Looking at them gathered around the table, lifting the giant boar for butchering, something settled in my chest.
I did something that made them smile.
Something I had never received before.
Favio was trying to let the boar bleed out, but his movements were inefficient. He was going to ruin the meat before they even got to cook it.
"Let me. You'll only ruin it."
I took my sword out from my item box and stabbed it cleanly. Skinned it, drained the blood with magic, butchered it without trouble.
"I'll dry the skin out. It can be made into blankets, cloaks, whatever you need, Leigh."
Celine and the other women lifted the hide and hung it over makeshift poles to dry in the sun and wind.
I cut off the head, extracted the tusks, and burned the rest clean on my palm.
"How do you want the meat sliced?"
I asked before doing anything else. Something inside me had already decided it was better to ask first. I didn't want to cause them more trouble than I already had.
Favio checked the fully bled-out carcass and nodded in approval.
"We'll be making stew and skewers. Cube some of it, smaller bite-sized pieces for the rest."
He pointed to the sections I'd be working from. I stored the sword and took out a dagger instead, and started cutting.
The other villagers gathered around and helped sort. What wasn't needed immediately I cut into large chunks and left for later use.
"There's still so much left." Benneth stared at the stacked cuts on the table. "It'll only spoil."
"That's wasteful." I said flatly.
"It is. But we don't have proper storage."
"Then I'll store it."
One snap. Everything went into my item box. The villagers looked at me, and this time there was no pity in it. Just open, unguarded delight.
"No more worrying about the meat rotting." Favio laughed and patted my shoulder. "Thanks, Leigh."
He rolled up his sleeves and turned toward the others.
"Gringo. We need vegetables. Carrots, potatoes, onions, scallions, mushrooms. Let's get cooking."
Gringo fidgeted and scratched his head.
"About that... we only have sweet potatoes stored."
"What? But the..."
Favio stopped himself and looked at the fields. At the ash.
"Right. We don't have anything stored. We packed everything for Torra's family to take."
I went to my item box and started pulling out the crates I had salvaged from the carriage in the Doom Forest, stacking them one by one.
Elder Elka's eyes went wide. "Leigh... you kept them?"
I nodded and carried the vegetable crate to Favio, who was already grinning.
"Right then. Let's start chopping. And you, Leigh, you brought the boar. Just relax."
He took charge and started slicing vegetables, setting them directly on the table as he went. I tilted my head.
"You're not washing them?"
Favio shrugged without looking up.
"Water's limited. We'll just boil everything thoroughly. If we wash them first, there won't be enough left for the stew."
My brows pulled together.
I had resistance. Illness didn't reach me. But the children running around me, the elderly, the rest of them, they didn't have that.
And Favio said it the way someone says something they stopped fighting a long time ago. Matter of fact. Already accepted.
"Don't worry, Leigh. Our stomachs are used to it. Those with weaker constitutions... well. That's just how it is."
Hopelessness dressed up as practicality.
I looked around the settlement again. The open space. The small number of people filling it. The worn-down structures. It was assembling itself into a picture I should have seen immediately.
No clean water source. No medical care. No easy route to the nearest town. Surrounded by mountains, picked at every night by monsters.
And the people who didn't fall to the Crawlies were quietly worn down by everything else.
They had already accepted what was coming for them.
And did he just say I was worried?
The headache arrived again. Paired this time with that sting in my chest. Both of them together, pressing in from different directions.
While people in the capital were dressing in jewels and sitting down to meals prepared by someone else's hands, these people were here, eating unwashed vegetables and calling it survival.
I couldn't stomach it.
Even raised as a weapon, my food had always been thoroughly prepared. I hadn't asked for it. It had simply been done.
And it hadn't occurred to me until this moment what it meant that these people didn't have even that.
I looked around until I spotted Torra. He was with four other children, playing at the far edge of the settlement. Five children total. That was all.
"Torra. Come here."
He came running immediately. The four others followed him without being asked, trailing behind him like it had already been decided.
"Brother Leigh, what is it?"
"We're going to make something."
His eyes lit up. He thought we were playing. The others looked at each other and then back at me.
"I want to join."
"Me too."
"Me also."
"I'm joining."
I had little armies on my hands now. I was used to operating alone. But their noise and their eagerness did something to whatever had been sitting stiff in my chest all morning.
My face stayed as it was. But something behind it shifted.
"Torra. Go ask Gringo for the magic stones from last night. Bring them to me."
"Okay. I'll go!" He was already running.
"Brother Leigh." A small voice beside me. I looked down.
Gringo's sister. Maya. She looked up at me and flinched, then smiled through it.
"Your face is doing the scary thing again. Like this."
She flattened her expression. Went completely blank and stared at me with dead, unblinking eyes.
It was, apparently, her best impression of my face.
Seeing it on a child was... upsetting. In a way I didn't quite have the language for.
"I look like that?"
She nodded. Enthusiastically.
"You look scary. But I'm not afraid. You saved me. You were whoosh with the sword and boom with the fire. And you saved mama and papa and Brother Gringo."
Her smile was the same kind as Torra's. The uncomplicated kind. The kind that didn't ask anything back.
My chest tightened. I pressed a hand against it without thinking.
"Brother Leigh. Are you okay?"
Maya tugged my sleeve. The other children turned and looked at me with those wide, worried eyes.
"I'm fine. We're making a water source. Go find me rocks and metal. Move."
It came out exactly like a battlefield order. They obeyed anyway. Giggling as they scattered.
Maya went to her father first, pointed at me, and came back dragging the pitchfork I had used against the Crawlies the night before.
"Brother Leigh. Here. Metal. Papa gave it to me."
I took it without thinking.
And stopped.
Maya was hanging off the end of it. Both hands gripping the shaft, feet off the ground, laughing. She hadn't let go when I reached for it. She had just gone with it.
The other children dropped their collected stones immediately.
"Me next."
"Me too."
My brow twitched.
Maya swayed every time I moved, small hands locked tight, still laughing. I stood there holding a pitchfork with a child dangling from it and had absolutely no framework for what the correct response was.
She held on for longer than I expected.
"Brother Leigh. Can you put me down now? Please?"
Her hands had reached their limit. I lowered it. The other children grabbed on before she had fully let go.
Then Torra appeared from nowhere and added himself to the end. Dropping the satchel on the ground.
"Up...up... Brother Leigh."
I raised it again. Swung it gently. They swayed and shrieked and laughed all at once.
I swung it again.
From somewhere behind me, Elder Elka's quiet laugh carried over the noise.
"Leigh's opening up. You won't see it on his face or hear it from his mouth. But look at him. Actions speak louder than words. It's only been one day. What more if he stays here for good."
I didn't know what she meant by that.
I was doing this because they wouldn't stop pestering me. Once they were satisfied they would move on, same as Maya had, on their own.
And they did. They tired themselves out one by one and asked to be put down.
I set the pitchfork down and looked at them catching their breath, red-cheeked and still smiling over nothing.
Just a piece of metal. Just swaying back and forth in the air. That was all it had taken.
And they all looked like they've been handed the world.
So innocent, so trusting.
I could do something that trivial again, if it meant hearing them laugh like that.
I could do that without any trouble at all.
For now...
I'll go with it.
And before I get even more distracted, I picked uo the pitchfork again. Only this time, it's for something they all needed.