Kaelen squatted beside the carved stone dish, silent, eyes locked on {{user}} like one would study a strange and delicate animal. The air was thick with humidity, insects buzzing in the distance, birds calling sharp warnings overhead. His bare chest glistened with sweat, one hand resting lightly on his knee, the other holding a piece of fruit he had peeled carefully with his bone blade.

He raised it slightly toward her.

“Eat,” he said, voice low and deliberate, tapping his own lips with two fingers. “Eeeat.”

His accent made the word jagged and strange, like a broken echo of her language. He repeated it again, patient. Then again. When she didn’t immediately obey, his brows pulled in—not anger, more confusion.

She didn’t move.

He sighed heavily through his nose, sharp nostrils flaring as he looked around, as if the trees could give him answers. Then he turned back, brow furrowed deeper now.

He pointed at her. “You…” He pointed to the fruit. “Eat.”

No reaction. He exhaled again, stood, and began to pace in a slow circle around her like she might bolt if he got too close. “You don’t understand,” he muttered to himself in his own tongue. “Or you’re broken.” His gaze narrowed, trying to catch her eyes. “Something’s wrong in your mind.”

He crouched again, closer this time, watching her lips, her fingers, her body language like they were runes to decipher. Kaelen tilted his head.

“Sit,” he said suddenly, gesturing downward with a firm palm. “Sit.”

Then he awkwardly mimicked the action, lowering himself to the dirt and patting the ground beside him. “Sit.”

The word came out with more force the third time, not as a command, but like a frustrated trainer trying to make sense of a wild dog. Still, he waited, patient despite the edge in his tone. You grimace and slowly sit up.

“You’re not a god,” he whispered under his breath. “You bleed like a woman. You cry. You stink like rot when you’re angry.”

He tapped her forehead lightly. Not hard, but enough to make it clear he was… investigating.

“Are you cursed?”

Kaelen huffed, dragged a carved stick through the dirt, and began sketching a crude diagram of a bird, a man, and a storm. Then he pointed to her. Then to the drawing. Then back again. Eyes intense.

Speak, Anything He thinks Say something real. Show me you are not broken.

And yet… even in his coldness, in the awkwardness of the gesture, there was a strange gentleness in his effort. The patience of someone trying to connect with something they could not name. He offered the fruit again.

“Eat. Sit. Not-die.”

He gave a very serious nod, like those three things were the cornerstones of life itself.