It wasn't a still sort of life, not when the world seemed as poised to fall as it was, not when it seemed the whole of Skyrim expected him to hold the land together all on his own. But in between the journeys and errands there were homecomings, bright spots of color in a world of gray. Collapsing into Breezehome's creaky slat bed before dragging himself back out again had been a poor sort of relief, in comparison. Now there was ease, a true ease, and the new experience of lying rested in the early-morning dark and listening to his people wake up around him. The children's voices drifted up from below, high and thin, along with the very domestic scrape of chair legs on a floor…

He woke from dozing, startled to have fallen asleep again, to find Lucia trying and failing to set a tray at his bedside without making a peep. "I didn't mean to wake you—"

"You didn't," he assured her, and sat blinking at the strong light of late morning.

She handed over a cup of milk, still warm, and then a plate with a misshapen lump of sticky-looking dough. "I made you a sweetroll!"

He hesitated, looking at the thing. It resembled no sweetroll he'd ever seen, nor any other cake or pastry. "Did you."

"Yes!" she said, her whole face lit up with pride and expectation, and there seemed to be no decent thing to do but eat and try to smile. When she scampered off, he offered the remainder to the mudcrab lurking under the bed.

The mudcrab didn't want it.