Nobody offered me a healing potion; why would they? Even if they had the medicinal herbs, I wouldn't have the extra day's nutrition to use it.
And yes, part of it was that word about Dinas, whom I knew as Yengwa, more specifically about how I had bullied him or her, respectively, had spread through the camp. I was a pariah, the dangerous one, someone who could at any instant turn into a violent and deadly threat.
If the adults had believed that, they'd have put me to death; it might even have stuck with me that weak. Maybe.
But nobody moved to kill me. Nobody helped me or made way in the walkways between tents. Cruel and imaginative pranks were played, but nobody who pulled a knife on me intended to skin me.
So, progress.
Okay, I'm through the worst; I'm only paying one rent now, the credit cards that are going to close their accounts have mostly closed, and at no point was I actually starving.
Things are looking better, and yet I had to write depressing things for Rhishi. He's made a pretty large blunder in resetting his life, and he's not past paying the consequences of that. And I'll admit it, I spent WAY longer than I should have figuring out how he was going to survive the coming battle.
Battles. Plural.
As always, thank you for your readership. It means more to me than finding an earthworm under a rock. I can't swear to more than a chapter or two a week, but life is back to stable enough that I can write again.