"Do you need some help?"
For a second—just a second—it seems that her only answer winds up being the steady, then suddenly violent, crackle of the flames before her, but, minding the other presence for yet another second, she suppresses a smile, finding him waving her off with a shake of his head and a flashing of his teeth that, even in the moonlit shadows hanging from the monstrously hideous spruce trees, still shimmers with a well-cared-for glow.
"What kind of gentlecolt would make a mare work?" He asks, not realizing how little the title applies by this point. Yanking up the metallic table with a single hoof, he unhinges its legs, stabs them into the dry dirt, and folds the countertop out with a precise flick of his wrist. Bending over to bring out the little brown bags in his teeth, he continues, "B'sides, you're already letting me use your fire." He turns around like a Royal Guard, but his chuckling figure doesn't quite match up to a T. He lets out a little more breath as he goes further, hoisting his collection onto the newly-available table, "Least I could do is let you sit down awhile." Thump! "You look like you deserve it."
If there was anything she actually deserved in the world apart from what it had given her, a nice round of sleep sounded about right.
Her stomach comes at her like a rising tidal wave, almost doubling her over and onto the ground in a seizing, cold heap, but, leaning farther back into her little canvas chair, she drowns the rumbling, bumbling, grumbling noise out with the creaks and hisses of her current source of support. She can't stop herself from humming a quiet note, but she returns to her straight face just in time for him to open his eyes once more. He's beaming again, but, this time, it seems it's more out of achievement than unjustified kindness. She blinks her purple eyes, which, once out and about again, dart over to the table-top. It's littered with plastic bags of greens, reds, and oranges, and a few cylinders here and there dressed in black, white, and red; there's a rectangular paper box with measurements on the side, a carton of broth, and a can of beans.
He notices her prolonged staring, and as she ducks back into her scarf and turns away—pretending she hadn't been looking—he pulls out a Dutch oven from the ground next to him in one hoof, and places the three-legged stand in his other hoof in the center of the fire. The oven goes on top thereafter. And just like that, as he begins slicing up butter, chopping up onions—and not shedding a tear, which raises her suspicions just a tad—mincing cloves of garlic, and then throwing all three inside, he's cooking a campfire meal she'd probably shake her head at when it was later presented to her steaming and fresh.
Her ears flick to and fro wildly with each pop and snap of the firewood, stray sparks causing her to involuntarily suck in short breaths and hope her companion hadn't noticed. She dares move up an inch closer to try and get more heat to stop her shivers; she moves back when it gets too stuffy. Her chair has begun to make twin trails in the dirt, parting rock and gravel and dirt better left untouched, but disturbed by her presence alone. A few black holes have begun popping up on the armrests. She moves back a little more.
Her forelegs jab first into the pits of her forelegs, then, with a revelation, into the safety of her jacket's front pockets.
The green peppers fall in.
"Thanks again, by the way."
She doesn't move her head, but her gaze shifts up.
He raises one of his sweater-covered forelegs to stop his yawn at the gates, but, incapable, lulls out his tongue like a party horn and opens his mouth to let out an almost absent mumble followed by an invisible curse. "Ah, sorry." Again, shorter this time. "IIIIII just... wow." A laugh. "I keep doing it." A cough, now. "Usually starting the fires would be my buddy Quick Step's job, but he couldn't make it, and everypony else is at the party in town. I'm pretty much all I've got, and that barely comes close to being enough."
She can't really stop from bunching up her shoulders with a hum. Minding the thermos sitting snugly in the cup holder to her right, she pulls it out, tips it back, and takes a few cautious sips of her hot chocolate. It burns her throat a bit, but what the hell, it's still chocolate.
A shake of cumin, oregano, chili powder, and cayenne pepper. It looks like an autumn cloud.
He sniggers, almost covering his lips with a hoof until realizing one was holding the wooden spoon, and the other was planted firmly into the ground to keep him standing. "Prob'ly would've..." he waggles his gripping hoof anyway, letting the utensil clatter against the inside of the oven, "...set the whole campground on fire. Or chop my hoof off with an ax. Was never any good at that stuff, you would not wanna see it."
As if hearing its mention, the forest lets its other occupants rematerialize in her ears.
A couple of teenagers still throwing around a frisbee—which was, mind her, lit up with glowsticks haphazardly duct-taped all over it—in the middle of the night let out whoops and hollers far to her right side in the tree line.
