Soup Time!

My appreciative revelry was interrupted by Solmina slamming down two rough wooden bowls, each filled to the brim with soup. "There you go." she announced, "Eat it while it´s hot, go on!" before digging in herself. I noticed that she didn´t begin the meal with a prayer, unlike the people of the towns down below, which was something of a relief. There are few things more off-putting than a roomful of wall-eyed northerners mumbling their prayers to a vengeful, foreign god over bowls of greyish, rapidly-cooling oat-glop.

Solmina ate without the slightest trace of decorum, noisily slurping down spoonfuls of hot soup, following it up by scarfing down large bites of black, homemade bread. There was something endearing about it, like watching a child or a squirrel eat, completely unaware of the myriads of pointless rules and bylaws of ettiquette, that make dining in company of the refined and perfumed young ladies of the free island cities down south such a nerve-wracking test of skill and memorization. It was actually quite thrilling to see a girl eat in such an unladylike manner, and it brought an unwitting smile to my tired face.

Not wanting to stare, I turned my eyes to the contents of the bowl. It looked good, a simple, yet rich stew of roots, herbs and smoked meat, thickened with spelt. It smelled good too. It had been a good long while since I had last eaten something this substantial and it´d probably be a good long while before I got to enjoy it again. Hunger and appetite set my mouth a-watering and my stomach grubled in anticipation.

Still, something, somehow and in some unnamable way seemed off. Some long-buried, pre-human spark of instict or intuition at the base of my skull stirred. I caught the young witch shooting me a strange glance from across the table. Was it fear I saw? Worry? Or something else?

Or, it could be that I had just spent the last month or so, trapped by solitude, wilderness and the twisting, crawling menace of the ruins of Eridu within my own mind. Such isolation can make a man paranoid, even a skilled Mage-Errant like myself. Any man would need some time getting used to company again, and come to think of it any young woman living by herself would be made nervous by a strange, swarthy man begging for a room to stay the night.

It was probably nothing. Or not...

I took a spoonful of soup.