The hut was simple and clean, its doorway cut square against the blinding brightness. Tlacael stepped from its shade like a figure carved from the land itself. Broad-shouldered, dark-haired, quiet-eyed, he regarded the arriving party with steady calm.
Jimena felt the pull of old habits—lower the gaze, take up less space—but she lifted her chin instead. The officer delivered his orders and left a cloud of dust behind. Two people remained, strangers neither had chosen, with a day full of heat and a future full of question.
“I know,” Jimena answered, surprised by the steadiness in her tone. “My family sent me because they did not know what else to do with me. Perhaps we are both here against our first wishes. But we are here.”
Something eased, almost imperceptibly, between them. They would not pretend. They would begin with truth.
Inside, Jimena found shelves lined with jars and bundles of drying plants. Chamomile. Willow. Comfrey. Names her grandmother had whispered over her shoulder in a garden that smelled of orange blossom. Her hands moved by memory, sorting, tying, labeling in neat script. When Tlacael returned and saw her work, his attention sharpened.
“You know these.”
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