He came back as the village was settling into evening.

  Not late - the sun had only just dropped behind the Greyveil range, leaving the sky a quaint shade of bruised amber that autumn seemed to specialize in - but late enough that Ashford Crossing had drawn itself inward for the night. Most of the visible shutters had been closed, and smoke grew thicker as it poured from the chimneys, houses and people desperate to stay warm in the chilling air. As Milos crossed through the crossroads of town, there were barely any townsfolk left; rather, only a few stray stragglers and a cat, picking its way across the cobblestones with the sovereign indifference of its kind.

  In his hands, which stayed warm and cozy amidst the nipping cold breeze, he carried a pot. It was a simple thing - root vegetables, salted pork, and a carefully crafted broth - but it carried with it good intentions. A half loaf of dark bread sat atop of the lid. Maybe it would stay warm. Maybe it wouldn't. But as good as Maret's kitchen was, the woman would be no doubt preoccupied throughout the night with her own business, rather than having to give extra care to four young people.

  Bread and water was good - but soup was better.

  The Ashford Inn was quieter than it had been lately, though there was still jubilant chatter and a positive ambiance as Milos walked inside. The curious villagers had long since found other business to attend to, and the common room was now thick with its normal evening festivities - namely, ale and the ordering of supper. Several villagers gave Milos a quick look, then returned to their conversations, the world turning as per normal.

  Two of them sitting at the end of the bar greeted Milos with a quick raise of their mugs and a wide-toothed smile.

  "Evenin', Milo! Care for a drink?" One of them asked as the other took a hearty swig from their cup.

  "Maybe in a bit, if you're both still sitting upright," Milos responded with a light grin. The two men snorted and chortled amongst themselves, turning back to their drinks, and leaving Milos without having to explain himself.

  Maret appeared from the kitchen corridor, wiping her hands on her apron.

  "Two of them are asleep," she said lowly. "The small blonde one and the mage girl. The other two..." She tilted her head to the ceiling, indicating the upper rooms. "Awake. Heard them shuffling about not too long ago."

  "You always make it a point to spy on your customers?" Milos teased lightly.

  The woman smacked him lightly with the towel at her waist, but with a roll of her eyes, she didn't dignify a further response.

  "Right, right," Milos laughed quietly to himself. "Which rooms?"

  "Last four on the right." He thanked her and began to head up the stairs, before a soft hand grabbed his shirt. "Oh, and Milos?"

  He turned to her.

  "You're a good man. Aren would be proud of ya, you know?"

  The quiet smile on his lips spoke louder than any word could have.

  He knocked on Ria's door first.

  There was a brief hesitance that hung in the air before Ria's voice broke the silence.

  "Come in?"

  Her voice was steadier than it had been during the morning, the rough edges sanded down by a few hours of enforced stillness - though, it also carried a flatness that sounded too much like someone who'd been lying in the dark, thinking too hard.

  The room was small and clean, with a single window that looked out over the rear yard. She was in bed - which probably represented a concession extracted by pain rather than any inclination toward rest - propped against the headboard with the blankets pulled up and her arms crossed over the bound ribs in a way that looked habitual. The ankle was elevated on a folded blanket, still dressed in the way he'd left it.

  "You kept it up," he commented. She snorted very softly, more intent on the pot that he had just set down on a small table by the window.

  "Yeah, well, Maret told me that she'd take away the pillow if I didn't." She shuffled her foot against the blanket, as if demonstrating her compliance. "I think she meant it."

  "She did."

  He ladled some of the soup into a bowl that he'd brought, savoring the smell of the meat and broth as it filled the air. Once the bowl had a thin wisp of steam coming from the edge, he set it on the nightstand next to her, then pulled a chair from the corner and sat near the bed - because standing over a bedridden person was a type of rudeness that he'd always disliked. "How's the breathing?"

  "Fine."

  He looked at her.

  "Manageable," she amended.

  "There's a difference between a bruise and a crack. You've certainly got a bruise, but maybe a broken rib, too. Either way, the treatment is the same - keep it covered and protected, breathe through it, and don't do anything strenuous for longer than you think you need to." He paused, eyeing her as she nonchalantly reached for the wooden spoon in the bowl nearby. "Which means you'll need to double whatever time you'd naturally give yourself."

