Row Needs Help

Yara and Jona sat side-by-side one another at an otherwise empty counter at a humble, little noodle stand, buried deep within the sprawling rows of stalls at the night market. After a three-week sojourn into the desert’s most unforgiving region, the two had decided to treat themselves to a well deserved, hot meal. Bowl after bowl was stacked in sloppy piles towering towards the night sky. Passersby did a double take when they bore witness to the cook and her husband struggling to keep up with the appetite of these two customers. They, however, were none the wiser, with faces fully engulfed in their bowls. They had come with the intent of enjoying some noodles and salty broth, and that’s what they were going to do.

Because they had racked up such a sizable bill, Yara and Jona were given complimentary moon cakes following the end of their meal, as a gesture of gratitude from a more than thankful stall owner and cook. The couple did a celebratory dance when they finally stopped cooking and were able to realize they were taking the rest of the night off. Maybe even a mini vacation.

Individually, the cookies were snapped down the middle between the two sets of hands. Bits of shortbread crumbs scattered across the counter and their laps. Now broken, the cookies revealed a rolled up slip of paper baked inside with a fortune written on it. It was customary to go around the table at the end of a meal and have everyone read aloud their fortunes before consuming their sweet-treat. Similar to American fortune cookies, but if the cookie actually tasted good and not at all like over-baked styrofoam.

“ ‘Where there is smoke, there is fire, but all that burns does not always smoke.’” Jona read, clearly dissatisfied in his ambiguous riddle-of-a-prophecy. “That is not a fortune.” he noted before shifting his attention over towards Yara, ready to now hear what her’s had to offer. But the warm glow around her vanished as dreams of swimming in broth were plucked out of her grasp and replaced by the troubling message she now held between pinched fingers. She took another moment to bring herself back to the present, back to sitting next to Jona at the night market. The beads of sweat rolling down the length of her spine.

“It’s Row. She needs us to meet her in the Lower Dunes by the next full moon.” There was a noticeable look of concern in her eyes.

The Lower Dunes were two weeks away by bike, and with the next full moon only twelve nights away, the two wasted no time and made their leave of the night market, opting instead to head right back into the desert.