tomorrow we fight.

AMALIA

you're staring at the sky
watching stars collide

Amalia has never been a killer. She has never been more than a village child, born into a snow-globe world where the dangers were constant, but at least there were known. Not until the Outlanders began to descend did en masse did the girl gain some inkling that there were bigger troubles than those she knows, vast and unknown and terrifying and nigh impossible to overcome.

One of those is the blight. One of them is the Spire.

One of them is sitting at her kitchen table with a known assassin who threatened her friend, and keeping enough composure to offer her lunch.

"I was hopeless when I started, too." She works as she talks, the busyness keeping her hands from trembling, keeping the nerves from winning the war. She is doing this for Remi, for Ronin, for Aoife, because if her friends can find humanity in this killer than surely it must be there. "I think I ruined half the loaves I made. My grandmother would have me do tiny batches, to spare ingredients." Those days she has been more interested in learning about the outside world than sitting in a kitchen. She'd been six or seven when she began to help in the bakery, too young, perhaps, for any real expectations, but old enough to work in their world.

Those are easier days to remember, when the world still makes sense. It brings a smile to her face, faint and fleeting but very much there, and her eyes are softer when she hands Ashetta a pair of wooden bowls. "Will you set these on the table? I'll grab the soup."

She is halfway back with the pot of stew when Ashetta's question meets her ears. Amalia pauses, biting her lip, suddenly self-conscious and concerned. The anxious, animal part of her howls: why does it matter? Why does an assassin want to know where she lives? Trust, she tries to remind herself, swallowing down and calming her face. "Ah... yes. I... my family had a house, but it's easier to just stay here." She shrugs, setting the pot at the table and extending her arm to invite her to sit. "What about you? How long will you stay with Remi and Ronin?"