  Just as she'd grasped the spoon, she froze and turned her gaze toward him sideways. "You don't know me."

  It was accusatory - but more than anything, it was daring. Like if he said the wrong thing, she was ready to pounce.

  "I don't," he said slowly. "But I know what you did in that ravine."

  And just like that, her quills had settled back as she turned her head away suddenly. The atmosphere of the room shifted; the spoon that was gripped in her hands suddenly found its way into her mouth, cutting off any potential response as the gentlest curtain of relief settled over his shoulders. She quickly stuffed another spoonful of soup into her mouth as soon as she'd swallowed the first, avoiding his gaze - but he took it as acceptance of both the food and the end of that particular argument.

  They sat in companionable-enough silence for a few minutes while she ate, and Milos watched the fire flicker in the nearby lantern, giving her privacy to eat without him staring her down. Outside, the wind had picked up off the mountains. It would be cold tonight; he could tell that much.

  "The others are alright?"

  He didn't break his gaze away from the lantern right away. "The two who are asleep will be better for it. Your boy with the arm-"

  "He's not my boy," she interjected, sharp and immediate.

  "-Kellen," Milos continued without pause, "is awake. I'll be looking in on him after you."

  Ria's jaw shifted slightly. It wasn't the look of guilt, but it was hard for Milos to place right off the bat. "He... he doesn't trust easily."

  "I noticed."

  "He's not..." She stopped herself midway through, the flicker of hesitation allowing her to sort her thoughts out as she started again. "He's not being difficult on purpose. It's just how he is."

  Milos said nothing. He thought she probably knew that wasn't entirely true - that Kellen was, in fact, at least partially difficult on purpose - but that she was defending him anyway, which told him something about the group's internal geometry that he filed away without comment.

  "Get some sleep when you've finished eating," he said, standing upright. "I mean that as a practical suggestion, by the way. Not as an order."

  "What's the difference?"

  "The difference is that you can ignore a suggestion." He picked up his satchel, tossing it over his shoulder once more, then reached for the warm pot. "I'd recommend against that. But you can if you really want to."

  And, in that moment, something crossed her face that might have been - in better light and from a more optimistic observer - the very beginning of a smile. It didn't reach completion and it was fleeting. But assuming he wasn't hallucinating, he was sure that it had been there.

  He stepped out into the hallway, and as the door closed behind him, he let out a breath that he hadn't realized that he'd been holding. A knot slowly released itself somewhere in the depths of his chest, and with it, came a slow release of anxiety. That conversation hadn't gone... horribly. He'd expected more yelling, or drama, or pushback - or something. Ria, if nothing else, had cemented herself in his mind as someone who wasn't afraid to be stubborn for whatever reason she had.

  It was a reason he didn't know, and quite frankly, wasn't his business. She, and her party, were visitors - he'd see them taken care of, treated well, and hopefully healed. Then they'd leave, and routine would return. Her personal life and history were not his to delve into. And judging by the suspicion from Ria and Kellen alone, he could tell they didn't want that digging, either. So, he was happy to see them heal enough so that they could safely leave town.

  With his anxieties a bit settled, Milos turned toward Kellen's door and walked forward, the pot and bowl nestled in his grip similarly as to before. And, again, when he knocked, he was met with silence. Which, he had completely expected.

  "I've got soup."

  There was no need to bother with an introduction - if anything, that was somehow more likely to ensure he was continued to be met with silence. Rather, the prospect and offer of soup for a few minutes of attention seemed like a fair trade.

  After a long minute, in which time seemed to stretch down the shadowed hallway, the door finally clicked open, a thin strip of darkness coming into sight between the doorframe and the door.

  "I have to let you in?"

  Milos almost laughed, but figured it might set him further back, so he bit back the sound. "You don't."

