Dinner continued coming together around them with an almost effortless rhythm. Theron stirred the enormous iron pot balanced above the stove while Ruby arranged bowls across the long oak table with practiced ease. Neither spoke much; they simply didn't need to. One handed over ingredients before the other even thought to ask. A fresh loaf of bread appeared exactly when Theron reached his hand out for it, and Ruby passed him a bundle of fresh herbs before he even turned around from the hearth. He caught them cleanly without looking. Years no, centuries of working in unison had made every single domestic movement almost entirely instinctive.
Adrian watched the fluid choreography for a silent moment. "You've clearly done this a few times."
Theron snorted, giving the broth a heavy swirl. "Only about eighty thousand dinners."
Ruby smiled softly, adjusting the silverware. "It is actually much closer to ninety thousand, dear."
Theron's brow furrowed thoughtfully as he looked over his shoulder. "Really? That many?"
"You regularly forget numbers. You forget birthdays, Theron."
"I do not."
"You literally forgot your own birthday last year."
"I remembered it eventually, Ruby."
Ruby laughed softly, the sound like chimes. "Yes, exactly three weeks after the date had passed."
Elena leaned comfortably against the wide window frame, her eyes tracking the golden light. "I've genuinely missed this place."
Theron looked over from the stove, his tone softening. "Then you should visit us far more often, Elena. You're always welcome."
"I've been incredibly busy with the frontier patrols."
"We're all busy."
Ruby nodded in firm agreement as she set down the water pitchers. "Being busy is never a valid reason to forget about family."
Elena's usual guarded smile softened into something deeply vulnerable. "You're right, Ruby."
Adrian quietly noticed the underlying choice of words. Neither of the hosts had used the term friend to define the relationship; they had explicitly said family. It wasn't delivered as a dramatic statement, and it wasn't loudly announced to the room. It was simply accepted as an absolute rule of the house. Anyone welcomed across the threshold of this estate eventually became a permanent part of it on the ledger, with absolutely no formal ceremony required to seal the bond.
Suddenly, a loud, scraping noise violently cut through the quiet kitchen. Everyone turned their focus toward Mira. The little high elf girl had somehow managed to drag an entire heavy wooden stool all the way across the floorboards, climbing proudly onto it to perch right beside Adrian's arm. She eagerly opened another leather-bound notebook, this one looking significantly thicker than the last. Across the front cover, someone had carefully and caretakingly written a bold title: Questions Adrian Could Probably Answer.
Adrian blinked deadpan at the thick pages. "You made an entire research notebook about my existence?"
Mira looked genuinely confused by his surprise. "Well... you've done a staggering amount of interesting things, Adrian. I have to document the data."
"I've only done a few things, Mira."
"You fought a beastkin Warchief face-to-face."
"I did."
"You built a frontier town out of ash."
"Sort of. With a lot of help."
"You are a half slime."
"I am."
"And you originally came from somewhere that absolutely nobody in Eryndor has ever heard of."
Adrian froze dead for the smallest fraction of a second, his posture locking up as the secret of his dual-world split flashed in his mind. Ruby noticed the microscopic shift instantly only Ruby. Her sharp emerald eyes tracked his expression, but she continued quietly arranging the ceramic bowls as though absolutely nothing unusual had transpired on the board.
Mira leaned significantly closer across the table, her blue eyes wide as she lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. "So... Question One, Adrian."
Adrian forced a faint smile, resetting his posture. "I'm listening."
"Do slimes actually dream when they sleep?"
An absolute silence fell over the kitchen. Theron stopped stirring the pot, Elena looked genuinely curious about the anatomical metric, and even Ruby paused her movements.
Adrian blinked twice, completely caught out by the biological query. "I... honestly, Mira, I have absolutely no idea."
Mira meticulously wrote something down in her logs: Research Required. She immediately continued down the checklist without pausing for breath. "Question Two."
Adrian let out a dry laugh. "You certainly don't waste any time, do you?"
"No. Efficiency is key. If two separate slimes hug each other..." Her brow furrowed thoughtfully as she mapped out the physics. "...do they instantly fuse and become one single, larger slime entity?"
Theron let out a loud, booming bark of a laugh that shook the rafters. Ruby covered her wide smile behind her hand, her eyes crinkling, while Elena quietly looked away toward the timber ceiling, clearly trying her absolute best not to laugh out loud at his expense.
Adrian genuinely thought about the question, processing the systemic properties for a longer duration than everyone in the room expected. "Possibly," he admitted flatly.
Mira gasped out loud, slamming her hand onto the notebook. "I KNEW IT!"
Theron pointed his dripping spoon directly at Adrian's nose. "You were supposed to say an absolute no to that theory, Mayor! Don't validate her madness!"
"I don't actually know the rules of my own physiology, Theron!"
"You're the half slime adventurer!"
"Exactly!" Adrian spread his hands wide in self-defense. "I've literally never encountered another slime entity to test the boundary with!"
The entire kitchen erupted into a warm, quiet laughter that made the remaining tension from the trail completely dissolve. As the laughter slowly faded into the evening, Ruby carried a large, steaming ceramic bowl toward the exact centre of the table. Rich, thick beef stew filled with vibrant carrots, sweet onions, mushrooms, and garden herbs glistened beautifully beneath the warm, golden glow of the hanging lanterns. The rich aroma alone made Adrian's stomach growl loudly enough that everyone at the table heard the noise clearly.
Theron grinned a triumphant grin. "There it is. The real voice of hunger."
Adrian let out a defeated sigh. "I was honestly hoping nobody noticed the noise."
