Our first night at the house wasn’t all that different to being at the tavern. We stayed in the room and, around dusk, Mrs Frinchen brought us a meal. Boiled vegetables and mash. Not terrible, but I still missed our evenings spent grilling veggies over the fire, roasting them in wet leaves.

Oh well, I wasn’t going to complain. It went down easily enough.

After that, we sat in silence. She read in the last of the daylight and by the light of her oil lamp. I made a circle with my hands, sometimes trying to do to magic, often losing myself in meandering thoughts that twisted and turned and ended up far away from where I began. Memories of my world, of this world, of moments I couldn’t quite remember, of things I could only remember remembering.

Then it was time to sleep.

She had the bed and I lay on her mattress thing, using my jumper for a pillow. I felt lonely. All this time alone with my thoughts made me more aware than ever how messed up I was, how broken.

I didn’t know how to have a friend. No, a peer. I knew how to lead around children and I knew how to follow adults. But her… I was so scared of her hating me, of losing her, it was like I couldn’t speak my mind. Only dared ask small questions.

And really, how could someone I barely knew mean that much to me? What made her so special that I couldn’t live without her?

I didn’t know, yet I truly did feel like that. Thinking about what I would do without her filled me with anxiety, made me feel physically sick, heart tight and breaths shaky. Like I couldn’t just go back to living that quaint life in the forest.

It was nonsense, I knew. Just… nonsense. Turning onto my side, I looked up at the little I could see of her on the bed: a bump where her shoulder was under the thin blanket. It was hot enough that even that was probably too much, but Hyraj still had it pulled up to her chin. Maybe how she was brought up.

Now we weren’t moving, I needed to think about what I wanted to do. What I needed to do. Well, I knew already.

It took me a while to fall asleep.

In the morning, we had a new routine. Mrs Frinchen made breakfast pretty much at dawn, so we ate first, then I went to shower. It was cold. Not icy cold, but cold enough that I could barely breathe, my lungs too shocked to work. I pushed through, missing the warm water Hyraj had always given me.

A gift from her I still had was a toothbrush—and some toothpaste—but I tried not to think about it too much, the bristles very much not made from nylon or some other plastic. It was better than rubbing my teeth with ash.

Hyraj went into the bathroom after me, so I went to our room, drying my hair. I knew she was going to go out in a bit, apply for a job at the merchant guild or something. Maybe merchant guild wasn’t the right term for it, hard to know when there wasn’t a dictionary, just my guesses. From what she told me, the local businesses sent in their “tax forms” and the guild made sure they were correct, then sent them to the tax office in the capital… or something. It was pretty technical and I knew nothing about businesses and taxes and stuff like that.

Anyway, it sounded like a good job and she would definitely get it.

Where did that leave me? Well, sitting in this room. I sat there, waiting, and she came back, then eventually left, saying, “Do not wait for me to eat if I do not return.”

I didn’t tell her that I couldn’t eat without her, that Mrs Frinchen had only mentioned two meals and I had no money for lunch. I didn’t ask her if I could go with, knowing I would only get in the way, make things awkward.

No, I just smiled. “Klin’graht.” A greeting and a goodbye, kind of like: “Good day.” But it meant more like lucky, my good fortune to meet you and wishing you good fortune until we meet again.

I keenly understood that meaning today.

With Hyraj gone, I sat in the room for who knew how long. The feelings swirling around inside me honestly made me feel so pathetic. Like I was a baby, screaming whenever someone but my mum held me. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t fine.

A crash in the lounge jerked me out of my thoughts, the muffled world coming into focus, hearing the distant chatter of people out on the street, some kind of hammering, and, of course, the whining of a child who had just crashed into something.

There was more to the world than Hyraj.

Curious, I walked over and opened the door. Sure enough, little Yinnie was curled up in a ball, Mrs Frinchen squatting down next to her, whispering something.

The door not silent, Mrs Frinchen paused to glance over. “Sorry, she’s not used to big chair,” she said, then went back to consoling the toddler.

I checked the rest of the room. Chroj, the older boy, wasn’t here, but Fesa was showing Lallie how to knit (or crochet or something else to do with yarn) and Herf was playing catch with himself, using a wooden spoon to see-saw the carved ball into the air.

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It was strange, peeking in on this family in their everyday life. I felt like I didn’t belong. I knew I didn’t. My brain was telling me to just go back into the room, lock myself away. No need to worry.

But I didn’t.

Yinnie calmed down soon, then immediately climbed back onto the small chair she’d fallen off of. Mrs Frinchen stood up, chuckling to herself, and turned around, catching me still watching.

I felt judged, believed she only put on a polite smile for Hyraj’s money while she complained in her head. Again, that urge to hide, to go back in the room and wait for Hyraj to come back.

But I didn’t.

“There something?” she said, how she spoke to me sounding more casual than when she spoke with Hyraj. Maybe because Hyraj had told her at some point that I was just a “maid”.

I didn’t really know how to speak as casual, so I just spoke. “That is it… I have nothing to do, but is there… help I can do?”

It felt humiliating to talk to someone else like that, caught between rushing out something I knew wasn’t right and leaving awkward pauses, both making me sound stupid. If only I had practised talking more with Hyraj instead of only following her lessons.

But I hadn’t.