  Though Kellen was barely visible - his eye and a small part of his hair falling into frame - there was a clear amount of consideration toiling over his face, to just snag the soup and close the door. But, maybe it was the barest essence of manners versus something more akin to curiosity, but something won out, and the door slowly cracked further open as Kellen retreated into the darkness in tune.

  "Alright. Come in."

  The room was darker than Ria's - the lamp was muted, the curtain was drawn, and the only source of light seemed to come from the hallway. Kellen had already withdrawn to a spot on the floor, where his back sat against the edge of the bedframe, with the small nightstand serving as a wall to his right. His knees were drawn up and his arms were wrapped around them, making him look smaller than he had any right of looking.

  Milos didn't comment on it. He set the pot down and filled a bowl, just like before, before setting it down a short distance away from the boy. He kept it far enough to coax him out of his defensive position, but not so far as though to communicate his intention. Then, he poured himself a small portion, and walked over to the lamp, lighting it. The orange-yellow burn of the flame filled the room with a gentle warmth, making it feel less like a prison, and more like a place to rest one's head.

  Satisfied, Milos sat on the edge of the bed, being sure to give Kellen a bit of space down on the floor. He might have ordinarily sat on the floor, but his knees had already cracked enough times today, and he didn't quite feel like asking a boy to help him up from the ground when he inevitably got stuck down there. He was past the point of pretending otherwise.

  Kellen watched him with those careful eyes, akin to an owl watching down on the world below it. He silently judged every action, every movement, as if trying to decide what had strings attached to them, and what didn't.

  "It's just soup," Milos offered after a moment.

  The boy's eyes flickered up to him, sharp. "I didn't say anything."

  "I know." He gently blew on a spoonful of the broth, before bringing it to his lips.

  A long moment passed between the two, like it had been frozen on the spot, before Kellen finally broke the standoff and reached forward to grab the bowl sitting on the floor. With the deal having been struck, Milos repositioned his body just a smidge, giving Kellen a shade more privacy while he inspected the bowl for traps.

  The wind moved against the window. Downstairs, the low rumble of the locals' conversation drifted up through the floorboards, indistinct, just the sound of voices going about ordinary business.

  "How long have you lived here?" Kellen asked. He said it like he hadn't decided to ask until after the words had already left his lips.

  "Most of my life. I was away for awhile." Milos paused in thought. "Came back about six years ago."

  "Away doing what?"

  "This and that."

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Kellen looked at him in-between bites, the fox-eyes again narrowing. "That's not an answer."

  "No," Milos agreed with the barest hint of a smile. "It's not."

  Again, a quiet blanket settled across the room - but this one felt less suffocating. Instead, it felt contemplative, Kellen's gaze falling toward his bowl as his lips pressed together in a thin line.

  "I don't like not knowing things." There wasn't a threat in his tone, nor any hostility. If Milos were reading it correctly, it almost felt more like a general confession.

  "Most people don't," Milos responded easily. His eyes fell to Kellen's bowl, which was drawing low in supply. "Want some more?"

  "...no, thank you."

  "Alright." The large man stood, taking the half-second extra to get back to his feet, just as he always did, and collected the pot, just as he did before. It may not have gone perfectly - but at least he ate, too. "Get some rest, Kellen."

  "You're not going to tell me, huh?"

  Milos blinked - was he still held up on the earlier conversation? He shook his head gently, the smile dawning once more. "Not tonight." He began to move toward the door, then stopped. "How's the arm?"

  A pause, long enough to suggest the honest answer was being weighed against the habitual one. "Here and there."

  This time, Milos couldn't suppress the laugh - a sharp, low chuckle - that slipped from his mouth. "That's how it's going to be?"

  "I don't know. You tell me."

  "Well, it'll be 'here and there' for a few days - come find me or someone if it starts trending more towards 'there'. Or if it gets red, hot, or swollen." He opened the door. "There's a difference between sore and infected. Don't talk yourself into thinking they're the same - or that you can ignore it."

  He left before Kellen could decide if that required a response.

  The boy was stubborn and hardheaded - he could see that much. Ria hadn't been kidding when she'd said that he was uncooperative. Whatever part of his life had scorned him toward trust, it wasn't his business. But, for a child so young, that was going to be something he'd eventually have to come to terms with. Life was lonely trying to face it without trusting anyone.

