"No," she tells him, before relenting and adding, "If you want to get a knife, you can help me cut the fruit I'm going to sing."

She knows he isn't human, and has every right to take her up on the invitation she made. But his obvious pride grates on her. It makes her want to yell, or stab him with the knife she has with her already for the purpose of carving fruit. She feels like she'll be crushed under the weight of it.

Because inside her is still the last vestige of a lonely girl, hungry for love and approval. And some days that loneliness aches worse than others, and it terrifies her to think of the risks it might drive her to take. The only part of that girl that feels safe to hold onto is her rage.

I don't mind if you come. Warren's here, at least for awhile, and he can be more irritating because he's my warden.

[Lark's approval doesn't grate on her quite as badly as Warren's does, but it's still a prickle of discomfort. She hates wanting anyone's approval. She knows where that led her before.]

"Music, mostly." That's the best offering by far. "But sometimes sailors' wives leave bread for me."

She sends them home with bones or pearls in their pockets, and they keep coming back to leave offerings. It's a cruel shadow of the acclaim she wanted as a naive and ambitious girl, and sometimes the pretty fish-shaped loaves taste like ash in her mouth. Ulla isn't someone who should ever have had a shrine built to her.

"Thank you. I'm Ulla. Would you like some fruit, or fish?"

Aren't they?

I'm not saying I've never had ambitions. And I know my own talents well enough to be proud of them. But even if I'm a talented musician, I know how to appreciate other people's music.

Who wants to listen to someone with nothing more interesting to say than boasts about their own superiority?

So did I. I'd grown accustomed to not hearing it here, but I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.