Page 115 of Sunder

She swallowed, putting down the vegetable—if indeed that’s what it was—and picked up the mug. There was a spoon tucked beneath the rest of it, but she ignored it. Took a sip. “All that is in here?” she asked, squinting into the cup.

Athan nodded. “Either in the stock, or chopped and cooked down into the soup itself.” There was a bit of excitement in his voice, but he tempered it quickly. “You’re sure your head is well enough for this?”

“For soup and you telling me about vegetables? I think I can manage.”

It was a balm she didn’t know she’d needed. To be poorly, and have someone for company. To not be left to her own thoughts and discomforts, to be certain, not merely hope, that this was precisely where he wished to be.

He wouldn’t tire of her. Wouldn’t push and wheedle for her to do more than she was able. He would take her as she was, whether that was full of life and love and desire, or pale and sickly.

Which was...

Far more than she could ever have hoped for.

???

She was in the kitchen. Not perched on the counter, offering him nibbles in between washing up, but seated in a chair, watching him work. He had a whole list of things to be mindful of when scrubbing out the cook-pot. Most particularly how it must be dried thoroughly afterward, and really she should just wait for him to do it because he worried her arms would snap off if she tried to handle it herself.

To which Orma rolled her eyes and sipped at her tea, Brum batting at her leg with his long tail as he happily looked between his people.

He had such a way about him. He did not talk down to her with his instructions. There was no embarrassed squirming in her stomach that she felt like a child, and their relationship was somehow tainted by her rather stunted education.

He simply... talked.

And she listened.

And would likely need to be told at least three more times before she felt remotely proficient at any of it, but that wasn’t the point.

She’d tried to tell him she was well enough to help with the cleaning, but he insisted the first lesson should always be observation first. Hands-on training was far down the line.

He got a glimmer in his eye when he said that, as if the words weren’t really his. “Is that how you learned?”

He finished with the cook-pot and returned it to its usual place on the stove. “Under my master’s tutelage.” He paused, as he often did when he spoke about his past. She didn’t feel guilty for poking at the bond, trying to see what troubled him about it. It wasn’t hesitation for her sake. But rather...

He hadn’t done it for so long. Perhaps the memories did not come as easily any longer. Tucked away and left to themselves. Shoved aside by other, more relevant matters. It made her hurt for him.

She would listen. To anything he cared to share with her. So maybe they could become real to her as well.

“My parents... they preferred to involve me in whatever I desired. Which led to a few burns along the way, since I was determined to learn to cook as my mother did. Well. It was the sweet things, mostly. Because if I knew how to bake them myself, then how could she refuse me eating as many as I pleased?”

Orma smiled, waiting to feel a tinge of envy for the life he’d known before. The one so decidedly different from her own. But she found she could listen. Could appreciate the parents he’d lost. The childhood he’d clearly loved.

“It made for more than one lecture when I started my apprenticeship. Always wanting to jump in before the foundation was set. That’s what he said, anyway.” He turned to her, looking far too handsome as he dried his hands on a cloth. “And how is your foundation?” he asked, quirking his brow and attempting to look stern.

“Abysmal,” she answered, knowing it was true and feeling surprisingly all right with it. “But better today than it was yesterday.”

She smiled at him, and she was rewarded with a returning smile, full of all the affection he felt for her. She was trying, and her efforts were noticed and appreciated.

Orma leaned back in her seat, using her one free foot to rub at Brum’s back as he lounged on his cushion. The other was tucked beneath his girth and was steadily growing numb.

When Athan had brought her down, the table was empty of all evidence of medical notes and texts. She really should ask what happened to them—if he’d taken them back to her father without her notice, or if he’d stashed them away in the storage room upstairs. Or maybe they’d been absorbed into his father’s library.

But she found she did not much care, not so long as they would be kept private—and she even trusted Athan more than her own father on that front. Her father had overridden her wishes more than once if he deemed her judgement faulty. Athan hadn’t. Wouldn’t.

She waited for the niggling doubt to come. To steal away the peace she’d found sitting here at their table, watching Athan go about teaching her household tasks.

But all was quiet.

“What?” Athan asked, giving her a curious look.

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