  He pushed the thought from his mind. There was no solving that issue in a day. That was for Kellen and his party to tackle as they got older; preferably, before they were faced with a situation that pitted them against one another.

  Instead, Milos gently approached the other two rooms and pressed an ear lightly against the door. There was no noise - no movement. The wood was thick, making it hard for sound to slip through; but, in the same sense, he suspected that both Lyra and Edrin actually were asleep. He poured a bowl and gently covered it with a wooden lid he'd stashed inside his satchel just in case and left it by the door.

  He thought briefly of checking inside - to ensure they were safely sleeping, and not some alternative - but decided against it. He'd respected Ria and Kellen's privacy. He should do the same for them.

  The pot nearly empty, Milos went back downstairs, nodding at Maret quietly as he set the pot on the bar. The inn had cleared out; coin, both loose and in fabric sacks, sat on a few of the tables with empty mugs and tankards littering the surface, while the bar was mostly cleared off already.

  "Can I get you one for the road?" Maret offered.

  Milos thought for a second, before he sighed, grinned softly at her. "Aye; I could do for one."

  With the flourish of only someone experienced in their craft could manage, a frothy mug of ale appeared on the bar before Milos could even register the process, eliciting a snort from the large man. He didn't bother sitting - he'd done enough sitting today - but he also knew better than to lean against the bar. While built sturdy, at his weight and height, the wood had a good chance to splinter if he distributed himself wrong.

  "You must be stressed if you're accepting a late one - can't remember the last time I saw that," Marget commented off-handedly as she grabbed several mugs from the nearby tables.

  "I'm not stressed," Milos countered mid-sip, cracking an eye open wearily. "There's nothing to be stressed about."

  "That's exactly what someone stressed says."

  "Maybe someone else. But I'm not stressed."

  Maret's smile, if possible, only seemed to grow. Like she knew something he didn't. "You're a typical man, Milos. You farm in the morning, you go through town in the early midday, you have tea and dinner at afternoon, and you have an ale in the evening. You don't have an ale at this hour."

  "Yes, well..." He paused, the tradition speed of an answer not quite coming to mind. The seconds seemed to tick by without his brain responding. A hearty sip of ale seemed to break his thought-block. "We don't often have guests."

  "We do," Maret countered immediately. "You don't. We see plenty of travelers pass through these parts; they just don't usually involve you, of all people."

  Even after another swig, nothing came to mind, leaving Milos to grumble under his breath. The last of the tables cleaned off, Maret tenderly touched his shoulder as she passed, her smug smirk morphing into something far more delicate and familiar. "Listen; it's okay to see daily routine broken. Things like stress and uncertainty... they're signs you feel strongly about things. It helps remind you that life is more than just the passing of a sun."

  "I am okay with daily routine changing. And I'm not stressed."

  Maret's smirk reappeared as she hauled the various dirty dishware into the backroom for cleaning. "Whatever you say, Milos. Now I can see why you get along with those kids..."

  She disappeared, leaving Milos to sulk into his drink. He stared into the sloshing remnants of his ale, hoping to find some sort of answers within the depths of the cup. The dark liquid staring back at him, but offered him no answers, leaving him to the gravity of his thoughts. He polished off the mug, setting it down a bit more forcefully than he anticipated, wincing when the thud echoed throughout the quiet room.

  He dropped a few coins on the counter, knowing full well that Maret would protest his payment, though he looked forward to her attempts to pay him back, before turning toward the large inn doors. Outside, he could almost hear the cold lurking. With a rumbling groan, he stepped forward, holding the room-temperature pot a little closer to his chest, as if it would offer him some type of warmth or protection.

  He was at the door, in fact, when he heard the footsteps on the stairs - light and careful, the tread of someone who'd learned to move quietly - and turned to find Edrin standing at the bottom of the staircase in his stocking feet, blinking in the way of someone who had woken from deep sleep and was not entirely sure the world was real yet.

