Chapter 83: A Month Was a Long Time to Be Carried

The trader admitted he wanted Dove to come to Quarry Market because he would enjoy seeing her there. He also knew two men looking for furniture and could use a merchant who brought new goods. Dove waited until he looked up from her mouth. "The furniture sounds promising. Keep talking about the furniture."

"You can introduce customers," she told him. "You can’t introduce me as your future wife, your discovery, or a woman who owes you a favor. We clear?"

He agreed while Thorne sat close enough for his knee to touch hers. Edrik said nothing, but the trader looked at him twice before describing the road. Quarry Market occupied old maintenance buildings outside Three Rivers, where crews avoiding damaged bridges had started trading and renting rooms.

The school caretaker confirmed the place the next morning. He had bought supplies there twice and marked its access road on their map. An ordinary quarry appeared on the printed page; the new settlement didn’t. Dove finally had a destination she could point to instead of another man’s vague promise about somewhere better.

Day Thirty-Four began with her pool-water wash and four large cocoa pouches from Sprout. Each made several full mugs. Selling three paid twelve normal coins, six fresh Favor unlocked a sixteen-coin three-pack of thick socks, and storing one new item completed the day’s practice while they stayed here.

"That’s a sensible amount of chocolate," she told it. "Keep doing this and I might stop threatening to replace you with a vending machine."

Thorne brought eggs made from the kitchen’s powdered mix, fried potatoes, sausage, and thick toast. There was enough for all three, and Dove kissed his cheek before stealing a potato from the serving plate. He caught her hand gently and asked whether she intended to let him sit down first.

She scratched behind his ear instead. "Good boy. You remembered the hot sauce." His eyes softened, his tail brushed the chair, and Edrik watched over his coffee with a look that suggested he was taking notes.

Their fresh reactions and the mate extra brought her Favor to eight hundred ninety. She kept one cocoa pouch for four, leaving eight hundred eighty-six. The three sale pouches brought dried fruit, a clean sheet, and two candles, plus the twelve-coin mission reward. She spent fifteen minutes walking the watched hall and doing the careful stretches Edrik showed her, then sat down before her recovering legs could object. Sales and exercise brought her to sixty-six normal coins. The eighteen-coin wash bowl left forty-eight.

She stored the sheet for her task, then used the new bowl behind the reading room’s wash curtain. A bigger basin was an improvement, though she still wanted a shower with water pressure and a lock nobody considered a luxury.

Outside, a man waited with a carved hair clip and an offer to braid her hair. She thanked him, declined the clip, and kept walking. He followed as far as the cafeteria door before Edrik appeared between them.

"She answered you," the bear said. The man tried to laugh it off, then saw Edrik wasn’t sharing the joke. He backed toward the lunch tables, holding his gift against his chest.

Dove touched the bear’s sleeve. "That was my polite answer. If he follows me again, tell him I’m fresh out of those."

"He heard you," Edrik said. "He thought you needed a different answer. I fixed that." His expression warmed when she smiled, which somehow made the change from frightening to attentive more obvious.

She checked supplies with both men that afternoon. Terminal remained north beyond the broken route, and the distant military base was still only a possible destination. They could learn more while earning supplies at the market. Dove wanted a counter and a room before she committed to another month of travel.

"We look at the place and decide for ourselves," she said. "If it’s awful, we leave. Nobody gets to turn a guided walk into ownership papers."

Thorne kissed her forehead and asked which bags she wanted first. Edrik checked the food without disputing the decision. Being listened to felt almost strange enough that she nearly explained herself again, then decided the men could survive without another speech.

That evening they drank strong cocoa beside the reading room window while runoff dripped from the school gutter. Dove complained about missing swimming pools, movie theaters, and sitting somewhere without a knife being part of the seating arrangement.

"We’ll find you somewhere to swim," Thorne said. "Then you’ll complain about wet hair and ask me to carry you back."

"You say that like it isn’t an excellent plan." She tucked her feet under his thigh, and he warmed them between his hands while Edrik sat across from them, smiling into a mug large enough to suit him.

Later, Edrik went into the adjoining supply room and closed his door. His cot stood beyond the thin wall near the hall, close enough to hear trouble without sharing their mattress. Thorne checked their lock, then caught Dove trying to steal the warm side of the blanket.

"You take up most of it already," she told him. "Keep complaining and I’ll put my cold feet on your stomach."

He caught her around the waist and tickled her through her shirt until she laughed into his shoulder. She pushed at his wrist, breathless and grinning, and he stopped the moment she asked. Unfortunately, his smug face remained directly above hers.

"Bad boy," she whispered, tugging him down by his shirt. "Now kiss me before I decide to get even."

His smile changed as he kissed her, slow enough that her hands relaxed against his shoulders. A floorboard creaked on the other side of the wall. Dove paused, then covered her mouth when Thorne looked toward the sound with an expression far too innocent to believe.

"Edrik’s next door," she whispered. "Try remembering that before you make me embarrass myself."

"I heard the laughing," came the bear’s voice through the wall. "The rest of the school probably did too." Dove pressed her face against Thorne’s chest, and his quiet laughter made keeping her own down even harder.

She asked him to be quiet, then pulled him close again because she wanted him there. He checked her face before following the invitation, his hands warm and careful while she decided that privacy had become a frustratingly flexible concept.