The Calm People usually have the most destructive Anger.

"Kick who out?"

The voice was soft — the kind of voice that ordinarily carried warmth in every syllable — but right now it was hurried, frayed at the edges with something that sat very close to panic. Every head turned. Alisha stood in the doorway, and the sight of her stilled the celebration instantly. She was always the kind of person who entered a room smiling — it was simply who she was, effortless and constant. But not now. Her face had drained of all its usual color, pale in a way that made the absence of her smile feel loud, almost alarming.
She was waiting for an answer.

"Goddess, you returned," exclaimed Loren.

"Kick who out?"

No one answered. The silence stretched — uncomfortable, evasive — and something in Alisha's expression hardened at the edges. The pale had not left her face but what replaced the panic was quieter and somehow more unsettling. She stepped further into the room, her voice dropping into something low and deliberate.

"I asked something." Each word fell with careful, unhurried weight. "And I will not be pleased — not even slightly — until I receive my answer."

She wasn't shouting. She didn't need to. The stillness she carried in that moment was far more difficult to ignore than any raised voice could have been. She was stern in her decisive thinking. The room felt it immediately. The laughter was gone. The triumph, the clinking of whatever modest celebration had barely begun — all of it dissolved beneath the weight of her presence. What remained was still and taut, the atmosphere of a room that had abruptly remembered it had something to answer for.

"That good for nothing is finally gone." Ouroboros announced it with barely concealed delight, wearing the expression of a man who had just resolved a great injustice. "You need not carry the burden of his presence any longer, Milady." He chuckled softly. "His resolve to stay was always fragile — ephemeral, really. One small push and he walked away himself." A pause, weighted with implication. "Speaks volumes, does it not? Even he knew what he was guilty of."

"Huh?" Alisha's voice came out quiet — dangerously so. "Rowan left?" The words seemed to arrive at her slowly, each one landing heavier than the last. "Where? And why —" her gaze sharpened, cutting straight to Ouroboros, "— why would you do that?"

"It was all for you Goddess, we did it all for you so that you do not have to get your hands dirty in this work."

"For me?" A breath. Then, with a clarity that left no room for misunderstanding — "It would have been best if both of you had done absolutely nothing."

Chez said nothing to the others. She simply stood at the periphery of it all, watching — the way she always did — and what she saw gave her pause.

Not because Alisha was screaming. She wasn't. Her voice remained what it had always been — soft, almost delicate — except that now it carried something unfamiliar within it, a faint tremor of displeasure that those who truly knew her would recognize immediately as extraordinary. This was a woman who did not raise her voice. Not for herself, not even when others had wronged her in ways that demanded it. She had a remarkable, almost unsettling capacity to absorb hurt without letting it curdle into bitterness or break into anger.
Which was precisely what made this moment so unnerving. And now her voice was feeble with something that was almost — almost — a scold.

It shouldn't have been frightening. By every reasonable measure, it wasn't even loud. And yet Chez felt it — that particular chill that comes not from noise but from the realization that something deeply patient has finally been disturbed.

That, she thought, is far more terrifying than any raised voice could ever be.

A few moments later...

"I have understood the situation." Alisha's voice had already returned to its usual calm, unbothered warmth — as though she had simply filed the matter away and moved on. "You both thought you were doing something noble. You were not." She said it simply, without drama. "This is Rowan's house. We are freeloaders. The man feeds us and houses us and you repaid him by kicking him out." She clicked her tongue lightly. "We should be grateful, not ungrateful." The tone had returned to normal, calm and serene. 

"I am sorry goddess, can we get down now." With the quiet dignity of two men accepting their fate, both he and Ouroboros had lowered themselves to the floor — foreheads down, perfectly triangulated, the universal posture of men who knew they had lost.

"No this is your punishment, stay that way. And I will not cook your favorite meals for a week."

"NOOO — anything but that — Goddess please —"

The laugh slipped out before she could help it — quiet, amused — and then Alisha was already moving forward, the way she always did, efficiently and without fuss. "Now that this is resolved —" she turned, expression shifting into something more focused, "— how do I get to Rowan? I need to find him before it gets too late."

"Easy," Chez said, leaning against the wall with the unbothered air of someone delivering a simple weather update. "Dark forest. That is where he went." She snorted. "Honestly though — I cannot get over it. He really just let those two walk up to him and talk him out of his own house." She gestured broadly at the two men still pressed to the floor in perfect penitence. "Big, capable Rowan — sent off like a crybaby by these two absolute idio—"

"Chez."
Alisha's voice was gentle. Dangerously gentle. "Mind your words — unless you would like to join them on the floor." Chez glanced at Ouroboros and Loren, still folded into their triangular penitence, and reconsidered her life choices with impressive speed.

"I meant to say," she continued carefully, "that Rowan is a deeply sensitive soul who deserves to be found immediately."

Alisha smiled but that smile carried a terror only Those three could feel. 

"I will head out For Rowan."

Loren spoke in panic, "Alone! Goddess? Take me w—"

"No." She didn't turn around. Her voice was gentle, the way it always was, but underneath it sat something immovable. "I will go by myself." A brief pause, as though she were confirming it to herself as much as to them. "I need to." 

Meanwhile, somewhere deep within the boundary of the dark forest our Rowan was sitting besides a campfire he just made reminiscing of the past and their first meeting. "Ahh!!" He recoiled sharply as the fire flickered and spat a little too close for comfort, sucking in a breath through his teeth. "Tch tch." He shifted back, brushing himself off with whatever dignity remained — which, sitting alone beside a self-made campfire in the middle of a dark forest after being talked out of his own house, was not a great deal.

What a pitiful situation he had ended up in.