Chapter 227: A Little Water, a Lot of Questions

DOVE’S POV

Dove wanted enough clean water to stop thinking about every swallow. That seemed reasonable until she tried lifting the largest container a trader offered her.

It barely moved.

"Lovely," she said. "I’ll just grow another spine."

Thorne took the handle, but she stopped him before he carried it away. "You being able to lift it isn’t the point. I need to move it if you’re busy."

He set it down without arguing. They chose smaller sound containers, checked the lids, and paid with ordinary goods from yesterday’s trades. Edrik tested the handles while Dove made sure none smelled of fuel or chemicals. Cheap water storage was less useful if it came with a surprise poisoning.

Back at the shop, she lined their household containers against the rear wall, clear of the door. Drinking bottles stayed above the wash supplies. The little space already looked less like a pile of bags and more like somewhere people lived on purpose.

Sprout offered household stock. Dove chose it, and six two-pillow packs filled the cabinet’s middle shelves, with six folded mosquito-net packs above them. The labels showed the net dimensions and the pillows’ size clearly enough that nobody had to ask whether they were meant for dolls.

"Now that’s a shop," she thought.

"Comfort products perform well when conditions worsen."

"You found a very cheerful way to say everyone is miserable."

She set fair barter terms and left the automatic sales running. Two nights of being bitten had made the nets popular before lunch. She kept one pillow pack and one net pack for eight Favor, sold the other ten units over two busy stretches, and collected the stated sixty-eight-normal sales reward once, after the sixth sale.

Then she used her new pillow for three glorious minutes before Iris arrived with lunch.

"You look busy," Iris said.

"I’m testing a product. It’s very demanding."

Iris put sandwiches, cold cooked chicken, and sliced fruit on the table. Her basket caught a rough edge on the ordinary counter, and she pulled her hand back with a sharp breath. A small cut opened across the side of her finger.

Dove found a clean cloth. She had already started thinking about her water before she could stop herself.

She could help Iris. She also kept seeing people come past with cracked hands, blisters, and small injuries made worse by heat and dirty work. Something that helped those heal could matter more than another stack of goods.

"Sprout," she asked privately, "if I dilute the water, is it still useful?"

"The concentration changes. You would need to observe the result."

"Can you tell me what it treats?"

"Not beyond effects you have already established. Do not promise a cure you have not seen."

Annoying. Also the answer she needed.

Dove asked Iris whether she would try something on the cut. She explained that she had seen it help small wounds, not that it cured everything. Iris agreed and kept the clean cloth pressed to her finger while Dove went into the back room. Thorne brought the prepared drinking water, and Dove asked for a few minutes of privacy. Dove measured one part pool water into nine parts clean drinking water, using clean equipment and the same marked measure for all six small bottles. Thorne helped with the caps. Edrik kept the shop doorway clear without making a show of guarding a secret.

Dove brought one capped bottle to the table, explained the dilution, and waited while Iris inspected it. The other five stayed capped in the back room. Iris nodded before Dove opened the first.

Dove poured a little onto a clean pad and let Iris hold it against the cut. The bleeding stopped quickly. When Iris lifted the pad, the shallow edges looked less angry and were beginning to close.

Both women stared.

"Well," Dove said. "That was more helpful than I expected."

Iris flexed her finger carefully. "Where did you get this?"

The answer stood in Dove’s mind like an open door she could never close again.

She shut it.

"Found a crate on the road. I’ve been careful with it."

Iris looked at the bottle, then Dove. "You could trade these."

Dove knew. That was the exciting part and the part making her stomach tighten. People wanted useful things. People also decided wanting them gave them a right to ask where every last drop came from.

Through lunch, Dove kept finding excuses to look at Iris’s finger. Iris finally held it up for her and laughed. She could bend it comfortably, and the cut kept closing. Dove let herself smile too. She wanted to bottle that feeling almost as much as the water.

The next day, she put the five capped bottles on her ordinary counter, separate from the system cabinet. Each had the same plain label and the amount written on it. "It helped a small cut," she told the first curious customer. "If you’re asking whether it can fix your entire terrible week, mine is still going." She asked for sealed drinking water in barter.

"Five available," she told the first buyer. "No, I don’t know when I’ll find more. No, you can’t take the whole lot and charge your neighbors triple."

He blinked. "I hadn’t said that."

"You were developing the expression."

Thorne laughed behind her. The man bought one bottle and left two sealed one-liter bottles in exchange. The other four went the same way, with Dove recording each trade herself. The cabinet could handle its own stock. This was hers, and she wanted to watch what people asked.

One buyer tried to pay with a bottle whose seal had already been broken. Dove handed it back before taking the treatment from her own counter. He protested, then found a sealed replacement. She could be helpful without accepting somebody else’s mystery leftovers as drinking water.

By afternoon, they had ten new sealed drinking bottles and no healing bottles left for public sale. Iris had kept the opened trial bottle. Dove still had her private source, but no public promise to fill everyone’s cup.

Across the street, Ash watched her hand the last bottle over. Recognition passed across his face before he looked away. He had seen the water work before. Of course he remembered.

Dove was still deciding how much that bothered her when Thorne’s older former employee appeared at the door.

He held an envelope with a fresh date on it.

"The relief warehouse answered," he said. "They think your father is still there."