A Place To Bloom

Wait

At the medical ward, Dr Zughi examined Renou's foot, then looked at me in astonishment. "You freed him from a box trap?"

Shamuni, the Eat-shit girl, asked, "why didn't you just cut his foot off?"

Renou's eyes bulged at her, and she walked off. Plump eleven year-old Besami threw her arms around me. "Because I happy that you OK!"

I rested my hand at the back of her head. "I'm glad I'm OK, too!"

A woman's voice came in from the far side of the medical ward, "what happened?"

The princess was a tall woman. Her skin wasn't as dark a green as the pure-blooded Na'uhui, and her dark-green hair had streaks of white. She wore a silken sash wrapped around her waist that glimmered like rose gold with a flap that hung to her knees and ended in delicate blue embroidery. That same spider pendant hung between her bare breasts, and on her left hand she wore a ring of twisted copper.

"Have you heard from my friends?" I asked

She held up one hand and faced Renou while Dr Zughi studied his lacerations through a brass-framed looking glass.

Renou's eyes were wide and he wore a big smile. He called the Princess over to him. "Let me tell you!"

"Have you heard from Yumi?" I pressed further.

She waved me off. "I'll talk to you. Can you wait, please?"

"What about..."

She fixed her light-green eyes on me. "Can you go, please?"

With that, she turned back to Renou, ushering me off with her fingers. I took that as a cue to leave.

Where would I even go? Miyani had said she would try to meet me at the tower.

I think.

We were still working on that.

I wanted to go to the church. A part of me still couldn't believe that we somehow survived, and felt it prudent to thank God for his hand in that. But as I shuffled through the wet grass beside the training yard, seared onions and herbs crept out from the mess hall, and I had a better idea.

A man swept the floor of the dining room. He glanced up at me and taunted, "ain't nothin' left, man, you're late!"

In the kitchen, one man tended to a fire beneath a giant stone oven, and across from him was a rotund man stirring a steel pot over a brick fire. They were both new to my eyes, but a third man looked familiar, the man covered in tattoos. Except his eye patch was turned up, and he could clearly see just fine.

They all glared at me when I walked in.

I furrowed my brow. "Is there truly nothing here to eat?"

The man with the tattoos stood up straight, looked around with both eyes, then turned to the man stirring the pot with a big smile. "Shayden! You have a customer!"

Shayen's chin wobbled as he turned to look at me. He then ladled a good portion of something brown and soupy into a ceramic bowl and brought it over. It smelt like warm butter and had a massive ball of dough swimming in a thick gravy of carrots, beans, and corn.

The tattooed man sat down across from me and smiled wide-eyed. "Go on! Try it!"

I did.

"Well?"

I struggled to find tactful words for it, so I took another bite. It was palatable, "it wants salt."

The man had a falcon tattooed on one shoulder and the crescent moon on the other. He waved that off "besides that."