So I lied to myself and smiled, acting like it wasn’t strange. Maybe because she was used to toddler gibberish, what I said sounded reasonable and she didn’t look at me like I was stupid, smiling back.

“No need, not no need,” she said—the double-negative making it more negative quirk of the language. “You just rest.”

She was telling me to go, my mind wanted to go. But I held firm.

“Well, I can always watch the little ones when time to cook,” I said, resisting the urge to look away by idly clapping my hand. Paying more attention to the gesture, it didn’t just mean yes. The person speaking could do it to, like, emphasise what they said.

After checking Yinnie was sitting properly, Mrs Frinchen turned back to me. “Is it that? It’d be handy, you know. Fesa’s been asking to learn, but can’t go and leave Lallie in charge of those two, can I?” she said.

I laughed, her tone making it sound like a joke.

“You got, what was it, little ones at home?” she asked.

A flush of embarrassment, apparently “little ones” not something people here said. Would have been nice if Hyraj had mentioned that, definitely something I must have said to her at some point… probably. Ignoring it, I said, “Ah, I lived in orphanage. Many no-parents to help looking after,” I said, still finding the term for orphan awkward. Especially since half the children at the orphanage still had parents, they just were deemed unfit or didn’t want them or some other reason. Wasn’t the sort of thing you asked about.

“Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, but this language was much better about it, having a sorry for apologising and a sorry for offering condolences. “It’s far away, right? Where you lived?”

There, it was starting to feel like a conversation. All I had to do was ignore my feelings, pretend I was normal, keep acting. “Yes, very far.”

“Selyo said you’re only learning for a few months? You speak good,” Mrs Frinchen said, smiling.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling back—and remembering that word to ask Hyraj about later.

We chatted a little more, then I left her to look after Yinnie. Climbing up-and-down seemed to be a game toddlers enjoyed in both worlds.

Back in the room, door closed, I sat on the bed and forced deep breaths in and out. My hands felt so cold, on the verge of trembling. I was a mess. Such a mess. But, when I thought about it, I had gone months without talking to people, then months only talking to Hyraj.

I was a mess, but maybe it was understandable. All I had to do was tidy myself up now.

Sort of exhausted from that, I lay on the bed and eventually drifted off into a nap. No clue how much time passed, but falling in and out of sleep, listening to some of the muffled chatter, glimpsing at like hundreds of brief dreams.

Then a knock on the door jerked me awake, suddenly flooded with relief at Hyraj being back.

Except Hyraj wouldn’t have knocked.

“Sweetie, are you up?” Mrs Frinchen asked. Well, I wasn’t sure about “sweetie”, but it was something older people called young people and it was similar to the word for a type of sweet biscuit.

Anyway, not the time to think about words. I pushed myself up and said, “Ah, yes?”

“I thought, save you going out for lunch, can you keep look of Yinnie so Fesa and me can cook something up?”

My heart pounded. “Yes,” I said, forcing the word out as my throat tried to close up.

“Good good, when you’re ready.”

I stayed sitting on the bed for a moment, forcing deep breaths, then stood up, ignoring how my vision swam, breathing, waiting for the light-headedness to clear. Once it did, I walked to the door and opened it.

The lounge hadn’t changed, just where people were. Yinnie and Herf were playing a rolling game, more like fetch since Yinnie couldn’t roll the ball too well, while Lallie was hunched up in a corner, still doing something with yarn. Mrs Frinchen and Fesa hovered by the kitchen doorway, pausing their conversation now I was out.

“Give us a call if they mess about, but they play nice most days,” Mrs Frinchen said, Fesa walking into the kitchen.

I smiled and nodded. “Okay.”

So she left too, left me with the three kids. Lallie glanced at me before going back to her hobby while the littlest ones carried on like they hadn’t heard anything. Probably hadn’t.

I did nothing, just stood there and watched. The ball rolled, the two of them laughed, Herf saying, “No no, to me,” and, “Watch me,” and Yinnie chattering a mix of words and gibberish back.

They kept playing, so I kept watching. No need to make a fuss. That was until Yinnie really missed the mark, ball rolling all the way over to me.

Herf had started moving to get it, but, seeing me, froze in place. I softly smiled and lowered myself to the floor, sitting down, then rolled the ball over to him. It reached him, he grabbed it, took another look at me, and rolled it back to Yinnie.

They carried on, but it was obvious Yinnie had found it funny and kept trying to roll the ball to me again. He did his best, catching it most times, only for Yinnie to laugh even more at how he practically dived to get them. I wasn’t super sure before, but it seemed like all the kids were two years apart, so he was probably four. Good speaking skills, good movement.

We played like that until lunch was ready. Nothing fancy, just like a hash brown or potato waffle: something starchy shredded up and fried. There was a sort of gravy-sauce drizzled over it and mushy peas on the side.

I was reminded of talking with Hyraj about soup and stock before. She had said I shouldn’t worry about “meat”, so I didn’t ask about the gravy. It tasted salty, maybe because I hadn’t eaten anything with salt for months, but that was quite nice with the rich fritter? That sounded right, fritter….

Eating in my room, I paused when I heard Mrs Frinchen talking in the lounge. “Was she nice?”

Yinnie giggled and, after a few seconds, Herf said, “I guess so.” I could just imagine him pouting as he did.

I smiled to myself, finding the mushy peas almost sweet today.