(And some minor scratches—with speed I lost a little of my caution. Okay, most of it.)
“I win,” Zan says smugly.
“This round,” I agree equably. It was close, though, and I’m still a little giddy about playing with him, and on even footing. “Now that I have more practice, I’ll get you next time.”
Assuming we have a next time.
Zan just looks at me with amusement, and then back at the basket, which is pretty well to overflowing. “How quickly do you think you can eat all ofthese?”
“Is that a challenge, too?”
He snorts. “Let’s clean up before we make the whole cottage sticky. It’s harder to get stains off of furniture than off of us.”
I blink, brought up short.
For all the limitations of my upbringing with the Order, cleaning was not something I was ever tasked with. There were always lower-ranked acolytes for that.
Though arguably this is also a limitation—that I don’t even knowhowto clean my house.
And it wouldn’t have occurred to me that furniture was any different to clean than skin.
How much of that labor was invisible to me?
Zan sets the basket down on the table and crosses to a cupboard. “This is where we keep the linens. Spare blankets and towels.”
He tosses me one of the latter and I catch it reflexively, following him to the sink.
We stand next to each other quietly, easily, washing the juice off our hands.
There’s an intimacy in this, in performing a domestic task together so casually.
When we’re done, Zan takes his pack off, and I follow his lead again. But rather than beginning to unpack, he motions me to sit at the table. I raise my eyebrows but do so, as he goes to another cupboard.
“This one is where we keep basic medical supplies,” he says.
“Medical supplies? Are you hurt?”
“You’rehurt,” Zan says with a hint of exasperation. “Do you think I didn’t see the scratches on your hands and arms?”
“Oh, those are fine.” I was trained to withstand a lot of pain, and I barely notice these. “I’ve had worse—”
“That doesn’t mean you have to accept bad,” Zan growls at me.
I blink a couple of times, working through my feelings about that.
I was raised for it to be a point of pride to not need coddling.
But at the same time, I wasn’t raised to do my own cleaning, which arguably is a different kind of insulation.
Is being able to withstand or ignore pain good? In a battle situation, certainly.
But best practices for battle situations are not the same as everyday life. If it were, I’d have treated the press of bodies around me in Crystal Hollow as threats and attacked them, which is an instinct obviously inappropriate for the situation.
And I’m notina battle situation right now.
Will addressing physical pain in everyday life make me soft, though?
Ohhh shit, that’s the real crux of it, isn’t it?
