Cole is in the grain loft, counting sacks that do not become more sacks by being counted.

You climb the ladder. Mira lets you speak first, then does not let you speak only.

“No hunt,” you say. “A gate in the fence. Dawn-watch fees. Elves as neighbors with rules, not as a fairy show. Voss can buy wool if he wants to buy something that grew here.”

Cole’s shoulders are a millstone. “If I say no to the horn in public, I look weak. Weak millers get worse terms.”

“If you say yes,” Mira says, “we look like the kind of village that sells the last true thing for a year of bread, and then has neither.”

Silence. Mice, probably, in the walls, doing their own ledgers.

Cole stares at a knothole as if it were a number. “I will listen at dusk, on the corridor, if the animal still uses it. I want to see what we would be taking. Or—if you need a crowd to make me brave—I will stand in the yard and let Elder Briar look at me, the old elf who remembers the deer-path road. I hate both options. That is how I know they are grown.”