"The stew noticed it, lad."
"I think the entire foundation of the house registered it," Elena chimed in.
Ruby smiled warmly at the bickering. "I'll gladly take that growl as a genuine compliment to the kitchen."
"You absolutely should, Ruby." Adrian looked down at the spectacular meal before his eyes, his focus turning inward. "I haven't smelled food this good since..." He cut himself off abruptly, his voice trailing away into nothingness. Earth. Grandma Lilly's kitchen. Sunday evenings spent sharing simple, quiet meals around a small table after a long week. For a brief, still heartbeat, his expression became noticeably quieter and infinitely more distant as the parallel memories anchored themselves in his chest.
Ruby saw the shadow pass over his features only for a brief heartbeat. She didn't press him with a single intrusive question, and she didn't demand to know what specific memory had found his soul. Instead, she simply and caretakingly placed an extra slice of warm, freshly baked bread right beside his ceramic bowl. She did it without a word of prompting, and without making the gesture obvious to the rest of the table. It was just pure, unadulterated kindness.
Adrian looked down at the bread, then raised his eyes to meet Ruby's gaze. She offered him the smallest, most understanding smile. "Travellers on this road should never be allowed to leave a family table hungry, Adrian."
He gave a slow, deeply grateful nod of his head. "Thank you, Ruby."
Ruby's smile widened just enough to reach the corners of her emerald eyes. "You're very welcome, Adrian."
For the very first time since stepping across the threshold into House Sylvaris, the terrifying, lingering shadow left behind by Velcrest's impossible theatre seemed just a little bit further away. It wasn't completely gone from his ledger—he knew that specific nightmare would never leave his mind that easily—but here, surrounded by easy laughter, warm food, and ordinary people who expected absolutely nothing from his title except that he enjoy a meal, the burden finally felt small enough to breathe around.
The last fading rays of the afternoon sun filtered gently through the broad kitchen windows, washing the polished oak table in warm, liquid shades of amber and gold. Outside the glass, the surrounding western forest swayed peacefully beneath a cooling evening breeze, while somewhere far beyond the orchards, a vibrant chorus of crickets slowly began replacing the daytime birdsong. The entire estate seemed to move at an unhurried, natural rhythm, one completely and beautifully detached from regional politics, marching warchiefs, and dangerous dungeon monsters. Time itself appeared softer and more fluid here, looking exactly as though the ancient forest had quietly agreed to let this single home exist completely untouched by the bloody troubles of the wider world.
Theron carefully and meticulously lifted the enormous iron pot from the stovetop using both of his broad hands, before setting it proudly right in the middle of the table. A fresh wave of steam immediately curled upward into the rafters, carrying with it the rich aroma of the slow-cooked beef, root vegetables, fresh rosemary, and garden herbs gathered only hours earlier. Ruby followed close behind his steps, placing baskets overflowing with warm bread around the layout, while Elena quietly helped arrange the empty bowls and wooden spoons without ever needing to be asked. It wasn't the sort of structured aristocratic household where guests were expected to sit rigidly and wait to be served by clerks; everyone naturally found something practical to do, and somehow that shared effort made the entire common room feel even warmer to Adrian's senses.
Theron rested both of his calloused hands proudly upon his hips, admiring the layout with the absolute satisfaction of an artist stepping back to inspect a completed masterpiece. "There," he declared firmly. "Perfect."
Ruby peered critically into the steaming pot. "You completely forgot to add the pepper again, Theron."
Theron stared at her, his jaw dropping. "I did no- yes, wait, you are entirely right." Without the slightest shred of embarrassment or hesitation, the giant elf reached across the table, grabbed a heavy wooden grinder that was nearly the size of Adrian's forearm, and enthusiastically added what Adrian professionally suspected was enough pepper to season an entire frontier village.
Ruby watched the performance patiently, her eyebrow raising. "Theron... that is too much."
Theron stopped his grinding mid-motion, looking up. "Is it really?"
"You completely stopped counting the rotations, dear."
"I never actually started counting them, Ruby."
"I noticed that when you grabbed the wood."
Adrian couldn't stop a genuine smile from breaking through his expression. "Do you two execute this exact routine every single day?"
Ruby turned her emerald eyes toward his face. "Every single meal, Adrian."
Theron given a proud nod, setting the grinder down. "It keeps the foundation of the marriage healthy."
Ruby tilted her head thoughtfully, a playful glint in her eyes. "I was under the impression that open communication and mutual respect kept a marriage healthy, Theron."
"It does, of course," Theron grinned a wide grin. "But aggressively arguing about the pepper ratio makes dinner infinitely more interesting for the guests."
Mira climbed eagerly onto her chair, still clutching her thick notebook tightly beneath her small arm. "I've actively written down and catalogued every single pepper argument they've had this season."
Theron looked genuinely, deeply alarmed by the research report, his eyes widening. "You... you have?"
She nodded her head enthusiastically, flipping her charcoal pencil. "Thirty-seven separate instances, Dad."
Ruby smiled a sweet, victorious smile across the table. "Thirty-eight, sweetheart."
Theron let out a heavy sigh of defeat, shaking his head. "I don't logically remember thirty-eight separate arguments about the spices, Ruby."
Ruby reached her hand across the clean table and gently, smoothly slid the massive wooden pepper grinder a little farther away from his reach, locking his inventory. "This current one right now officially counts as thirty-eight, dear."
The kitchen erupted into a warm, quiet laughter once again, the domestic joy anchoring Adrian firmly in the peace of House Sylvaris.