It had been a long day, starting with me wanting to stay with Mrs Frinchen and her family, ending in a small room in a new place. It was like a dormitory, I thought. Sort of a corridor with bedrooms and then a kitchen and a bathroom at the end. The room only had a bed, desk, and chair. Although the bed was a little wider than a single, I wasn’t going to squash into it with Hyraj and, really, I didn’t mind the floor with her mattress thing.

Nothing else to see, it didn’t distract me for long and I began to fall into depressing thoughts again. There was a feeling like it was useless to even try. An old feeling, sort of the same one I had all my life before.

It didn’t matter how hard I studied, I wasn’t going to get into a good university, wasn’t going to get a job much better than working at the orphanage. Making friends didn’t matter, not when I couldn’t go watch movies with them or buy cute clothes or popular music. Trying didn’t matter, so I stopped, just kept up the little I needed to do to be comfortable.

Thinking about the past, I ended up remembering the goddess and what she’d asked me. Was I satisfied? Well, my answer back then had been no. I had wanted all those things. Friends, a nice phone—family. Even now, I wanted to call Hyraj my friend. I wanted a place I could live where I didn’t have to worry about people stealing my things. Parents were something I knew I could never have, but I had thought about being a parent, the time I had spent looking after the little ones making me think about what I would do if I was one. I’d never really fancied a boy, and the whole childbirth thing… scared me, but I’d fantasised about owning a small house and adopting a child—Matilda was my favourite movie for a reason.

Was I satisfied now? Not really, but it was maybe better. I was trying. I felt like I could maybe reach those things, that I could change. I wasn’t trapped inside the orphanage.

Besides, more literally, I was comfortable with Hyraj. It wasn’t like I wanted to get away from her, I just wanted to, like, deserve to be her friend. At the camp, I had the food and dried reeds (for fires) to offer. And my little house for stormy weather. Travelling through the forest, I had foraged the vegetables and cooked them for us.

What could I offer her now?

I idly stared at her while she read at the desk, her face glowing in the oil lamp’s light. It wasn’t that late, but dark clouds had rolled in, a fierce wind blowing, apparently enough to make the whole building creak.

She didn’t wear her hat in the room. Hadn’t worn it in the forest, so I guessed she didn’t much like wearing it. It wasn’t that everyone always wore hats, a few I’d seen without, but I guessed it was the culture, just like back in the Victorian era—and probably before then too.

Well, no hat meant her hair was loose. It looked as clean as ever. Beautiful. I remembered how nice it felt, thick compared to the little ones’ hair. Could run my hands through it all day.

Just then, the rain started and it made me jump, hitting the window with heavy taps. Almost like the sound of popcorn popping, but a little muffled and louder. Maybe I was just used to the quiet, though, sounding quieter after the shock wore off.

Curious, I went over and looked outside. It was dark, but the steady glow of the lamp lit enough to show the droplets running down the window, landing with splats. They appeared so suddenly, I kept blinking from the mini-frights.

“It seems we had good timing,” Hyraj said, her voice under the rain, yet clear to me.

“Yes,” I said, pushing my voice a little louder as I knew mine wasn’t so clear.

She said no more, so I focused on the rain again. There was something satisfying about darting my eyes around wherever I heard another raindrop fall. A game, just for me. Here, there, up top, down low, to the left, to the—

Something moved next to me and I very nearly screamed. At the least, my heart gave a painful thump. After a second of holding my breath, I glanced over enough to see it was just Hyraj. I hadn’t heard her put down her book or move her chair or walk over. Well, my fault for being so engrossed in a silly game.

“Is there something interesting to see?” she asked, whispered.

“Not really.” I couldn’t bring myself to admit what I was doing, feeling like it was too childish.

After a moment, she said, “Is it that?” and stayed with me. I sort of hesitated, unsure whether to look at her or the window, but drifted to the window as the silence dragged on.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

We stood there, just looking at the rain on the window. Minutes slipping by, maybe an hour, hard to keep track.

Eventually, there was a knock on our door. “Dinner lady!” What the person said literally meant that, so I guessed that was her job.

“Two,” Hyraj said, raising her voice.

“Two,” the woman said back, then her muffled sound of footsteps moved on.

I turned to Hyraj. “They cook for you here?” I asked.

“That is it, this job is usually for young men with an education, so cooking is not something they know,” she said.

I tapped my thumb along, then muttered, “That is it,” and turned back to the window. It was nice having something to distract me, keep me from thinking. Raindrops fell and time passed.

Dinner, when it was served, wasn’t too different from what Mrs Frinchen (and Fesa) made. Vegetables fried into a fritter thing, a nutty mash, but also with a soup… kind of? It was quite thick, similar to yoghurt.

