The fields didn't care who you are, were, or will be.

  That was something that Milos had come to appreciate about them - the long furrows of dark, rich soil that ran the length of his back field, patient and indifferent, demanding the same thing from every and any man or woman who knelt beside them.

  Water.

  Weeding.

  Time.

  It didn't matter if your hands had once held a shield against dragonsfire, or if they'd wielded a greatsword with the fury of the divine. The fields didn't mind who tended to their delicate harvest - just so long as whoever's hand graced its bounty did so with care and affection. The plants may not have spoken, but they surely paid attention. And the fields did not judge prematurely; for they always needed tending.

  He worked in the early quiet, before the village fully woke, when the only sounds were the creak of his knees against the dirt and the distant complaint of a stray rooster down the lane. The morning air always seemed to differ, but in that, Milos found a soft appreciation for each new day. Today, it was clean and sharp, with just enough chill to make the work feel honest and true. If there was ever a description of early autumn, this was it.

  His hands were large, scarred across the knuckles in ways that had nothing to do with the farming at hand. But they moved gently here, with a care that only came from practice and purpose. His mother had always said that one could tell a man's character by how he handled the things that couldn't fight back.

  By the time the sun had cleared the tree line to the east, he had finished two full rows and started on a third. He sat back on his heels for a moment, one hand pressed briefly to his ribs - a habit, unconsciously born, similar to the way a man might check his pocket for something he no longer carried - and looked out over the field with quiet reverence.

  The valley that cradled Ashford Crossing was ordinary as ordinary could be, as only the way that truly good places could be. To the north, the Greyveil Mountains rose against the sky challenging, grey-shouldered and permanent. The way the peaks seemed to threaten the clouds never ceased to amaze Milos - even after he'd traversed those rocky peaks. To the south, the Ashwood began where the pastures ended, its canopy just beginning to rust with the season's turning. Between them, the village sat at its crossroads, yet minded its own business as it always had, and likely, always would.

  Milos took a moment to breathe in and then breathe out.

  The cold air caught somewhere in the middle of his chest. It always seemed to cause him a stutter this time of year, as if the chilled breath didn't quite want to leave his body. He hesitated; waiting in a way that had developed after patience and long practice. A moment passed. Then two. Then, the breath seemed to tumble out with a gentle, covered cough, and he went back to weeding, none the bothered.

  By mid-morning, the pie had become a problem, not the fields nor his breathing.

  He'd promised his sister Talla that he would make it - a harvest apple, her eldest boy's favorite - and he had said it the way he said most things: plainly and without ceremony. As though it were simply a thing that would now happen. Despite his quiet bravado, he had not fully accounted for the fact that his hands, which had tended to pies many times before, did not naturally produce what most people would call a crust.

  He stood at the kitchen table and regarded the situation with the same furrowed brow he'd had since he was a kid.

  The dough had been rolled. The part, at least, had gone fine. What had not gone fine was everything after. The edges were uneven in a way that suggested the dough had opinions of where it wanted to go outside his control. One side was thicker than a heel of bread. The other had developed a tear that he'd tried to press closed... which had thus produced a seam that Talla would almost certainly have something to say about.

  "It'll taste the same," he said to no one.

  He folded it into the dish anyways, working carefully, and spooned in the apple that he'd sliced from his morning routine. Then, he added some cinnamon, sugar, and a little nutmeg that he'd sneakily acquired during the last trader's pass through. He crimped the top edge with his thumb, which produced a border that looked less like a pastry and more like a fortification. It was functional and sturdy - not quite pretty or appealing.

  With a heavy shrug, he slid it into the oven and stood up straight, which took a half-second longer than it used to.

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  Outside, the village was awake now. He could hear it - the ring of the blacksmith's hammer from two streets over, the faint metallic smell that seemed to drift from their shop in the early morning when the forge was first fired. The call of the market woman setting out her stall at the peak of the crossroads was distant, but recognizable as well, while the sound of children chasing something through the lanes with the specific urgency that only children could have rang through the open windows of his small house. Through the kitchen window, he watched as old Persim from the mill trundled past with his cart.

  And, like clockwork, Persim raised a hand without looking up, the way you did for someone you'd known long enough that greeting required no extra particular effort.

  Milos raised a hand back and turned back to his pie, his spirits a bit higher as routine fell into place.

  He spent the better part of the afternoon doing what the village quietly expected of him without ever quite asking.

