Luton's surface rippled in the particular way it did when it was absorbing information without committing to agreement.
He ate.
The fire had done the work correctly and what came off it was better than anything he had eaten in the last week, which was partly the quality of the preparation and partly the specific way that hunger and effort combined to make food taste like more than its ingredients. He ate without rushing, without distraction, the particular quiet comfort of a meal at the end of a series of days that had asked a great deal of him.
The clearing was calm.
The altar glowed.
The forest outside the clearing went about its rhythms.
He finished what he wanted.
Sat for a moment with the comfortable weight of a full stomach and a healed chest and the knowledge that there was only one more altar between him and whatever was at the center of this forest.
Then he looked at Luton.
