He drops everything onto the counter.
Without a glance at me, he answers, “Yes.”
I make a face at him—but I learn that he’s not lying.
For the next while, I watch him prepare a meal I wouldn’t have ever come up with from those ingredients in the pantry.
He picked out some small tuna tins, cans of chickpeas, penne pasta, seasoning, a can of peas and carrots, and a packet of instant mash I didn’t see behind the old boxes of stale cereal.
It takes a while, and every so often, he’ll speak a simple word, likespoon, and I’ll find it in the kitchen somewhere.
That’s my contribution to what he makes.
I don’t quite know what it is that he makes, because it looks like nothing I’ve had before, yet sort of looks like both a Shepard’s pie and a Lancashire hotpot.
The only hotpot I’ve ever had was lamb and rosemary, the one my granny used to make back in Wales every winter, like it was her favourite meal and no one would ever get sick of it.
But this one is tuna and chickpeas.
And unlike granny’s hotpot, this is uncooked.
Samick places the lid on the pot then gestures for me to follow him.
I do.
He has my unwavering attention all the way back to the fireplace.
I don’t spare Mika and Arwyn more than a fleeting glance, both asleep, one on the floor, the other still on the hard sofa.
I’m more interested in how Samick is going to cook this in a fireplace.
I sling the straps of my backpack off my shoulders, then drop with it to the floor.
The relief is instant.
I roll back my shoulders, over and over, as Samick fixes a grate (pulled from his satchel) over the flames.
As he sets the pot on the grate, I linger a frown over the satchel—because there’s no way a fucking grate should fit in there, and especially not with all the other stuff he pulls out here and there, like an entire new outfit for me, spare leathers for himself,a sewing kit, sketchbook, and all the magical medicines he has packed away.
I shift onto my side, hand flat on the coarse rug. “Is your bag magical?”
Samick’s knee presses into the hardwood floor as he sets down a second smaller pot and fills it with crystal clear water from the plastic bottles he grabbed from the cooler.
He doesn’t answer.
“It fits more than it should,” I add, and that lures in his gaze—narrowed and flooded with an icy warning.
Be quiet.
I roll my eyes before I flop down onto the rug.
It’s not comfortable.
Maybe I would take the hard sofa after all.
Samick places the small pot of water on the grate, tucking it next to the bigger one, then—still kneeling on the floor—turns his chin to his shoulder.
He considers me.
