"It's yummy," he said.
"Don't fill your tummy with milk. Eat your sandwich first."
"Just one more sip." He drank a few more swallows.
"That wasn't a sip. That was a gulp."
He grinned and took another sip, this one demonstrably small, his eyes never leaving hers. Then he set the glass down and picked up the sandwich.
He smacked his lips after the first bite, the way he always did when he enjoyed something.
She loved that small percussive sound of pleasure that he'd been making since he was a baby, announcing to the world that he'd been given a tasty treat and he was enjoying it.
There was something to be said about taking pleasure in the small things.
Yaaf had been like that as a boy. Perhaps his smacking hadn't been as loud, but he'd also expressed his pleasure with gestures and sounds.
She remembered the two of them in the dining hall when they were six or seven, sharing a passion fruit that one of the kitchen women had slipped them. They'd each gotten half of it, and as they ate the soft interior with a spoon, Yaaf had been making similar smacking sounds. He had looked at her with the juice running down his chin and said it was the best thing he had ever eaten, and she had laughed because back then everything had been the best thing he had ever eaten.
Two boys, thirteen years apart, smacking their lips at the simple pleasure of something sweet.
The ache in her chest deepened.
She picked up a piece of bread from the corner of Tomek's plate and put it down again without eating it.
Yaaf was eight people now. Eight men who had been brought together by something that had been done to them, drugs and isolation and whatever else he hadn't told her about. Yaaf was her friend, the boy she'd grown up with, but he was also a stranger who shared his mind with seven other males who had been listening to every word she had said to him.
Were they good people, those other seven?
She had not asked him about that because there was no point. He would say that, yes, of course they were good. He couldn't answer any other way, while she could only base her guess on what she'd seen in him since he'd returned.
He seemed good. He'd crouched beside her in the dirt and made her laugh by saying absurd things like inspecting the garden for weapons-grade chili peppers. He'd brought her books and hadn't been offended when she'd explained why she couldn't keep them. He'd asked her about Tomek with a soft expression on his face that no one could have faked so well.
He could not have done those things if the seven others were bad people. They were inside him, a part of him. They saw what he saw and felt what he felt and shared whatever he was when he was with her. If they were evil, the evilness would've leaked through, and she would have sensed it.
But she hadn't. On the contrary.
Yaaf had told her that they had his back, that they helped Number Eight deal with the blow of his mother being a member of the Sacred Mothers' order. They had also helped Yaaf deal with the grief of his own mother's death.
How much of his mind was his and how much was shared?
That was the harder question, and she did not have an answer for it.
The boy who'd been her friend was still in him. She had seen him in too many moments to doubt it. But he was also seven other men, and those men had their own memories of lives they'd lived before the merge, and they would always be there, listening when she spoke to him.
Yaaf had said that they all liked her a lot.
Sullha did not know what to do with that statement.
Perhaps once she got to know the others, she would learn to like them too, but how was she going to do that if they were merged and didn't have separate personalities? Would they all feel like Yaaf to her?
The bench creaked as someone sat down beside Tomek. Sullha looked up and found Burda settling down with a cup of tea between her gnarled hands.
"You look preoccupied," Burda said. "Anything wrong?"
Sullha forced a smile that probably did not reach her eyes. "I'm fine."
"Mama is tired," Tomek offered helpfully through a mouthful of sandwich.
