He sat inside and ate his dinner while she did her sewing.

After he was done, he bid her goodnight and went upstairs, to his old room, and laid down, on his old bed, and stared at his ceiling, and cried again.

Because it was not fair.

He would wake up, at any moment now, and his mother would be dead again, and his master would be dead again, and the village would be barely rebuilt from the ashes the demon army had left behind.

He would wake up and Mariposa would smile gently at him and ask if he'd had a bad dream.

And he'd have to tell her he didn't.

That it was a good dream.