The food was, in fact, very good, and Cynthia conceded it with the reluctance of a woman handing a point to someone who'd never let her forget it.
"Fine. It's good," she said, around a second helping she'd sworn she wasn't taking. "Don't let it go to your head. That's already the biggest thing in the room."
"Too late. It got there around the first bite of yours." Trafalgar topped up her cup, thoroughly pleased with himself.
Mayla laughed, low and easy, a hand on her middle. Across the table Pipin picked through a crust of bread with the focus of a creature who considered the whole meal his by right.
For a while it was only that: the warm room, the clink of plates, four people scattered across cold places for a month letting the quiet knit them back together. No talk of mines or houses or borders, only the ordinary noise of a family at a table.
