They ate. The food was good—the taste in the mouth, the feel in the belly. Some was the way it would be anyway, but some… some was from this day, this time, this doing. Kalesh could not quite say it in his mind in a way that made sense, but he knew. He chewed slowly, tasting every bite, enjoying every morsel, from the feel against his teeth to the juice that came, to the flavor on his tongue, even the way the food went down. Never before had it been like this, a meal without worry, without fear, without wondering if someone would take it or what they would do to him. He sat and chewed now, and he was himself and did not fear.
He had women, too, and that was good, even merely the knowing of it. They looked at him, sometimes openly and sometimes not, but they did not have to say what they f
