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She sat there, in the middle of the desert, looking at the woman on the other side of the fire. She still had no idea why the woman invited her. Or what was her name for that matter. But the promise of a fire and a warm meal was too much to pass on, even considering the risks. She was too hungry and too cold and, frankly, she missed human contact too much. Nina couldn’t remember the last time she talked with someone, probably a few weeks ago. She’s always considered herself a loner, but apparently, even she needed to have a conversation once in a while.
The woman moved to pour the soup in two bowls and gave one to her. It was so hot it was almost scalding, but Nina wolfed it down anyway. She never would have thought that a simple vegetable soup would make her so happy, but god was it good to finally eat something warm (and something she didn’t have to prepare herself).
They ate in a tense but still quite companionable salience when the woman finally spoke for the first time since inviting her.
“Why are you traveling here, alone? It’s not exactly a safe place for a lonely traveler and definitely not for such a young one.”
“Why did you invite me?”. Yeah, so answering questions wasn’t her strong suit, sue her. But she couldn’t answer that one anyway, so at least maybe she could get an answer for her own question. The woman tried to look calm and was still smiling, but Nina could see her shoulders tensing just enough to know that she won’t get an honest answer for this one.
“I saw a young girl traveling alone in the middle of the night, so I decided to, ah, help her out”. Yeah, help out my ass. She still didn’t know what the woman wanted from her and now that she wasn’t so hungry anymore the alarm bells started ringing somewhere in her mind. Actually, why was the woman alone here at night if it was so dangerous? Yeah, maybe she was older than Nina, but not by that much, so their situation was quite similar. Something was wrong.
Just when she was about to get up and find some excuse to get away, the fire went out.