# PSYCHIC HARVEST

### Chapter 8: Ordinary Days

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The settlement's kitchen hall smelled like something Ethan still hadn't fully identified after three months — sweet, faintly smoky, some Ashgate spice blend the cooks used on everything that could hold it. He'd come to associate the smell with safety more than food, which said something about how thoroughly this place had rearranged his instincts without him noticing it happen.

"You're doing the thing again," said a voice at his elbow, cheerful and entirely too observant for someone he'd known less than a minute.

Ethan turned to find a young woman balancing a tray one-handed, dark curls escaping a loose braid, watching him with open, undisguised interest. No Bleed yet, he noted automatically — new enough, or unlinked entirely.

"What thing?"

"The staring-at-nothing thing. Very intense. Very broody." She set her tray down across from his without waiting to be invited, dropping into the seat with the easy confidence of someone who'd never once worried about overstaying a welcome. "I'm Mira. You're the poison-type guy. Heard you've got a way with Vareth."

"That's a generous way of putting it."

"It means you're interesting, which is rarer than you'd think around here." Mira stole a piece of bread off his plate without asking, entirely unbothered by his look. "You've had a busy few months, from what I hear."

Ethan set his fork down.

"I'm twenty-six."

Mira blinked, genuinely startled for half a second before recovering into a grin. "Huh. Okay. You've got a baby face, that's a crime against accurate first impressions, not my fault." She pointed the stolen bread at him for emphasis. "Noted, though. Twenty-six. I'll try to remember that the next three times I forget."

"You say that like it's already a pattern."

"It's absolutely already a pattern." She said it without a trace of shame, popping the bread into her mouth. "You've got a face that reads younger than you are and a personality that reads about forty. It's a confusing combination. People are going to keep getting it wrong. I'd just start correcting everyone on principle if I were you — eventually it sticks."

Ethan found himself almost smiling despite the mild indignity of the whole exchange. There was something disarming about how little effort Mira put into performing anything — no careful reading of him the way Reyes did, no evaluating weight behind her attention like Okoro's. Just straightforward, unguarded curiosity, entirely comfortable existing exactly as she was.

"You're very forward," he said.

"I'm efficient," Mira corrected. "Life's short here. Shorter than it used to be, back home. I don't see the point wasting it being subtle about things." She said it lightly, but something honest sat underneath it — the kind of hard-earned philosophy this world seemed to hand out to everyone eventually, one way or another.

Mura, dozing in the crook of Ethan's arm, chose that moment to wake, blinking up at the new voice with open curiosity of his own.

"Oh, he's *adorable,*" Mira said, delighted, reaching out slowly to let Mura sniff her fingers before scratching behind one ear with practiced gentleness. "This is the terrifying poison monster everyone keeps talking about? This little guy?"

"He's more dangerous than he looks."

"Aren't we all." Mira grinned at him, unbothered, entirely at ease. "I like him. I like you too, honestly, though you clearly have zero idea what to do with that information, so I'll go easy on you today."

Ethan opened his mouth to respond to that and found, for once, that he genuinely didn't have anything ready.

Mira just laughed, delighted at having stumped him, and stole another piece of his bread.

---

He saw Naomi on his way back from the kitchen hall, standing near the well with her back half-turned, watching the settlement's evening routine settle in around her the way she always seemed to — present, but somehow apart from it, like weather observing a landscape instead of living in it.

He hadn't meant to slow down. He noticed himself doing it anyway.

Her eyes found his before he'd decided whether to look away, and for one long, suspended moment, neither of them did anything at all — no nod, no word, just the strange, wordless weight of being seen by someone whose attention clearly cost more than most people's did.

Then she turned back toward the well, unhurried, as if the moment hadn't happened, and Ethan kept walking, feeling something in his chest he didn't have a good name for yet.

*She's paying attention,* he thought, filing it away with the same careful precision he filed everything. *More than her reputation says she should.*

He didn't know what to do with that observation. He wasn't sure, yet, that he was supposed to do anything with it at all.

---

Dallin found him near the training yard an hour later, tossing a whetstone idly between his hands with the restless energy of someone who'd rather be doing something than standing still.

"Heard you made a new friend," Dallin said, grinning. "Mira corners everyone eventually. Consider it a settlement rite of passage."

"She stole my bread."

"That's how you know she likes you." Dallin fell into step beside him as they crossed toward the yard, easy as always, though something in his posture today read a little more careful than usual — the same watchfulness Ethan had seen in him on the road three days ago, not fully gone yet. "Reyes wants a word, by the way. Training-yard business. Nothing urgent, or so she claims."

"You don't believe her?"

"Reyes always claims things are nothing urgent right up until they're extremely urgent. It's practically a personality trait." Dallin shrugged, easy again, some of the tension bleeding out of him. "You're doing fine, by the way. For someone who's only been at this three months, you've—"

"Twenty-six," Ethan said, without heat, more reflex now than irritation.

Dallin blinked, then laughed outright — genuine, surprised. "Noted. My mistake." He shook his head, still grinning. "You really don't look it, you know."

"So I've been told. Repeatedly. Today, specifically."

"Building a whole campaign against it, huh?"

"Someone has to," Ethan said, and felt, for just a moment, lighter than he had in days — three months into a world that had tried to kill him more than once, and somehow, impossibly, still finding room for bread theft and baby-face jokes and a woman by a well whose attention he couldn't stop thinking about.

Reyes was waiting at the yard's edge when they arrived, arms crossed, Rook curled nearby in a patch of late sun.

"Got a job for you," she said without preamble, the moment they were close enough. "Nothing dangerous. Nothing exciting, either, honestly. Voltbridge needs an escort for a supply caravan heading toward the eastern relay outpost — routine, low-risk, good pay." Her eyes flicked briefly to Dallin, something unreadable passing between them. "Sato wants to catch you after, if the timing works. Said he finally has a spare hour to go over your report properly instead of secondhand."

Ethan nodded, the request landing as ordinary as it was framed — not an audience, not a summons, just an overdue conversation finally finding a gap in someone's overfull schedule. "Any word on whether they found anything?"

"Nothing solid yet, from what I've heard. Still looking." Reyes shrugged, unbothered, the kind of shrug that came from having watched plenty of investigations take their time before. "That's Okoro's business more than mine. Sato'll tell you what he wants you to know."

Ethan felt Mura shift against his shoulder, small and warm and entirely unbothered by the conversation happening over his head.

"When do we leave?" Ethan asked.

"Dawn," Reyes said. "Get some sleep, kid."

Ethan opened his mouth.

"Don't," Reyes said, already walking away, though he could hear the smile in her voice even without seeing it. "I already know. Twenty-six. I'll try to remember."

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*End of Chapter 8*