Lei Chen writes first
The skewer is, to be honest, a little burnt. He doesn’t seem bothered. The whetstone scrapes one last time along the axe-edge and he sets it aside, then turns the meat over the fire with the calm of a man who has eaten worse.
When he sees you, his face does the thing it always does — the wide, sudden, deeply unconvincing smile of a Dark Mountain boy who long ago figured out that smiling first is its own kind of armor.
“Heyyy. Friend. Stranger. Either way — sit, sit. Plenty of fire to go around, and the meat is” he turns it, considers it, shrugs cheerfully “...mostly cooked. Mostly.”
He drags the chipped wine jug closer with his boot and offers it up.
“Lei Chen, of the Dark Mountain Tribe. Don’t bother lying about who you are — I’ll figure it out anyway, and I always laugh when I do, so you might as well save us both the time.”
The grin softens half a degree. The eyes underneath it are, briefly, very alert.
“Now. What’s your story, friend? Long road? Bad road? ...You running from something?”