  With the pie in the windowsill - a habit he'd developed but had no idea what purpose it even served - he wandered the village, greeting the denizens that had lived longer than he had, but welcomed him back with arms wide open years ago.

  He stopped by Widow Calver's gate, which had been listing since the spring, and which her son kept meaning to fix on visits that seemed to grow further apart each year. With the strength of a man as big as he was, he grasped the wood and pulled, using his foot to kick some loose dirt into the gaping slice of land that the gate's post had slowly been carving with time. Once leaning, the post now stood proudly erect once more - and Calver might not notice, but it didn't matter.

  At one point, he stopped by the miller's cottage, grabbing the extra sacks of grain that sat at the door, while the apprentice - a lean, young boy by the name of Harlem - struggled to lift the one.

  "Havin' issues?" Milos asked kindly.

  Harlem barely had the air in his lungs to respond, his face an impressive shade of red. "Y-yes!"

  No more was required; Milos hoisted two bags up - one balanced on each of his broad shoulders - and even lifted the third bag in Harlem's slipping grip, to allow the boy a chance to readjust. He heaved a few lungfuls of oxygen, before nodding in tired appreciation, re-accepting the bag with a far improved stance. Then, they together moved the bags to the nearby cart, Harlem's profound thanks falling on deaf ears and a kind smile.

  He even stopped by the edges of Morran's farm, having recalled that the young Lucy Morran - the inheritor of her recently retired parent's farmland - had seen 'something' lurking on the outskirts at night. Probably a mountain fox, but nothing dangerous as Lucy fretted. Still, it didn't hurt to make sure the perimeter was intact so she might hopefully sleep a little better.

  None of it was heroic - but all of it needed doing.

  As he walked, people greeted him with the same warmth you greeted someone with who had always been there, and whom you expected would always be there.

  "Mornin' Milos. Cold one today, huh?"

  "Hey, Milos! You hear about the merchant caravan? Held up past Ashwood, from the sounds of it! Hopefully they're alright..."

  "Hey, hey! Milos! Talla's boy is getting tall, ain't he?! By the way, are you coming to the harvest supper on Seventhday?"

  He answered each of them in the same unhurried way. G'morning; yes, it is cold. I hope you and your family stay warm. No, I haven't heard; I hope they're okay, too. Yes, he is. He's growing fast.

  He'd be there.

  If they knew anything of who he had been - and some of the older folks did, one could see it in the way they looked at him, a flicker of something akin to dawning realization - they did not make a show of it otherwise. That was one of the things that he'd come to love the most about Ashford Crossing. It was not a town that made a show of things.

  He was just Milos, here.

  Son of Aren, the stonemason, who had died three winters back with his boots off and his family around him - the best death a man could ask for. Brother to Talla, and Peer, and young Davi, who was not so young anymore. Uncle to more children than he could keep track of without a written record. Thankfully, Talla kept him updated with pointed regularity.

  He was just Milos. That was enough. That was, on most days, exactly enough.

  The pie was, against reasonable expectation, a success.

  Talla served it after supper, with the slight suspicious expression of a woman who had expected to have to say something diplomatic. But when she tasted it, her expression shifted into something far more genuine. Her boy, Cayden - eight years old, gap-toothed, already showing the early signs of the Aricson family stubbornness - had two slices and was already asking if there was more before Milos managed to finish his first.

  "There is not," Milos told him, "because someone ate half of it before supper."

  Cayden looked at his mother. His mother looked anywhere except Cayden.

  Milos cleared the table with the smallest of satisfied smiles while they argued about it in the comfortable way of families who argued about everything and meant nothing by it did. He stood at the washbasin, listening to the carefree sounds of accusation fill the kitchen behind him, while outside, the first stars began to peek through the rapidly approaching dusk, atop the warring peaks of the mountains and the clouds.

  Yet his hands moved through the warm water, unhurried.

  His knuckles ached a little, the way they always did when the temperature dropped. He didn't stop to think about it. It was just weather in his bones now; the kind of thing that was simply part of a day, like the rows in the morning, and the gate that needed adjustment, and the pie that turned out better than it had any right to.

  He dried his hands, like any other day.

  From the kitchen, Cayden's pointed accusations had morphed into untamed laughter at something that Talla had said, the bright, uncomplicated laugh of a child with no understanding yet of how quickly a day could change. Milos listened to it for a moment, relishing in the tranquility of it all.

  Then he hung up the cloth and went to join them.

  He slept well that night, which was not always the case.

  He did not dream of fire.