Iratus woke with straw in his mouth.
Not metaphorical straw — real, dry, itchy strands stuck to his lips like the farm had tried to eat him back in his sleep. He spat it out and rolled onto his back, blinking at the low wooden ceiling of the loft.
For half a second, his brain tried to scream wrong place.
Then the ache in his arms reminded him that yesterday hadn't been a dream.
"Iratus!" his father's voice came from below. "You plan to starve with the cows or eat like a human today?"
The smell reached him before he answered — boiled grain, warm bread, something faintly sweet that his old world would've called pathetic and his stomach called salvation.
"I'm coming," he said, surprised at how naturally the words formed.
He climbed down the ladder, feet finding grooves carved by generations that had never worried about office chairs or online forms. Hendrik was already at the table, tearing bread in half with hands that didn't need knives.
"You sleep like a rock," his father said. "Didn't even hear the hens riot this morning."
Iratus sat down, still half afraid the chair would vanish if he trusted it.
A wooden bowl slid in front of him. Porridge thick enough to fight back. Milk still warm from something that had eyes.
He ate.
Not because he was hungry — because hunger had been a language he forgot he knew.
They chewed in silence for a while. Not awkward silence. The kind that didn't need defending.
"Fields after this," Hendrik said. "No falling into wells today."
Iratus nodded.
And for the first time since dying on a rooftop, the day ahead didn't look like something he needed to escape.