Lashan kept an ear out when the girls came in sweaty from staff practice. Sister Apothecary would have put him out like a light, and she thinks about it, for all that he's sincere in lack of malice right now. This is a difficult situation and she can't blame the girls for being unhappy about it. The enclaves are a haven for the strange and the cursed, and her mind-gift is unusual enough to make her judgement calls baffling and inexplicable. She has brought girls back who were very difficult at first.

"Sit with me. Eat your greens, they're good for you, and if you don't drink the shrub it'll attract flies. Flies are not invited to this table," is all she says, fully transforming into her mother for a moment. The meal is already blessed and the Twins don't expect unbelievers to participate in these rituals anyway. That's another reason not to get attached, she can't see him converting.

Guts eats more neatly than she would've expected. She knows he's hungry. It actually makes her slow down, which isn't a reaction she usually has to eating with a teenager, but she's suddenly afraid she'll leave him wanting.

At that age Lashan had been considered near-adult. Old enough for solo watch and messenger duty for some time, just old enough to start participating in battle, and she'd been rough-and-tumble in peaceful months, too, keeping up with the young men her age. She'd had some scars. Not as many as the boy does. He probably has more marks of injury than she does now. The older she is and the further from clan life, the more idyllic it seems.

"How's the shoulder?" she asks when there's not a lot left on the table. "Has it reopened?"