“It’s validation,” said Church.

Dahlia frowned. “Of what?”

“Of himself,” he said as they began climbing a steep hill. He moved well for his age, but she could see that he moved with care. “Neeko hasn’t received a lot of support in his life; he was never properly nurtured. Abusive homes are like that. He was told that he was worthless so often by the authority figures in his life that he came to accept that as an inarguable truth.” Church took hold of a sturdy maple sapling and used it to pull himself up onto flat ground. “You started that process, Dahlia. You trusted him as a scout and praised him for the things he did right.”

She scrambled up after him, only slightly winded from the climb. Beneath her extra pounds was a lot of useful muscle. The weapons and tools she wore were all in padded holsters or sheaths, and Church had taught her how to move through the woods without making noise or leaving sign of her passage. She felt a little like a girl version of the ranger, Strider, from The Fellowship of the Ring.

“I was hard on Neeko when he screwed up, though,” she said.

Church shook his head. “From what he said, you corrected him pretty sternly, but there’s nothing wrong with that. You needed him to be safe and you wanted his intel to be accurate. That’s discipline, not abuse.”

She started to argue, but let it go. She never won those kinds of arguments with the old man. They moved deeper into the woods. Old oaks and sycamores rose high above them and the air was filled with bees and butterflies. Clouds hid the sun and cast the forest in a softness of gray-brown shadows.

“Neeko will continue to mature and grow stronger,” Church said after a moment. “I have high hopes for him.”

“He deserves to survive,” she said, and was surprised at her own words.

Church turned to her. “Most people deserve to survive,” he said. “More importantly, most people deserve some measure of enduring happiness. Even now. Even after all of this.”

Dahlia studied him for a long while. “You don’t look happy.”

Church turned away. “I said that most people deserve happiness. Not everyone.”

She asked him what that meant, but he didn’t answer. Instead they walked for nearly an hour though the forest. Finally, he checked the angle of the sun and told her to continue the patrol while he went back to camp to give another lesson to the some of the newer recruits.