Looked at the grass clump. Threw.
It sailed over the target by three metres and vanished into the tall grass.
Her ears drooped.
"That's a great first throw," Yuki said. It wasn't. But she was five and traumatised and he would lie through his teeth to keep those ears from drooping.
He set up proper targets — dead wood from a scrub tree, propped upright in the grass. Kana threw. Hana threw. They missed and missed and missed, and then Kana hit the edge of the wood and shrieked with delight and Hana threw harder and hit nothing but seemed less defeated about it.
Then Lira spotted the boar.
A grassland variety — smaller than the forest boars Yuki had hunted at the homestead, but solid. Maybe eighty kilos, tusked, rooting through a patch of low scrub about forty metres out.
Lira nocked an arrow. The new ones — mana-reinforced shafts Yuki had crafted, tipped with blue-metal heads that could punch through stone.
She drew. Held. Released.
The arrow crossed forty metres in a blink and took the boar through the neck. Clean. Instant. The animal dropped without a sound.
Kana's mouth fell open. Hana's ears went straight up.
"Wow," Kana breathed.
"That," Yuki said, "is what practice looks like."
Lira slung her bow and walked toward the kill with the casual stride of someone who'd been doing this since she was a child. She glanced back. "Coming? It won't clean itself."
They processed the boar together. Yuki did the heavy work — field dressing, skinning, breaking down the carcass. Lira handled the cuts with practiced efficiency. Kana watched everything with wide amber eyes, asking questions about every step. Hana sat nearby and played with her daggers, occasionally glancing over.
By afternoon, they had meat for the camp and two fox-kin girls who'd spent the day in the sun instead of a goblin pit.
Small victories. The kind that mattered.
The sleeping arrangements evolved without anyone formally agreeing to them.
That first night, Yuki had set up a separate bedroll for the girls in his tent. Kana and Hana had at some point in the night, crawled into his blankets instead. One on each side. Kana's silver tail curled across his stomach. Hana's face pressed into his shoulder.
He lay there, rigid, afraid to move in case he accidentally rolled onto a fox child.
By the second night, he'd adjusted. They were warm and small and slept with the boneless heaviness of exhausted children. Kana snored lightly. Hana whimpered sometimes in her sleep, and Yuki would put his hand on her head and the whimpering would stop.
On the third night, Lira appeared at the tent flap.
"I can't have these girls sleeping alone with you, its inappropriate. Therefore, I will be accompanying them."
Yuki looked at the two fox-kin children draped across him then at Lira and her terrible excuse to be here and couldn't find any reason to refuse. "Sure, but it might be tight."
"I'll manage."
She slipped in beside Kana and pulled a blanket over herself. The tent was large — big enough for four, barely — and within minutes the arrangement had settled into something that worked. Hana against Yuki's right side. Kana between Yuki and Lira. Lira on the far edge, her arm reaching across Kana to rest on Yuki's chest.
Nobody commented on it. It just was.
On the road, Hana claimed his lap.
It started on the fourth morning. Yuki was sitting on the wagon bench next to Lira, who was driving. Hana climbed up, looked at the bench, looked at Yuki, and sat directly on his left leg. Then she took his hand and placed it on her head.
The message was clear.
He scratched behind her black ears. She melted. Her tail uncurled and swayed gently. Her eyes half-closed.
"She's not a cat," Lira said, watching from the corner of her eye.
"She seems to disagree."
Hana leaned into his hand. She still hadn't spoken a word since he'd found them. But she communicated in other ways — ear position, tail movement, where she chose to sit, whose hand she grabbed. And right now, she was communicating that Yuki's lap was hers and his hand existed solely to scratch her ears.
This lasted about twenty minutes before Kana noticed.
Silver ears appeared at the wagon's edge. Amber eyes locked onto Hana's position. Kana scrambled up onto the bench and wedged herself onto Yuki's right leg.
"Me too."
"There's room on the bench—"
"Me. Too."
He scratched behind both sets of ears simultaneously. Two tails wagged in sync.
Lira drove the wagon, cheeks puffed out, staring pointedly at the road.
"Problem?" Yuki asked.
"No problem. I'm just the one doing actual work while you get a double ear-scratch session."
"You're jealous."
"I am not jealous of two children."
She was jealous.
Yuki laughed. Kana laughed because Yuki laughed. Hana's tail wagged faster.
Lira's puffed cheeks held for another ten seconds before she cracked a smile.
He told them stories.
On the road, between practice sessions and meals, the girls wanted stories. Kana asked directly. Hana communicated her interest by climbing into his lap and staring up at him with expectant ears.
He told them about the forest. About the monsters he'd fought — the boars, the wolves, the armoured lizards. He flexed when he talked about the dragon and Kana grabbed his arm with both hands and said "you're so strong!" and he felt unreasonably proud of himself.
He told them about building the homestead. The house, the garden, the pond with fish. Kana asked if there were fish she could catch. He said yes. She declared this the most important information she'd ever received.
But the stories ran out eventually. And the road was long. And two beastkin children with boundless energy needed more than tales.