The scrape of bare feet on wet stone, and then a familiar orc woman came down the steps. The healer's braids were wound up off her neck and pinned with a bone needle. She had a clay pot balanced on one hip and her braid swinging heavy behind her. She set the pot on the ledge, unwound a linen wrap from her waist, and lowered herself into the pool with a groan that resonated off the ceiling.
Mab had met Thessaly on her third day at Northwatch, sitting on a stool in the healer's quarters while Thessaly pressed cool fingers along her ribs and asked her questions in a voice that expected honest answers and got them. She'd checked Mab's teeth, her eyes, the bottoms of her feet. She'd rubbed a salve into the kitchen burns on Mab's forearms and sent her away with a packet of dried willowbark and instructions to eat more meat.
That version of Thessaly had been professional and thorough and a little terrifying.
This version had her feet up on the submerged ledge and was making a sound that belonged in a bedroom.
"Don't talk to me for three minutes," Thessaly said. "My left shoulder has been hurting me all morning."
Delia moved over to make room along the pool's edge, and Thessaly settled into the space without opening her eyes, her moss-green skin darkening where the heat flushed it across her chest and throat.
Nobody rushed the three minutes. Mab let her shoulders drop another fraction as the water worked at her in layers, loosening things she hadn't known were tight. Verity had found a pumice stone and was scrubbing her heel, while Delia tipped her head back against the stone lip and closed her eyes, one hand restingon the swell of her belly where it broke the surface like a smooth pale island.
Thessaly opened her eyes exactly when the three minutes were up.
"Better," she said, and reached for the clay pot on the ledge. She pried the lid off and a sharp green smell cut through the mineral steam.
"Rosemary and something," Verity said. "What's the second one?"
"Nettle root." Thessaly scooped a measure of the paste onto her fingers and began working it into her shoulder, pressing deep with her knuckles.
"You could ask me to do that," Delia said without opening her eyes.
"You're incubating a whole person. I'll manage my own shoulder."
"Mm, true," Delia said. "Actually, pass the pot over here. My ankles could use it."
Thessaly grunted but set the pot on the ledge between them. The green smell thickened in the steam, pungent and clean, and Mab breathed it in and felt something in her ease.
Rosemary. Hester's hands. The garden at the holding, bolted and overgrown.
She didn't chase it. She let it sit where it landed and kept breathing.
"How are you settling in?" Thessaly asked, looking over at Mab.
"Well enough," Mab answered, which was mostly true. "Everything is still so... new."
"New wears off," Thessaly said. She switched hands on her shoulder, pressing the heel of her palm into the joint. "Then it's just where you live."
"Easy for you to say," Delia said. She'd opened her eyes and was working Thessaly's paste into her ankles with both thumbs, her belly resting on her thighs.
"I was a stranger to Northwatch once, too," Thessaly argued.
"Yeah, but you were always an orc," Verity pointed out.
"I came from the southern forests," she said. "Fifteen years ago. Different clan, different customs. I couldn't sleep for the first month because the wind sounded wrong against the rock." She flexed her shoulder, testing the range. "Being an orc doesn't make every orc place home."
Mab watched the healer's face as she spoke.
Thessaly caught her looking and raised one brow. "Go ahead. Ask."
"What made it home?"
Thessaly considered this with her hands still working the joint. "Time. And work. One morning, I woke up and realized I'd stopped counting the days since I'd arrived." She rolled her shoulder once, twice, and set her hand back in the water. "That's when I knew."
Delia passed the clay pot to Verity, who sniffed it, wrinkled her nose, and began applying it to her wrists.
"How long have you both been here?" Mab asked of the two human women.