A flash of oranges, yellows, and reds, which she quickly discovered to belong to the large bonfire of a three-pony family cheering gleefully as the flames danced across the drawn-out fabric of their pretty expensive-looking tent. The little colt was already pulling out a bag of marshmallows and toting a sharp branch.
Two jolts of the pepper and salt shakers each.
Sucking in a long breath of air through his nostrils and pushing it back out between his open lips, he falls onto his haunches even though his seat is right behind him, lifts his chin, and surveys the deep-blue, white-speckled sky stretching out above the both of them. He would've been better off talking to it instead of her. "This is nice, y'know?" Back down. Little flecks of embers flee the coop and swirl about in front of his fuzzy face. Any closer and he'd burn that beard right off. "Quiet, or, well, at least compared to the city," he resumes, giving a quick glance over to the frolicking teens. "Nice change o' pace from busy streeeeets, and taxis... and the tall buildings and the, I dunno, pressure I guess." He turns to regard her. "You ever feel that way?"
She blinks once, and then twice, without putting any thought into her response.
She sucks in her bottom lip and nods.
"A lot."
He makes a low note, returning the gesture, and then he's back to staring skyward. "Never really liked Manehattan, honestly. Only really moved here for college, and it's only been a few months and I already don't like it. Miss being back in Vanhoover." His hooves softly clap each other, then make a huge gap that's easily twice as wide as his own body. "Lots of places to camp there, really nice trails and stuff too. Seems everyone in Manehattan is concerned about crossing the street and not crossing their boss."
She feels words about to spill out of her mouth.
She closes it, then slightly parts it to take another swig of cocoa. Another shiver overtakes her, but she wiggles herself around on her canvas chair, turns in at an angle, and rests the back of her head against the beginnings of one of the armrests. She probably looked ridiculous, but it was a lot more comfortable this way.
The broth is opened, and it tips over above the oven and begins to pour its contents inside. It thumps hollow back onto the table, and the large can of beans takes its place and sickeningly schlips its own members into the thickening stew.
It's starting to smell like Heaven, and it's starting to get harder to ignore the remnants of last night's noodle cup and this morning's half of a granola bar. She grumbles again, then passes it off as an annoyance with her position, which she fixes again.
He whistles a sweet tune to nopony in particular, stirring the concoction around and bobbing his shaggy-maned head to and fro. The first thing that she reads not coming from a little screen is the words on the front of his pullover-sweater.
Vanhoover Blizzards! and a cartoon picture of a very angry snowflake shooting metaphorical and literal daggers—of ice—at something out of frame. Below it, the letters look to have been caught in the team name, dripping with stalactites. We'll Kick Your Ice!
"You want my firewood, by the way?"
Clunk!
Clunk!
She's looking at the bowls as they fall onto the table side-by-side, and her ears dance with each scrape of the spoons he's now dropping inside them. He stops for a second before placing the last utensil, looking over at her from between his brow.
Chhh!
She finds her voice, way, way down. "Sure."
It sounds indecisive and almost relenting to her, but he seems to take it affirmitavely and begins scooting his plastic black tote over to her side. He doesn't look at her when he cackles, "I'll try an' make sure I get it before sunrise tomorrow. Think that cute mare over there was asking about a bonfire earlier," instead returning his focus solely on the chili. "Birthday or something," he adds, as if she hadn't already been overanalyzing every word she could hear since arriving. He taps the bottom of the oven with his spoon, then clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Ah!" Turn. "Uh uh, don't get up."
She sinks back into her seat.
She at least should help him clean...
"I'll get you a bowl first. Your fire, after all."
It crackles in agreement, burning a hole into another section of her armrest and dotting the rocks around it with black.
He scoops up both bowls with one foreleg, tucking them into the crook of his arm. Sweeping them about, he picks up the spoon with his other appendage, dips it into the oven, and lets drip the presumably spicy gates of campfire chili. He repeats it and, with both steaming in his grasp—and surprisingly not burning his skin, which raises another red flag—he holds one back behind his head and overdramatically presents her with the other.
Her depraved hunger lunges at her, and she reflexively leans forward, only to hesitate with a slight noise she wishes she hadn't made. It's as if her maneuver starts to play in a reversed state, her mind even blanking somewhat to allow it to go unopposed. She blinks rapidly as if there are tears there, and every time she's either looking far to her left, and right in the center toward the steam billowing up and over the top of her purple mane.
