He rolls his eyes!
“Did you want to help me or not?” I demand.
“By doing something you can already do?” Kovan scoffs.
“First of all, taking a burden off of someone elseishelp. Secondly, I knowhowto make bread, but I amterribleat it. I’m terrible at it even normally, because you have to remember to do things at certain times which is basically impossible for me, but now even though I know the oven is working because other things are cooking fine, every attempt I’ve made at bread on this mountain has been adisasterand I stopped trying. So I will teach you how to make bread, and then you will figure out how to actually make it, becauseyouwon’t stop trying, so not only will you be able to feed yourself, you will behelping me.”
A long pause.
“I would be happy to learn how to make bread,” the sage finally says quietly.
I belatedly realize my fists are clenched, and I release them, breathing hard.
I have been yelling at a sage. At a guest in my house that I have to live with now! Argh.
Rather than open my mouth and make it worse again, I move past him to a cupboard and pull out a big book.
It’s a gorgeous tome of a book, and huge, and not something even a little bit practical and I love it so unreasonably that I have been unable to bring myself to actuallydoanything with it.
Like my touch will somehow ruin its magic, too.
“I brought this here to write down all the recipe adaptations I learned and then, well, I didn’t do it,” I say. “So you can use it to keep track of things instead. I’ll show you how to get started first.”
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
I want to tell him not to thank me, because once he feels able to fend for himself I won’t feel guilty when our living together inevitably doesn’t work out.
I want to tell him not to thank me because he shouldn’t need to be grateful for someone teaching him something as basic as how to make bread.
But I don’t want him to feel any worse.
I don’t want him to feel like even basic kindness is a weapon that can be wielded against him.
I refuse to pass that on if I can possibly help it.
I refuse to let how other people treat me make me like them. Make mehard, when what I really want is to be able to be excited about anything and not have to feel bad about it.
So he can have my beautiful book.
And all I say is, “You’re welcome.”
Despite what I said before, his touch then, gently covering my hands as I work the dough, his steady gaze focused intently on a task he’s not even interested in but is caring about for my sake, does start to make me believe that maybe he does, in fact, mean everything he says.
Even about me.
Chapter 3
Kovan
Fortheremainderofthe morning, Tasa teaches me everything she knows about bread, and it is the easiest thing in the world to focus all my attention onher, and her brightness.
Her brown eyes and hair catch the light as she smiles, which she does easily and often, as she moves, not gracefully but in bursts of energy.
I hadn’t realized that easy excitement was something missing in my life until this moment. Being a sage isn’t about joy, so it isn’t necessary; but it’s certainly not present.
The sage of resolve is about bringing determination in hard situations. Battles. The aftermaths of disasters. Difficult and massive undertakings. Digging deep and drawing on inner mettle.There can be triumph, or a kind of fierce group determination, but I’m never called on forjoy. The priests around me, likewise, are serious in their dedication.
Tasa is dazzling with it. And watching her unlocks a yearning in me I am completely unprepared for and absolutely cannot touch.
