...she stops coughing.

She looks at Ruava.

Her brother looks at Ruava.

"What was that?" she asks.

"Magic," she says.

"I've never seen magic that—bright."

Shrug.

"And it really worked? She's really cured?" demands Ryal.

"Yes."

"Okay," he says, and blinks a couple of times.

"Is there anything we can do for you?—I'm Rina, by the way," the sister introduces. "We could cook you lunch, and I'm actually pretty good with the loom when the cough doesn't interrupt me—"

"Thanks," she says, and glances at Kaede. "I don't know, do we want lunch?"

"Hmm, I guess we could eat?"

"Then sure."

So Rina starts busying herself with food preparation and bossing Ryal around, who makes a show of being unwilling and suffering but is clearly animated by the sudden disappearance of the looming spectre of his sister's inevitable death.

It's pretty great.

It is! Kaede offers to help with the food and is promptly driven away from the kitchen with a spoon.

"So do you just go around healing people?" asks Rina of Ruava and Kaede.

"Well - I realized I could just do that if I wanted to," she says. "So now I am."

"Well most other mages are so busy in the capitals or the city-states or wherever doing gods know what."

"There's probably things I could be doing that would be even more important than healing people, but... I want to be doing something that's at least this important," she says.

"For all I know they all believe they're doing things at least this important. For all I know, they're right."

She shrugs. "Maybe they are. I don't know. But for now, I can heal people and I want to so I am."

She beams. "You're a good one." Then turns to Kaede. "How about you?"

"What about me?"

"That's what I asked. Are you her helper? Or her 'friend'?"

"...I think the answer to that is 'yes.'"

The woman takes a second to decide that that's alright and then resumes foodmaking.

"...'Friend'?" she murmurs to Kaede.

"She was asking very politely whether we're having sex, basically," she murmurs back.

"Oh."

"There is not a lot of homophobia but there is some, especially in smaller towns and villages."

"Huh," she says thoughtfully.

"—where 'homophobia' means basically prejudice against people with same-sex attractions, not sure you managed to translate that, and most people wouldn't know the word here anyway."