The elder came to them while the dust was still settling.
She was old, small and slightly bent at the shoulder, with hands that had done decades of real work and a face that had processed a great deal of life and arrived at a kind of permanent, unshockable steadiness.
She walked across the ruined market space with a carved wooden cane and in no particular hurry, stepping around the debris without looking at it, her eyes on the three of them the entire way.
She stopped in front of Lucius.
She looked up at him, looked at the fallen alpha behind him. Looked at the destroyed stalls and the cracked well and the buildings that had taken damage they hadn't had before the morning started.
Then she looked back at him.
"You saved us," she said. Her voice was the voice of someone who had been speaking plainly their entire life and saw no reason to change the habit now. "We're really grateful for all you have done, but we have nothing to repay you with."
