Wind by Naomi kritzer(16)

Zimeya shrugged. She could, with a great deal of care and no small amount of pain, hobble now for a short distance using a stout stick. Dagmar had found her some additional cast-off clothes to wear. Zimeya was not a large woman, so several women with grown daughters had outgrown items they were happy to give Dagmar, since most of them owed her fees they were never going to pay, and giving her something they no longer needed made them feel a bit less guilty about it.

“I expect to be here some months yet,” Zimeya said, “if you will have me.”
“You’re welcome to stay,” Dagmar said. She’d become fond of Zimeya, who was pleasant company. She had not opened her heart to Zimeya as she had, decades ago, to Gytha, but that was not terribly surprising; she wasn’t sure she even remembered how.
Zimeya’s strength was returning, even though she couldn’t stand for long; she could sit at the kitchen table and help peel vegetables and slice them for stew, and one day Dagmar returned home from stitching up a gashed arm to find that Zimeya had unearthed her overflowing basket of mending and was fixing a ripped hem.