Mrs Frinchen had cooked a bit different, probably because her kids were young, but I’d noticed some things from the other places we’d stayed. Dinner was usually fried vegetables and a mash and maybe something else. The fried vegetables were usually seasoned with something like ginger, a bit spicy, and the mash was usually creamy, like a very thick porridge.

So it was a bit different tonight, but the creamy soup was about the same as mash anyway, and the mash tasted nice, reminding me of the “garlic” mash I made in the forest. Three distinct flavours, different textures.

I watched Hyraj for a moment. She always ate in the same way with these things, having one bit of one thing, swallowing it, then having a bite of the next. As if she measured it out, she always finished the different things at the same time. I realised now it was probably taught to her…. Etiquette, right?

How Mrs Frinchen and her family ate was different. They had big spoons and scooped up two or three different things, not always the same amounts. I ate like Hyraj out of habit, thinking it was the polite way to eat here, but, tonight, I thought it was probably cultural.

After all, Hyraj wasn’t really a local here, was she? No… she was, there were just different kinds of “local”. She had spoken very carefully about it all, but she had clearly said she was of “Krousten descent” and stuff like that. This was her home, not some place in Kroustoa.

I knew too well what it was like being asked questions like, “Where do you come from?” when all I knew was the country I called home.

Those thoughts souring the food, I pushed them away. Food was supposed to taste good. So I carefully cut off some of the fritter and scooped up some of the soup, then chewed it all together. Oh, it was good, soup making the fritter not too rich, fritter making the soup not too plain. A milder flavour, but it was a lot of flavour. The mash and fritter, their flavours went together so nicely, same way garlic and chilli did. With the mash and soup, it was like the soup melted the mash on my tongue, spreading the soothing flavour around. All of them together was amazing, a gentle taste that, when I chewed, gave bursts of flavour.

I wanted to tell Hyraj all about it, but, when I looked at her, still eating as she always did, the words died on my tongue. Was now really the best time to tell her she—and maybe her entire culture—was eating wrong? Well, her people probably cooked meals differently. But still, today felt like a bad day to tell her to change.

After dinner, out of habit, we settled down to sleep. The end of a long day. I was emotionally exhausted, drifting off quickly to the rain drumming on the window and howling wind.

In the morning, I woke up to tinkling rain. It was still quite heavy, but, without the wind, it didn’t sound as loud, didn’t splat against the window as much. Gloomy, sun stuck behind thick clouds.

I didn’t know what the time was, but I didn’t need to. Knowing I wasn’t tired was enough. Sitting up, I glanced at the bed. Hyraj sat there, curtain a little drawn, hazy light falling on her as she read. Except that she noticed me immediately, slotting in her bookmark.

“I have work soon. Will you have breakfast now or later?” she asked.

“With you,” I said, then thought for a moment. “Is it not… weekend?”

She softly smiled. “To ask for a favour, a favour should be repaid.”

I didn’t understand at first, but then it sunk in where we were. Still, I had the instinctual urge to argue, or maybe whine was a better word. Wanted to remind her of the storm, even though she’d said something like moving in here was so the weather wouldn’t keep her from working.

“Okay.”

She went to shower first, then I did, no one else up at this hour—except the cook. The same woman as last night. Like at Mrs Frinchen’s, the bathroom was a concrete floor with a grate that drained outside, presumably on a slight angle so the water went that way, water pouring out an open pipe when the shower was turned on. The toilet and sink were in another room, this shower-room like a long closet. Fortunately, it wasn’t as windy as last night, cold enough with just the chilly water and slight breeze that came in through the grate.

Coming back to the room, idly drying my hair with the towel, I found Hyraj sitting at the desk again, reading. Always reading. She’d mentioned that it was all she had to keep her mind sharp or something, the exact words escaping me. That this work would be good at keeping her brain busy.

Her hair still looked damp, a shame there weren’t hair dryers. Oh it was a nightmare getting the little ones to stay still while I dried their hair. Here, I couldn’t imagine how much worse it was, towels not doing quite enough.

Lost in those thoughts, I came up behind her and went to touch her hair. Thankfully, I stopped myself before I did, but the urge remained. How I wanted to dry it, brush it.

All at once, a dozen thoughts bombarded me, crashing into each other and settling into a very weird shape. Weird, but… compelling. It took me a moment to find the courage, then I said, “Would it… help if I braided your hair?”

She thought for a moment, saying nothing as she slotted in her bookmark and closed her book. “I suppose it would.”

A burst of giddiness filled me up and I hung my towel on the hook on the back of the door, then started on her hair. Something small, not at all important, but it helped.