Page 34 of The Orc’s Comfort

I’m still angry about being managed. I meant what I said about that. But I understand, sitting here with the paper in front of me and the recipe on the counter and my hair up in carved bone worn smooth by his grandmother’s hands, that the meals themselves were never the wrong part.

A heavy knock at the door.

I don’t even need to ask.

“Grulk,” I call. “It’s open.”

He comes in with his toolbox, noticeably subdued. His gaze moves around the condo: the research spread on the table, the recipe on the counter, my hair, then finally me. He’s reading the room with more subtlety than he usually bothers with.

“The bookcase,” he says, gesturing at it. “HammerFall follow-up inspection.”

“The bookcase is fine, Grulk.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “It is.” He sits down anyway after gently setting the toolbox on the floor. “Rhazgar said you finally had the conversation.”

“Okay.”

Grulk glances at the recipe on the counter for a moment. “He gave you the hair comb,” he says, mostly to himself. Something in his expression shifts, that particular HammerFall sentimentality he usually buries under noise. “I didn’t think he would. I hoped, but doubted it.”

“Tell me about her,” I say. “What you know.”

He looks at me for a moment, as if deciding something. Then he leans back in the chair.

He talks for a while. Not about courtship traditions, not about WarmHearth clan protocol. About a woman who smelled like herbs even in her sleep, who taught a young orc to cook not because it was duty but because she believed food was how you said the things that wouldn’t fit in words. Who spent her last two years on Earth teaching Rhazgar everything she knew, faster than was comfortable, because she understood something about her own health that she didn’t share with him until near the end.

“She was making sure he knew everything before she was gone. Deliberately. He’s always thought he ended up carrying those traditions because everyone else was gone. If he understood that she chose him on purpose, with complete confidence, it might feel less like chance and more like a gift.”

I sit with that for a moment.

I’m still angry. That hasn’t changed. But all these years, Rhazgar has believed he was carrying grief when what his grandmother left him was trust.

No one has ever told him.

Grulk said she believed food was how you said the things that wouldn’t fit in words.

I have something to say to Rhazgar that won’t fit in words.

I think about the recipe on the counter. Twelve ingredients I’ll have to source. Instructions in two languages, one of which I can’t read. A dish I’ve never made, written down for the first time by a man who never wrote it down before, given to someone who made pasta from a jar last night and called it dinner.

I have spent years keeping careful distance from things I couldn’t footnote. This is me stepping across my own line, armed with a recipe I barely understand and no guarantee of anything. It is going to be a disaster. I’m going to make it anyway.

I look at the recipe on the counter.

“I’m going to cook for him tonight,” I say. “His grandmother’s recipe. For him.”

Grulk is quiet for a moment. Then, “You understand what that means.”

“Yes.”

“In our tradition—”

“I know what it means, Grulk.”

He looks at me for a long moment. Then he stands and picks up his toolbox.

“The bookcase looks good,” he says. “Very secure. Excellent work.” He heads for the door, pauses. “He’s been alone for a long time.”

“I know.”