  He looked younger without the effort of trying to be useful. The straight posture was gone, replaced by the natural slight-shouldered uncertainty of a boy who hadn't grown into himself yet. He was holding his shoes in one hand with no evident memory of deciding to pick them up.

  "I-I heard you on the stairs," Edrin said softly, his voice almost drown out by the stilled quiet of the room around them. "I thought... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." He trailed off, his eyes finding interesting in anything but the large man at the door.

  "It's alright; you didn't interrupt anything." Milos stepped back from the double-doors, walking over to one of the tables closest to the staircase. He pulled out two chairs; one for himself, one for Edrin, patting the spot. "C'mere. Sit before you fall."

  Edrin sat at the nearest table with the immediate compliance of someone whose legs had made the decision before his brain weighed in. In the nearby hearth, the fire had burned lower, but preserved to Milos appreciation. He couldn’t imagine how cold his house was going to be when he got home.

  "How are the hands?"

  The boy looked down at his hands, searching them for an answer. "Better. I... I ate the soup you brought." He paused. "Thank you. For the soup. And... and for earlier! For all of it, I guess."

  "You already thanked me," Milos said. He could feel his lips turning in a smile, the boy's earnest demeanor almost too wholesome.

  "I know," he said. "I just... wanted to thank you again when I wasn't rattling."

  Milos nodded once, accepting it. "You all did well getting here. And, you too. Whatever energy you spent, you spent it on the right things."

  Edrin was quiet for a moment. The firelight moved across his face, and he had the look of someone turning a thought over carefully, deciding whether to release it.

  "...can I ask you something?"

  "You can ask."

  "You knew what was wrong with all of us," Edrin began, his eyes finally lifting to reach Milos's. "Before we told you anything. You knew what was wrong with Ria's ribs without even touching them. You knew that Lyra was a mage. You even knew that Kellen's wound had been ignored." He paused, searching for the next words carefully. "You... you walked through that room like you'd walked through that situation before. Many times."

  Milos said nothing, which was an answer of its own kind.

  "Were you a solider?"

  "Not exactly," Milos responded.

  Edrin's brow gathered slightly, working through the possibilities with the methodical patience of someone accustomed to solving things quietly. "But you have seen battle."

  "Yes."

  "And... you've tended injuries after?"

  "Yes."

  Edrin looked at him steadily. Not pressing - just following the thread carefully, the way you followed a path in low light, one careful step at a time. "You knew exactly where to look... and what it meant when you did look. That's not something you learn only in a book."

  "No," Milos agreed. "It isn't."

  "So... how'd you learn?"

  For a second, Milos thought about being honest. But, before his mouth could even open to respond, he felt the words die in his throat as he looked into the young boy's eyes. There was innocence - youth. The boy had a careful face, no doubt about that. The genuine curiosity that had none of the performance of someone trying to extract something. Just a boy who noticed things and wanted to understand them.

  "Time, experience - that sort of thing. Nothing fancy, I'm afraid. It came like most things come. Through learning."

  "How long did it take you to learn?" Edrin asked earnestly.

  "Hmm..." Milos ran a finger along his bare chin, replaying the years in his mind. "I'm not sure. It took eleven years to get to this point, I suppose. But I'm always learning."

  Edrin received this without rushing to fill in the space after. That restraint, in someone of his age range, was uncommon enough to be worth noticing.

  "You did well today," Milos said again, deliberately shifting the ground. "But you burned past your limit keeping the others going. You know that."

  Edrin looked down at his hands again. "Yeah... I know."

  "How long were you all out there?"

  "Three weeks." He paused. "The troll was our... fourth encounter?"

  "What were the first three?"

  A faint color came into the boy's face, the particular kind that arrived with honesty that didn't flatter. "Well, they were smaller. Way smaller. We... we thought were ready for something bigger."

  It was a very honest line - the type that Milos often heard after a tragedy. This time they'd been lucky. Hopefully they had learned their lesson.

  "But you weren't."

  He hadn't meant it so bluntly - but there was something important in confirming. If they left Ashford and still had the hunger and mentality that they could handle bigger, more powerful creatures, then they'd be in serious jeopardy of losing their lives. Adventurers that couldn't pace themselves appropriately often met their demise far earlier than fate had dictated.