He cocks an eyebrow.
"Not hungry?"
Not eating, she would have liked to say.
"N-not that, I..."
The bowl thrusts suddenly. He snorts as if it was some kind of a joke. "C'mon, eat up." He backpedals, daring a glance behind him to make sure he's aligned, and finally falls into the comfort of his creaky, wooden tripolina. The dirtied white cloth sags in his wake. "Trust me, it's pretty damn good. And I'm not just saying that because I made it."
Yes you are.
...
The bowl having been placed further from her with his rearing, he leans far over to his left—almost tipping the whole chair—and presents it to her once more.
...
...she had been talking to him, even if her words were small. She could've very easily shooed him away, or said a simple no, or something. But she was talking.
...maybe she deserved a bite, just this once.
"O-okay."
He lights up like a Hearth's Warming tree, and she has to stop herself from grinning in kind.
"Yeahhhh!"
The bowl goes into her hooves, then clutched between the thick sleeves of her coat upon realizing its temperature. At the other end, her adversary is already digging in with the bowl just inches from the end of his snoot.
She looks down at her own. And before she lets herself have a single second thought, she coils her hoof around her spoon, collects a bit of everything on the end of it, and sticks it between her lips.
At once, the pangs seem to vanish completely, as if just this one morsel was all it would take to stave off her self-sustained hunger. The garlic mixed with the butter and the onions, with the peppers and the beans, with the broth soaking it all with the spiciness of the herbs... Gods, she hadn't had real food in a long while. Despite her own, newly-burning desire, she steadies herself and keeps a light pace to savor the flavor. It might be ages until she got another good meal, even if asking for seconds wasn't out of the question for a party of two.
As she quietly slurps up vegetables, he takes the opportunity to wipe his mouth, lean back with a tilt of his head in both directions, and a maintained stare at something seemingly far and away to his left—behind her right—in the distance. His irises peer at her for half a split second, and then he reaches for his spoon and takes another short self-serving. He barely finishes swallowing before, wiping his chin, he points at what he'd seen.
"Is that yours?"
Oh.
She rotates about at her hip and looks at it.
The two tarps—silver over black—are still hanging over the rear; her panniers on either side still have their locks on them; the three bright-red gas cans are still sloppily clipped to the back of her upright seat; her purple, white-lined helmet is still dangling from the right handlebar. Her license plate is beyond dirty, too, but there's no need for her to clean it out here in the nowhere. She knew a few ponies who'd have a fit if they saw all the dust and dirt caked all over it. She's reminded of her constant task to acquire a spare tire for emergencies, but she'll probably forget it again.
She blinks, and turns her head back toward the fire. It greets her with a friendly snap that almost catches her swaying hindlegs.
"Y-yeah."
She dips her muzzle back into her bowl.
"Pretty sweet bike, if you don't mind me saying!" He exclaims with a belly laugh that shakes it too. "You've got a... heh, lotta stuff on there."
She breathes in and out.
In and out, softly.
She takes another bite.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him blink, then look away and then back. Thankfully, his small frown gives way to his bright grin again. "Where you headed, little mare?"
She hadn't really looked at her map in awhile, to be completely honest, and the last time she had, the only thing was just... kind of... all over the place.
Her spoon scrapes the bottom of her bowl.
"Dunno yet, just... kind of... moving, I guess."
"Hm, nice, nice. Little adventure, huh? You look about that age." Creeeeak! "Used to do that with my friends back in high school during break. Pack up our stuff and head anywhere we wanted. Mostly Las Pegasus, though. Nothing beats a nice beer and kickass burgers."
Snap!
Pop!
Pffffsssss!
"...where'd you start?"
She sucks in much more air than was necessary, her stomach almost exploding. Her nostrils flare up, and she eats another spoonful.
"Ponyville."
A chuckle. She can't help but call his voice safe.
"So, what, you running from home or something?"
She can't even hear her own heartbeat. It seems that the raging fire has grabbed a chokehold of her vocal cords and silenced her indefinitely. She hears a twig snap, and she's not sure if it was in her head, or behind it. She's barely halfway done with her food, but now she feels like she shouldn't have eaten it in the first place.
A breath in and then out. She reaches a hoof up and wipes her mouth, then lifts her chin and blinks at him.
"It wasn't home."