"Friends do," Qebhet said, but her earnestness sounded soft and inadequate against the harsh, hard walls of his reality, a reality where young men fought and killed and died for a god of violence, where family was as likely to hold your head under the water as it was to pull you out. To talk of freely sharing water with all travellers, simply because it was right and just... she might as well be a evangelical doorknocker insisting that Jesus saves, for all the relevance it had to Kaden's world.
The world he knew – the gods he knew – were transactional, even when they didn't appear so at first. Gifts were never quite freely given, especially when they came from someone so much older and more powerful. People who said they wanted nothing in return were always lying.
Qebhet wanted nothing. But perhaps... if it were a transaction, with terms and boundaries, where each's contribution was understood... perhaps that might reassure him?
"What if..." What was it fair to ask for? Some small after-school jobs? "I need help with errands sometimes? Nothing to do with immortals. Just... shopping, tidying, sorting. Perhaps some help with my pets. I could pay you a fair rate. Then we would both be getting something."