People greeted him with warmth that felt real, gratitude that asked for nothing in return.

Sals has just walked back through the city gates. The victories have become routine. The rituals repeat. And yet the people who meet him are not performing. Their warmth is genuine. Their gratitude carries no weight, no condition, no request. Children run to keep pace with him. Elders simply acknowledge. None of it is demanded or arranged. It arrives freely, the way some things do when we are not looking for them. He receives it with courtesy. He does not turn it away. But something in him stays quiet, unable to meet it fully. There is a distance between how others hold us and how we hold ourselves. Sometimes people see something real in us before we can. They respond to a presence we have not yet named. You may know this feeling. Someone offers you something honest, and you accept it politely while remaining somewhere else entirely. It does not mean the warmth is wrong. It may simply be arriving ahead of you. What would it take for you to believe what others seem to already know about you?