Ash stopped looking at her stock and looked straight at her. Dove immediately understood why people preferred lying from a safe distance, preferably by email.
"Where did you come from?" he asked, keeping his hands on his side of the counter.
"A city called Cleveland. I worked in a store, I paid for things with money, and nobody treated a bottle of shampoo like evidence in a murder case." She pressed her pencil against the paper before she could add anything about trucks. "I can’t explain how I got here in a way you’ll believe."
His eyes narrowed at the unfamiliar name. "You expect me to accept that you remember another home but not the people standing in front of you?"
"I expect you to hear what I said before deciding what I meant. My expectations have been taking a beating lately, but I’m trying to keep one alive."
He asked where Cleveland stood in relation to the Warren. She could not promise that a map of her old world meant anything here, and his expression hardened when she admitted it. She had offered something real and watched him turn it into another failed inspection.
Kael returned before Ash replied, carrying the ordinary cloth roll he had forgotten at the counter. His silver-gray ears shifted toward their voices, but he only asked whether the roll had been left behind. Dove passed it through the gap beneath her notes.
"Was the water agreement settled?" he asked.
"Small tests by agreement, with normal treatment continuing," Dove said. "No miracle promises and no surprise appointments with my belongings."
Kael nodded, then asked to see the sample label again. She retrieved the already prepared bottle behind the tarp and brought it out. He checked the mark before handing it back, making no effort to hide what he was doing.
"You thought I’d switch it?" she asked, trying for lightness and hearing the thin edge underneath.
"I don’t know what you might do," he said. "I can believe the cut closed and still need to check what I give a patient."
Dove put the bottle away herself. "Right. Of course you do."
Kael remained at the counter while she collected her bowl. "That doesn’t mean you have to stand here being questioned until you stop eating. The kitchen is serving, and I have time to walk that far."
She wanted to refuse because her pride was an expensive idiot. Her stomach wanted stew and had never once paid rent. She closed the display, stored the few goods she had brought out, and fastened the gate behind her.
Ash watched Kael offer to carry the empty bowl. His gaze stayed on their hands even after Dove kept it herself.
"Your patients are waiting," he told the healer.
"My next check is in ten minutes. You signed the clinic schedule this morning."
There was nothing warm in Kael’s answer. Dove glanced between them, unsure why an empty bowl had suddenly become a matter of public importance.
"I know where the kitchen is," Ash said.
"Congratulations," Dove replied. "If you remember where they keep the spoons, we can put you up for a promotion."
Sprout recorded three Favor Coins from Ash’s irritation, then opened a second purse. "Your completed beginner missions activated the merchant tier. Your existing twenty-one coins carry over as normal coins. New male-reaction earnings go into Favor Coins, starting with these three."
Dove ducked behind the tarp long enough to read the terms. From tomorrow, daily consignment goods would arrive without a purchase charge, with different products and a named sales target each day. Selling the required goods earned normal coins for shop purchases. Reactions earned Favor Coins and unlocked shelves. At closing, each unsold consignment item cost four Favor Coins to own, or went back with a one-normal-coin return fee.
Retained items became hers permanently; her older purchased stock was already hers.
"So you’ve invented two wallets and somehow both can disappoint me," she muttered, checking that neither purse could silently pay the other’s bill. The system confirmed it, and she copied twenty-one normal, three Favor onto separate lines.
They walked past household stores, where sealed food tubs sat behind a barred partition and a man counted lamp batteries from an opened carton. Supplies existed. People simply preferred keeping track of who carried them away, which Dove understood considerably better after losing her soap.
A young adult beastman carrying folded towels nearly walked into a post when he saw her. His companion caught the stack before it fell.
"Gods, she’s even prettier up close," the towel carrier muttered, loudly enough that the nearest bench heard him. "I’ve never seen a female with eyes like that."
"Keep walking," his companion answered. "That’s Dove."
The admiration did not leave the first man’s face. The welcome did. He hurried past without offering either towel, and Dove continued toward the kitchen with her bowl held against her stomach.
A serving lid caught white lashes, bright blue eyes, and silver-white hair. This face could have sold the ugly store lights she used to work under. Here, strangers wanted to look while people who recognized her checked their pockets.
Kael passed her the filled bowl after the server set it down. "You went quiet."
"I was calculating how much this face should owe me in emotional damages. It’s clearly getting more attention than my actual business."
His mouth moved, nearly smiling, before he looked toward the clinic passage. "I need to go back after this."
"I know. You don’t have to turn lunch into a watch shift."
She meant it, although she was glad he stayed until she had somewhere to put the hot bowl. Kindness with a time limit still counted as kindness. It just hurt to realize she had mistaken some of it for trust.
When she returned to the stall, Ash was gone and Thorne stood across the hall with a folded bundle in his hands. He waited until she opened the display before approaching the counter.
The light above her tarp caught short silver waves she had not properly looked at before, falling around black ears and a notched left edge. He was six-foot-five, broad enough to make the counter seem badly designed, with golden eyes that barely moved from her face. Pale scars crossed his jaw and disappeared beneath his collar. They did absolutely nothing to make him ugly, which felt like unfair distribution of resources.
"For you," he said, setting down the bundle without pushing it through the gate.
Dove uncovered a pair of thick gloves, worn at the palms but carefully cleaned. "What does it cost?"
"Nothing you owe me. You keep rubbing your fingers before you count the pins."
Behind him, the salvage keeper stopped sorting his tray. Dove looked at the gloves again, then at the man who had noticed her hands.
Sprout opened a small notification before she could tell it to behave. "You may wish to ask why he washed his own gloves before giving them to you."