  "No," Edrin said without flinching, to the approval of Milos. "How do you know when you are, though? Ready for something bigger?"

  Milos thought about it for a long moment, because if nothing else, it deserved an extra moment or two of thought and he knew that Edrin would wait patiently.

  "You... mostly don't," he finally said, his voice nearly masked by the crackle of the hearth. "You make the best assessment you can with what you know, and you plan for what you can plan for, and then... the world does what it does regardless of all of that. The difference between a party that survives the unexpected, and ones that don't isn't necessarily readiness. It's how fast they adapt when the plan fails."

  Edrin looked at him. "That's not very reassuring."

  "No," Milos said with a gentle snort. "But it is true - which I figure you prefer."

  Something shifted in the boy's face - a kind of surprised recognition, as though he'd been handed something he'd waited for a long time without quite knowing he'd wanted it. To be taken seriously as a child was hard, Milos remembered. People constantly looking down - figuratively - at him, talking down to him like he couldn't understand the world around him. It had been understood, but frustrating.

  "Yeah..." Edrin finally said. "I do prefer it."

  They sat in a comfortable silence for a little while after that, the type that neither felt compelled to fill. The hearth continued to crackle while Maret worked on finishing her nightly chores in the room over, no doubt listening in on their conversation. But Milos didn't mind. They were talking in a public place, after all. Plus, she was good with kids - she'd tell him if he'd said something wrong later on.

  The weight of fatigue began to weigh on Milos's eyelids, and he became acutely aware of tired he really was. He was far beyond the time that he normally went to bed, and although the single ale was nothing powerful, the alcohol was still enough to further depress his energy levels. He suppressed a yawn, but couldn't fight off the mounting fatigue that was hiding in the shadows, not so patiently. He stood up, the chair screeching against the floor, as Edrin's eyes jumped upward.

  "I think it's time for rest."

  "Will you...!" Edrin stopped suddenly, and Milos could see him weighing the question in his mind. "Will you... come back tomorrow? Not for our injuries. Just..." He paused again, and what came next had the shape of something he'd been sitting with for the better part of the evening. "Ria's going to want to leave as soon as she can stand. Which, with my healing magic, that'll probably be tomorrow afternoon. She'll convince Kellen, and Lyra will go because she won't want to be the reason we stay. And I don't-"

  Another pause.

  "I think... we need to stay. I don't think we're ready to go back out. But I'm not the one they'll listen to."

  Milos looked at him for a long minute. He looked at the boy's slight shoulders and the steady eyes, and the hands that had stopped trembling, but were still clenched nervously. He could see the boy who had asked for help for the sake of his party, and not for the sake of himself.

  It would have been easy to say no. He had said no to plenty of things over the years, and it had always been the right answer. Ashford Crossing needed what it needed from him, and his family needed what they needed, and there were rows to tend to and a gate somewhere that was probably beginning to list again.

  But, at least for this moment, these kids were now a part of Ashford Crossing. And, by that extension, they fell into the same category as the gate and the grain, and his family, and neighbors. They, too, needed him - it wasn't the job for a hero, but it was a job that needed to be done. They needed support. And he could give them that.

  "I'll come back tomorrow," Milos said with finality.

  Edrin nodded, quietly, like he'd hoped for it without quite letting himself expect it.

  "Get some sleep," Milos said again. Then, the crack of a smile teased his lips. "And... leave the shoes at your door."

  Down in his hands, throughout the whole conversation, Edrin had never set his shoes down. Even as his fists clenched and unclenched, the shoes remained within his grasp, never finding the ground. He giggled, like the whole situation had been defused, his nerves seemingly fading. "Right."

  Milos left him there, sockfooted at the table, setting his shoes down with the careful deliberateness of someone returning to the ordinary world after a long way out from it. He walked out into the cold evening, and the stars were hard and bright above Ashford Crossing, and the mountains were dark shapes against the darker sky.

  He rolled his shoulder once in the cold, without thinking.

  Then he walked home.