Free Down a Lost Road by J. Leigh Bralick

standing
there, watching me. I met his gaze, trying not to look skeptical.
He lifted both hands, bowl and all, in an annoyed shrug.
    “ What?”
    I bent my head to hide my wicked grin. But
the more I tried to stifle it, the more it wanted to surface.
Finally I dissolved into laughter, the image of him stabbing
fiercely at the gruel popping into my mind every time I had almost
managed to sober up. I risked a peek at his face and found him
scowling at me.
    “ I’m sorry,” I gasped,
cracking up again. “It’s just…it’s…”
    He turned away suddenly. A little pain
touched my heart, and I tried to be serious. I hadn’t meant to hurt
his feelings… Yatol wouldn’t really get that upset about something
so silly, would he? He covered a face with one hand, shoulders
shaking. Laughing. After a moment he turned back to me,
stern-faced, and pointed his bowl at me.
    “ No comments. At least I
can make—” He paused, examining the gruel and sniffing it
experimentally. “Something…edible.”
    I grinned at him, and then the most amazing
thing happened. He actually grinned back. A tingling rush of
vertigo swept over me, and I dropped my gaze. For a second I even
forgot that I was hungry. Of course, one glance back into the bowl
and I wondered if I still was. Yatol had already set to eating his
breakfast, and I really didn’t want to make him feel bad, so I
tried a bite. It actually wasn’t terrible, despite its interesting texture. Could have used some milk and brown
sugar, but at least it was “edible” as Yatol called it, and
surprisingly filling.
    When I finished I got painfully to my feet
and hobbled over to him, handing him the bowl with an apologetic
smile.
    “ Didn’t die yet, I see,” he
remarked, straight-faced.
    “ Not yet,” I said. “It
wasn’t half bad. Thanks.”
    The corner of his mouth quirked in a smile
and he got suddenly to his feet, kicking sand over the fire. I
flinched, expecting darkness, but a dusky light filtered in from
the mouth of the cave. I hadn’t realized it was that close to
morning. Of course, now that I thought about it, Yatol had just given me breakfast. I turned away abruptly to hide a blush and
a smile – he tried to make me breakfast in bed .
    Yatol scoured the two bowls with sand –
apparently that made them clean – and stacked them by the pots and
jars. Dishes taken care of, he went to the back of the cave, where
a broad wooden chest languished against the wall, sand-strewn and
moldering with disuse. I hadn’t even noticed it before. What else
didn’t I know about this place? I’d thought at first that it was
just some natural cave, but apparently it was a well-provisioned
hideout of some sort. Interesting.
    As Yatol shoved back the lid I wandered
over, curious to see what it held. To my surprise, its contents
were perfectly preserved, almost as though they had just been
stored. Yatol pulled out a few articles of clothing, holding them
briefly before dumping them into my arms. Then he quickly began
filling two small leather pouches with various items from the chest
and the clay jars, food and flint and a bunch of other things I
couldn’t identify off-hand. He placed one of the pouches on top of
my lump of clothes and glanced up at me with a bland look.
    “ Put those on.” He got to
his feet. “I won’t be far.”
    He stopped to fill a few leather sacks from
the water urn. I watched him sling them over his shoulder and
disappear from the cave, then went to the entrance and peered out
after him. He strode off, but I frowned when I saw that he masked a
limp.
    After I convinced myself that no one else
was around, I hid in the shadows of the back wall to change my old
clothes for the new. They seemed almost medieval in style, the
cream tunic and tan pants made from some sort of soft fabric, like
cotton or fine linen. The tunic fell long, nearly to my knees, and
I could just make out the remnants of worn embroidery around the
cowl neck. All the pieces were