"Glad you had time to talk to them. No secret cord suppliers, huh? Makes sense." Chop chop goes the fish. "What do you think of roast turnip with this?"

"Sounds lovely. Chopped, y'think? And how many?" She steps over to Veggie Storage and examines to see which container holds turnips.

The turnips aren't hard to find.

"I'm thinking sliced into disks, so pick two of the smaller ones, the big ones are too big for that."

There are indeed a couple of turnips in there whose middles would render into disks big enough to threaten conquest of a dinner plate. The ones on the smaller end of the size range are much more reasonable.

"Oh yeah. Those big ones would just dominate the plate." Two smaller turnips, smoothly rendered to discs.

While she slices, she looks over at Lily with a soft smile. "Ran into Torok at Palla's, by the way."

"Oh? How's he doing?"

She sighs softly, a bittersweet smile crossing her face. "He's okay. Not failing to take care of himself physically in any meaningful respect, at least. Just emotionally. Tried to hug a bit more self-care into him. We'll see if I succeeded."

"Huh. Not quite what I expected," she muses. "Though it's not a surprise he's having a rough time."

She nods. "Not surprising, but particularly good, either. It's not like his suffering can bring the witch back at this point. What good is more pain?"

Lily shrugs slightly. "He's hurt because his friends don't trust him, and his friends don't trust him because he's a killer. It's not fun and games, me deciding he's not welcome on my land anymore. It's my own safety I'm looking after. Who's to say he wouldn't lose his temper with me next time, or with another guest? I won't have him here until I'm satisfied I won't regret it."

"And the worst part is I can't say you're wrong." She shakes her head and sighs. "It's not your fault no one here is prepared to make a situation he's in safe. It's just another piece of suffering in the world that I can't fix until I get a whole lot stronger."

"If you want to take him under your wing, feel free. My best guess is he won't go after a friend. I'm just... not confident enough to invite him onto my farm again."

"That's the idea. We just can't really do much for him other than hug him and be his friends until we've got more options at our disposal. Ruby accidentally outed us to him as plural, he took it well, and then we got to talking about comparative magic levels in worlds. He got so concerned that we might not have the the same kind of soul people in his world have, which can protect them against death from accidents or fights. He basically ordered us to stay by the lakeshore until Hazel could figure it out for sure."

She giggles and shakes her head. "He cares about people. Got very concerned and protective. I'm planning to take him with us to Hazel's for testing in a few days (we tempted them into wanting to see how our soul works as a plural system), both as a comparison point for whether we have the ability he has, and because now I'm wondering whether anyone here normally has that ability either. That might honestly explain everything."

She blinks, trying to pick her way through this. "...sorry, which ability?"

"Oh, sorry. So people on his world apparently can hang on when they would have died — like from an accident or a blow to the head — with some weird thing their souls can do. No one on our world has any means to detect souls, nor has behavior like that ever been seen before. And now I'm wondering if it happens here, either. Is he just in a world where lives are suddenly a lot more fragile than he's ever experienced before?"

"—no. That's the normal way that souls work. That's..." She shakes her head slightly. "That's what being a murderer is. Someone who's chosen to kill and seen it through. That's why it matters so much. You can kill imps by accident, you can kill fish or animals with barely a thought, but someone who's killed a person has wanted that person dead, and fought them soul to soul to make it happen, and won."

"Oh, fun. So it's our old world that's the weird one. Protections like that don't exist where we came from at all."

Her head rocks back slightly in shock, and it takes her a moment to respond.

"...I can see why he'd be worried about you! I'm sure Hazel has some clever way to figure out if you've got a soul or not, but—I wouldn't recommend you leave the lakeshore either, until you find out. A person without a soul..." She shakes her head in disturbed amazement. "No one would know, and if you tried to tell them they'd think you were some strange new kind of demon. Someone could try to rob you and end up killing you by mistake."

"Well. That certainly adds a bit of delay to our plans. Our world had nothing like that at all. People could die just from falling out a second storey window and landing on their heads, where we came from. Okay, guess we're staying put until we know more."

She sighs.

"I can't imagine it," says Lily. "A world with no souls. People just dying when they get hurt. It sounds—tragic. Terrible."

There's a harsh, clipped sigh. Her voice comes out a bit tighter, now, a bit sharper. "Our old world is one of people huddling together and coping terribly amidst a millennia-long ongoing tragedy, yes. We're well shut of it, though Sable will likely try to find some way to spread this kind of soul protection there if we ever find a way back."

She shakes her head. "Even if we do, we're staying in this world, though. Not giving up magic just to go back to a home we only tolerated at best."

"Well. I wish you the best of luck," she says. The fish is pretty well disassembled by this point; she turns her attention to frying it.

The turnips are quite sliced as well. "Where do you want these?", she asks, gesturing to them. "And... sorry for being a bit sharp. I don't like reminiscing about what a wreck that world was, and I run rather snarky to begin with. I'm Hailey."

"I don't mind. Good to meet you, Hailey. Let's see..."

She gets out a flat metal sheet to roast the turnips on, and passes it to Hailey to fill, along with a small dish of salt. "Try to get them pretty flat and even, it's all right if they overlap a little, and then sprinkle a pinch or two of salt on top."

She arranges them evenly. It takes a moment, then they all rest flat. A couple light pinches of salt sprinkled across the lot, and then they're ready to go in.

Gradually, the process of cooking puts a small smile on her face.

Lily echoes the smile as she takes the tray to get it in the oven.

"If you want to make our lives a little easier tomorrow, you could grab the big pot out of that cupboard," she nods indicatively, "and get the extra fish in there, maybe with some carrots chopped into big chunks and a couple of onions likewise. Then we can fill it with water and start it on the stove, and have a nice fish stew for tomorrow's breakfast."