Aren flutters a bit over the handoff but accepts their baby in the spirit in which he's given, with a self-conscious smile. "Maybe. It looks like we're about up. Would... you two sit with me?"

It's loud in the dining hall, the sound of chatter trapped by the walls. Vena casts a look over her shoulder at Guts; she'll propose going outside if she has to. When she's not eating with her friends and there aren't too many flies, outside is better in her eyes anyway, but they need to actually pick up breakfast first.

Mostly people seat themselves at the long, low tables and take food from communal platters brought out by girls on kitchen duty. The waiting is mostly for space to be cleared, and messes to be handled if they're made. The table Aren goes to has milk-boiled grain porridge in tureens, whole peaches, day-old bread, soft white cheese, pickled eggs, and heaps of leafy greens cooked in butter. There are pitchers of warm milk, weak beer, and more of that watered vinegar. Also, some flowers.

"I miss salt," Aren says, looking up and down the table forlornly.

"We gotta buy it, or send people to the sea with pans, an' it takes a while to get there," says Vena, local exposition fairy, leaning half across the table to get a pot of jam. "The eggs are salty."

Aren sighs in a what-would-children-know way and adjusts Kai's sling. "It's not the same."