Page 18 of The Minotaur's Little Peach
The first time I fetch water before she asks, Soreya stops mid-motion at the stove, wooden spoon suspended above the pot of simmering bahru. Her hazel eyes track my movement as I set the pitcher on the counter, confusion flickering across her features like she's trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces.
"Thank you," she says after a moment, the words careful and measured.
I nod and retreat to the table where Taran sleeps in his makeshift cradle—a taura-hide basket lined with soft thistle wool that Mirath brought during one of her visits. The baby's chest rises and falls in the steady rhythm that's become my anchor in this strange new life. Everything about him is impossibly small—fingers like flower stems, ears that curve like tiny shells, the way his mouth moves in sleep as if he's dreaming of milk.
Three days later, I notice the door latch sticking when Soreya struggles with the market basket balanced on her hip. She doesn't mention it, just works the metal until it gives way with a grinding protest that makes her jaw tighten with frustration.While she's out selling fruit, I dismantle the mechanism and file down the rough edges that have been catching. The work is simple—nothing compared to maintaining rigging in a storm—but my hands shake slightly as I test the smooth motion of the repaired latch.
When she returns, the door swings open without resistance. Soreya pauses on the threshold, understanding immediately what changed during her absence. Her fingers trace the latch experimentally, testing the easy movement, and something shifts in her expression. Not gratitude exactly, but recognition. Like she's beginning to see me as more than just a temporary obligation.
"It was binding," I say unnecessarily, my voice rougher than intended.
"It had been for weeks." She steps inside, closing the door behind her with deliberate care. "I kept meaning to ask someone in town about it."
The admission hangs between us, loaded with implications neither of us addresses directly. That she's been managing alone. That asking for help doesn't come naturally. That maybe she's starting to trust me with the small failures that make up daily life.
The nights are when the real work begins. Taran's cries cut through sleep like a blade, and I've learned to distinguish between them with the same attention I once paid to wind patterns. Hunger starts low and builds, becoming increasingly urgent until it reaches a pitch that could wake the dead. Discomfort is sharper, more immediate—the sound of something wrong that needs fixing right now. But it's the third cry that stops my heart every time: the lost, bewildered wail of a child who doesn't understand why his world has changed, why the voice he knew in the womb no longer answers.
The first week, I waited for Soreya to wake, listening to her stumbling movements in the next room as she tended to him with exhausted efficiency. But exhaustion makes people clumsy, and I've seen what happens when tired hands fumble with precious cargo. So now I rise when he stirs, padding to his cradle before the cries can fully form.
"Easy, little one," I murmur, gathering him against my chest. The weight of him still amazes me—substantial enough to feel real, yet so light I fear I might damage him with clumsy movements. "Just a dream, that's all."
Taran settles against my heartbeat with the trust that humbles me every time. His small fist closes around my finger with surprising strength, and I walk the length of the kitchen in slow, measured steps. The floorboards know my weight now, and I've memorized which ones creak, stepping carefully to avoid waking Soreya.
Sometimes the walking is enough. Other times, I need to change him, fumbling with the cloth wrappings until my thick fingers manage the delicate work. Mirath showed me the process during her second visit, her hands moving with practiced efficiency while she explained the importance of keeping him clean and dry.
"Babies are tougher than they look," she'd said, watching me struggle with the ties. "But they're also completely dependent. Every need has to be met by someone else."
The responsibility feels heavier than any cargo I've ever carried. When Taran cries from hunger, I bring him to Soreya's room, knocking softly on the doorframe before entering. She wakes instantly, maternal instinct cutting through sleep with the precision of long practice. I transfer him carefully and retreat, giving them privacy while she nurses him.
But increasingly, Soreya doesn't send me away immediately. She settles against her pillows with Taran latched securely,and we talk in the hushed voices that night demands. These conversations become the foundation of something I don't have words for yet—not friendship exactly, but understanding. Shared concern for this small life that connects us to Korrun's memory.
"He had the strongest grip," she says one night, watching Taran's tiny hand rest against her breast. "Even during birth, when everything was..." She trails off, but I can fill in the gaps. Pain. Fear. The knowledge that Korrun wouldn't be there to see his son's first breath.
"Korrun wrote about teaching him to sail," I tell her, settling into the chair beside her bed. "Said he'd start with toy boats in the washbasin."
Her smile is soft and sad at once. "He made one. It's in the chest by the window."
I glance toward the wooden chest but don't move to investigate. Some discoveries need to happen when she's ready to share them, not because curiosity demands immediate satisfaction.
"What else did he write about?" she asks, and I hear the hunger in her voice—the need for stories that confirm her memories, that prove their life together mattered beyond the boundaries of this house.
So I tell her. About the letters filled with plans for their future, descriptions of the fruit trees they planted together, the way he wrote about her laugh like it was music he'd never tire of hearing. I share the parts of Korrun that lived in his correspondence—his hopes for fatherhood, his pride in the woman he'd chosen, his dreams of retiring from the colosseum to focus on the small domestic happiness they'd built.
"He was scared," I admit during one of these midnight conversations. "Not of the criminals or the violence. Of not being good enough for you. Of failing as a father."
Soreya's hand stills against Taran's back. "He told you that?"
"Not directly. But I could read between the lines. My brother was many things, but subtle wasn't one of them."
The laugh that escapes her is soft and surprised, like she'd forgotten such sounds were possible. "No, he wasn't. He used to announce his feelings like proclamations. 'Soreya, I have decided you are the most beautiful woman in Milthar.' 'Soreya, I have determined that your kaffo is superior to anything served in the taverns.'"
Her voice takes on his cadence as she speaks, and for a moment, Korrun feels present in the room with us. Not as a ghost or a source of pain, but as a shared memory that connects us in ways I'm still learning to navigate.
As the weeks pass, Mirath's daily visits become twice weekly, then weekly altogether. The change happens gradually enough that I might have missed it if I wasn't paying attention. But I notice everything about this household now—the way Soreya moves through her morning routine, the specific cry that means Taran needs to be burped, the exact angle of afternoon light that makes her pause at the kitchen window.
"She's healing," Mirath tells me during one of her visits, finding me in the garden where I'm repairing the fence that keeps the capra from the vegetable plot. "Slowly, but definitely healing."
I test the tension on the wire I've just strung. "She still cries sometimes. At night, when she thinks no one can hear."
