I watch every person we pass demand things from Tasa—finding parts for a stove, checking on a malfunctioning toilet, moving a piece of debris for them, which I even help with, to alarmed expressions thatI, a stranger, should not risk myself.
All of this from a ‘safe’ distance.
They want her labor, but not her.
Meanwhile Tasa responds toeveryonecheerfully, by name, without complaint and only rarely with redirection. She gives all of herself and respectstheirboundaries even if it breaks her heart, without enforcing any of her own.
Except that she doesn’t let them see her hurt.
She let me.
It’s sinking in how rare that must be for her.
Just as rare as a sage trying to find himself anew.
I stay close to Tasa the whole time, daring anyone willing to meet my gaze to see me standing next to her. Watching every person meet my gaze with abject confusion or even horror.
Only one man appears to look away in guilt.
At last Tasa comes to a stop in a quiet section where we’re alone, and it’s immediately apparent why: she’s somehow made a pile here of detritus from Crystal Hollow.
“Welcome to my junk heap!” Tasa announces in that same false, cheerful voice, and I can’t take it anymore.
“Don’t perform here, Tasa,” I say quietly. “Not for me.”
She pauses, and her smile falls away.
“If we go a little farther, I know where one of the closest wards is,” Tasa says instead. “You can test—”
“It’s not ajunk heap,” I say furiously, stepping toward her. “And I don’t care about the wards.”
She blinks quickly. “Wait. You’re upset forme?”
Gods, how does she even have to ask that—
But I know, don’t I? I just watched.
I just glimpsed exactly why she lives alone on a mountain.
Where I had the gall to tell her she was hiding from her problems.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
She was finally establishing a godsdamned boundary.
And maybe—maybe that’s what I’ve done too, fleeing to a mountain.
“Do you ever say no?” I ask her quietly. “Do you feel like you can?”
She blinks but answers, “Not if I can help it? I mean, what else am I supposed to do? I can finally help them for once.”
“Foronce? Whatelse? You’re the reason they’re all alive right now, and they treat you like—”
“Whoa, okay, I feel like we just had two very different experiences—”
“Clearly.”
“—but cut them some slack, okay? Their entire way of life just collapsed, andtheydidn’t choose it.”
