The dinner was exactly the sanctuary Mara had promised it would be.
It was the heavy, rich stew she always prepared before every departure, the meal that had been sitting faithfully in the cold cabinet while they were out in the dirt, doing terrible things to real monsters. Mara served it without any dramatic ceremony, sliding the steaming bowls onto the wooden table before retreating to the counter with her ledgers.
The squad ate with the feral, single-minded appetite of people who had subsisted on compressed field rations for five days and had finally stepped back into a kitchen that smelled like a home worth surviving for.
