Part Thirty-Eight — What Brought Her This Far

　She ate like someone who'd forgotten, temporarily, that food was something you were allowed to enjoy rather than just survive on. I let her finish most of it before I asked anything at all.

　"So," I said, once she'd slowed down enough to actually talk. "What brought you all the way out here?"

　Her expression shifted, the small warmth of the meal draining out of her face as something heavier settled back in.

　Up close, in better light, I could see it properly now — the dark, hollow circles under her eyes, the specific exhaustion of someone who hadn't slept or eaten properly in far too many days.

　"My family sold me," she said, flat, like she'd already worn the words smooth from repeating them silently to herself. "A month ago. They needed the money to feed the rest of the family. I was — I was going to my new master's house. Before all of this."

Wow.

I did not even consider that slave trade would be a real thing in this world. Guess I learn something new every single day, whether I want to or not.

　"My name's Aria," she added, quieter, like it was an afterthought she wasn't sure still mattered.

　"What happened after that," I asked, gently as I could manage.

　"Two days ago," she said, "the carriage taking me to my new master got attacked. Bandits. They killed the people transporting me — didn't even hesitate, like we were just cargo that happened to still be breathing."

　She swallowed hard.

　"I ran. Into the forest. They followed."

Of course they did.

　"I thought I was going to die in there," she continued. "Hit a dead end. They almost had me — and then a giant snake just... came out of nowhere and took their heads off. All of them, at once. While it was busy feeding, I ran the other way."

A giant snake. One of mine, probably. Didn't even know it had made a kill recently.

　"After that," she said, voice dropping further, "I kept running in circles. Every direction I tried, I'd end up back at the same spot — where the bandits died. Over and over. I thought I was losing my mind. Eventually I just... collapsed. No food left in me to keep going."

The barrier. She wandered into the barrier without permission, and it just kept looping her back toward her own entry point, exactly the way it's built to. She wasn't losing her mind. She was just caught in something she had no way of understanding.

　I didn't explain that part to her.

　Not yet.

　"That's when I found you," I said instead.

　"Yeah," she said. "That's when you found me."

　"So," I said, after a quiet moment. "What's your plan from here?"

　She was quiet a long time, staring at the fire.

　"I don't think I have one," she said finally. "I don't have anywhere to go. No home. Nobody who'd take me back, even if I wanted them to."

Huh. She's kind of like me, honestly. No family left. No home that still exists the way it used to. Just whatever gets rebuilt from nothing, going forward.

"Correction," Anti-Subconsciousness said, only to me. "She is not like you."

Nobody asked you.

"Noted."

　I looked at her a moment longer — small, exhausted, entirely without anywhere else in the world to put herself — and made a decision that felt, somehow, like the easiest one I'd made in a long while.

　"Why not stay here," I said.