When the morning sun crept across the forest, Marron was pretty sure she had several teriyaki sauce spots across her robe.
Even if her arms felt sore and she'd lost feeling in her left leg, Marron had a bunch of chicken teriyaki onigiri to sell.
Maybe this is how mom felt every single day, before Aunt Ry helped her out.
She looked around the inn's guest room for a container and found a wicker basket.
"Okay, let's get packing."
She moved with the steady calm of someone who barely slept and was obsessed with keeping her mind preoccupied to get away from The Horrors.
Marron packed the rice balls into the basket, each one carefully wrapped in a fragrant leaf with some plum salt.
I want to keep it as fresh as I possibly can for whoever's going to eat it.
They needed to be gone by the end of the day, but they weren't going to spoil within their leaf wraps while they waited. Each triangle was intentional, had her honest feelings in them, and they were a complete meal.
Maybe I got scared when Mielle talked about how hard she and Balen worked to infuse feelings into their food.
Marron wondered if Mielle or Balen's emotional infusions felt different. Hers felt weightless, when she wasn't thinking about it...after a few pinpricks on her fingertips.
She could almost see a light pink aura over each rice triangle, and felt like today was going to be a good one.
+
Marron wheeled her food cart out to the wolfkin marketplace, nestled beneath the looming pine trees. Cloth canopies in various earth tones were strung through the pine as makeshift roofs for the food vendors.
Smoke curled from a nearby meat vendor's spit, and the warm scent of sweet and savory pancakes filled the air. Other vendors waved at her as she rolled past them and set up in an empty stall next to the fountain.
She walked up to a young female wolfkin who used a swatter to keep the flies away from her fried flatbread.
"Can I set up here?"
Her ears flicked, taking in all the sound while her white coat looked even brighter in the early morning sun.
"Sure," she replied, looking at Marron with mismatched eyes. The dark brown eye looked like it was missing, especially when her piercing blue one drew so much attention.
"Square is for everyone. If no one's taken it yet, free game. Do humans not know how to share?"
Marron laughed. "We do, but there are so many of us--so we have to exchange gold to borrow the space for a while."
"Such an odd custom." The white wolfkin shrugged her shoulders. She sniffed at Marron's basket and her tail started swishing in hyperdrive.
She grabbed one of her flatbreads and offered it to Marron.
"Trade?"
"Sure!"
Technically it wasn't a sale, but this was the first time another person was tasting her food.
+
The white wolfkin bit into the rice ball.
Her chewing slowed almost immediately. Her blue eye blinked once, then narrowed with intense concentration—like she was trying to decode a memory she hadn't known was buried.
Then she let out a low hum. "Mmm."
Tail still wagging, she licked a bit of sauce off her thumb. "This tastes like warmth in the middle of winter. Like… napping under a blanket after a long patrol shift."
Marron smiled, a little stunned.
"Is that good?"
"It's dangerous." The wolfkin grinned, fangs just showing. "Someone's gonna propose to you if you keep cooking like this."
Marron laughed—embarrassed, but relieved.
The wolfkin's ears twitched again. "Hey, Rua!" she called out to another vendor across the square. "You gotta try this!"
Within minutes, curious wolfkin drifted over to Marron's stall. A few sniffed the air before even seeing what she was selling.
"Is that meat in rice?"
"Wrapped food? Is it filled or folded?"
Marron unwrapped one and offered it up. "It's rice on the outside, chicken teriyaki in the middle. You can eat it hot or cold. It's a portable snack."
The words felt strange in her mouth—sales pitch voice—but the pride was real.
The first wolf took a bite and groaned. "Why does this taste like my grandmother's stew night and my first hunt at the same time?"
Another wolfkin, this one with greying fur and a cloak stitched with beads, approached her stall with a small crate.
Inside were apples—glossy, the deepest red she'd ever seen. Just touching one released a shimmer of juice down the skin, like the fruit had missed her.
The elder sniffed the air. "You made these?" he asked, tapping a claw gently against the onigiri.
"I did," Marron replied.
He offered the crate forward. "I'll trade. These are apples from the southern slope—where the snakekin cultivate fruit between the hot springs."
Marron accepted one carefully. It was warm in her palm, almost like it had been freshly picked.
She took a bite.
Sweetness exploded across her tongue—bright, clean, with a whisper of mint and plum underneath. The juice ran down her chin. She gasped. "Oh my God."
The elder chuckled. "Friend of mine tends that orchard. Says the soil remembers stories. The fruit changes depending on what mood the land was in when it bloomed."
Marron wiped her chin, slightly dazed. "What mood was this?"
"Joy," he said. "Spring joy, I think. Right after the first thaw."
She looked at the remaining apples in the crate and swore she could feel them humming gently in anticipation.
She gave him two onigiri for the trade. He nodded once and wandered off, whistling.
As the market swelled with the morning rush, Marron realized she hadn't thought about the shadow all day. She hadn't even noticed how sore her legs were.
Her fingers were sticky, her robe was stained, and she was surrounded by wolfkin laughing and licking sauce off their paws.
She looked down at her food cart.
Half empty already.
Still enough for more trades. Enough for new memories to be made.
Marron exhaled—and for the first time in days, it wasn't from tension.
It was peace.