Bellhollow

I sigh.

Not at anything, really. Just the weight of a long day settling out of me the way it does when the fire's warm and the bench beneath you has been worn smooth by years of other people's long days. Three years in Bellhollow now, and I'm still not used to how full the Crooked Nail gets come evening. A town this small, one I never saw on any map growing up, and yet by dusk the room packed with farmhands and peat-cutters, the odd tinker passing through, all of them talking low under the black beams, so the whole place hums, loud, but not overbearing. It's the kind of noise you get used to hearing.
I'm still listening to it when a hand comes to rest on my shoulder, warm and unhurried, and stays there a moment longer than it needs to.
"Another, love?" Maerwen is already reaching for my cup, setting a bowl of stew down in front of me with the same motion, her thumb brushing a bit of dirt from my knuckle on the way past. Grey at her temples, flour on her sleeve, her aging body built tough from a busy life, and that look she saves just for me, like I'm something the world dropped on her doorstep and she's decided to keep. "And don't you tell me you're not hungry. You only ever eat when you’re down here, and I won’t have you passing out in my house."

"I know I say this every time," I tell her, "but just because I rent a room here doesn't mean you have to look after me."
Which would land better if the spoon weren’t already in my hand. I’m three mouthfuls in before I even finish the sentence. Maerwen doesn’t say a word. She just stands there with my empty cup and watches me eat, letting the silence do the arguing for her.
“Mm,” she says eventually. “Very convincing.”
“I’m serious.”
“And so am I, kid.” She sets the cup back down, refilled while I wasn’t looking apparently, her arms crossing as she looks down at me. “Three years, Iori. Three years you’ve had that room, and in those three years I’ve watched you come down those stairs for meals and go back up them, and the only other place I’ve ever known you to be is out on that cliff getting rained on for no reason anybody can name.”
“It’s quiet out there,” I pause for a moment to have a drink. “Calming.”
“It’s quiet in a grave, kid. Doesn’t make it good for you.” The way she responds is gentle, despite what she’s saying. One of her hands finds the back of my head, ruffling my hair, almost as if the rest of the tavern doesn’t exist. “You were seventeen when you turned up on my step with nothing more than a bag you could’ve carried with one hand, and enough gold to pay for a room for five years. Somebody had to keep an eye on you, might as well be the woman who owns the roof.”

I open my mouth to respond, but she’s already gone, moving off deeper into the room, calling out to some of the adventurers to pay their tab in her gentle, yet demanding way.

“It’s fine,” I say to nobody, eating another spoonful of stew. “It’s better this way.”