Part Ten — An Extra Plate

　Fenrik didn't come find us.

　We found him, more or less by accident, sitting alone outside the inn a couple hours later, back against the wall, watching the street the way someone watches a room they don't fully trust.

"You're still here," I said, sitting down across from him without waiting for an invitation, which felt like fair payback for every time Doran had done the same to me.

"Wasn't sure where else to be."

He said it simply.

No weight behind it.

Just a fact.

"Figured I'd move on in the morning. Didn't want to overstay whatever that was, back at the shop."

"You didn't overstay anything."

A pause.

"There wasn't a stay to begin with."

That got the faintest twitch of something like amusement out of him — gone almost as soon as it appeared, like he wasn't used to letting it show.

Doran joined us not long after, dropping onto the step with the same unhurried economy he did everything with, and for a while nobody said much of anything.

It wasn't an uncomfortable silence.

Just three people who didn't know each other yet, working out the shape of that not-knowing.

"You got people somewhere?" Doran asked eventually.

Not unkind.

Just direct, the way he was about most things.

"Family. Somewhere you're actually trying to get back to."

"No."

Fenrik didn't hesitate on that one, which told me more than the word itself did.

"Not anymore."

A pause.

"Not in a while."

"What happened?" I asked, and then, before he could answer, added:

"You don't have to say."

"I'm not fishing for a sob story. Just — you don't have to carry it alone if you don't want to."

He was quiet for a long moment.

His ears flicked once.

Twice.

Like he was deciding how much of the truth was safe to hand two strangers he'd known for the better part of an afternoon.

"Village didn't want beastkin blood mixing with the rest," he said finally.

"Wasn't subtle about it, either."

"Left when I was old enough to walk far enough on my own."

A short, humorless huff of breath.

"Suppose that's the short version."

"That's plenty," I said.

"You don't owe anyone the long version."

"Not us."

"Not tonight."

Doran leaned back against the wall, arms crossed, studying Fenrik with the same careful weighing he'd given me back in that clearing.

"Can you fight?" he asked.

Blunt.

Practical.

Doran's version of getting to know someone.

"Enough to have survived this long," Fenrik said.

"Wouldn't call myself impressive."

"Nobody's asking you to be impressive."

Doran's eyes remained on him.

"Just useful, and honest about what you're not."

"...Fair."

I watched the two of them size each other up — not hostile, just careful, the particular caution of people who'd both learned the hard way that trust costs something and isn't handed out for free.

It reminded me, a little uncomfortably, of the rule I'd only just finished setting for myself two nights before.

Guess I'm not the only one who's learned that lesson.

Good.

Means I'm not the only one being careful, which makes the careful part easier to live with.

"So," I said, when the silence had stretched long enough that somebody needed to actually say something useful.

"Doran and I are heading out come morning."

"No particular destination, near as I can tell — just somewhere that isn't here."

I glanced toward Fenrik.

"You're welcome to come, if you want."

"Not because you owe us anything for the shop."

"Just because it beats sitting on a step deciding where to walk next, alone, one more time."

Fenrik looked at me for a long moment.

Then at Doran.

Doran gave him nothing more than a small, noncommittal shrug — which, again, from Doran, was practically an invitation carved in stone.

"...You're not going to regret this," Fenrik said slowly.

"And I mean that as a promise, not a threat."

He looked away for a moment.

"I don't do well with people who let me down."

"Good," I said.

"Neither do I."

He almost smiled at that.

The real kind.

Not the polite kind he'd been wearing all evening.

"Alright," he said.

"Alright."

A small breath.

"Count me in."

Doran fetched an extra blanket without being asked, tossing it into Fenrik's lap with the same economy he did everything else with, already treating the matter as settled before either of us had finished feeling it settle.

I sat back and watched the two of them fall into an easy, wary sort of quiet — not friends yet, not really.

Just two people willing to find out.

Two, now.

Not the family I had.

But it's starting to look like something, all the same.