Noah gazed at the woman before him as she blinked and looked toward the food, almost in a daze, then down at her own mended body, and then back at him.
And he locked his gaze with hers, and read the many things moving through it!
There was pain there, and relief, and exhaustion, but the biggest of them, the one that pulled at something in his existence, was a longing for a thing that did not seem to exist.
She was looking at him the way a person looks for someone in a familiar face and cannot find them. Searching him and not finding whoever it was she searched for.
She spoke, and her voice came out soft, and low, and carried a strange composure even soaked in her own dried blood.
"You haven't cooked for me in this place for a long time. I missed it."
...!
Once more, she talked as though she knew him unfathomably well!
