"It's a fire…"
I muttered weakly, weirdly dazed by something as simple as the fire.
I'd seen fires thousands if not tens of thousands of times in the past. A great fire to celebrate the end of high school. Small fire appearing at my stove whenever I wanted to cook some food. A fire of a lighter as I lit up the fuses of the fireworks or the front ends of the cigarettes.
For some unknown reason, though, the fire before me felt different, like the very first fire I happened to witness. And it was special enough for me to completely lose myself in it.
"Cough!"
Snapped out of my daze, I raised my eyes to see the saintess remove her fist after she used it to cover her mouth as she cleared her throat. Yet, from the intense look on her face, one thing was quite clear.
"Oh, right!"
My eyebrows jumped up as I rushed to pull my bag off my back and then gently lay it down at my feet, squatting down as I slipped the zipper open and started to paddle through the mess inside in search of the promised item.
In a second, I brought the cup of the instant mashed potatoes out of the bag with a look of excitement on my face easily rivaling the excitement in the saintess's eyes.
Yet, when I properly raised my eyes and looked at her, the pragmatic reality dawned upon me.
'We have a fire. That's great. But we don't have water or anything to boil it in!'
The first problem had an easy solution.
While searching around for the cup, I clearly felt the texture of both of the bottles I brought to college, both of which retained the familiar springiness of a properly sealed, plastic container.
One of the bottles had the tea I hurriedly made with some cheap, off-brand bags and enough sugar to put the nature of that "tea" into question. The other one, though?
Carbonated water.
Not perfect for the purpose of making cup noodles and a precious commodity all in its own right—
'But I'm not really in a place to keep stuff for later, am I?'
With a look of grief on my face, I gritted my teeth and pulled out the clear, plastic bottle.
"Oh right…!" Right as I twisted my arms a bit to gain the proper leverage over the sealed cap, the saintess spoke. "You said you need boiled water, not just fire alone, didn't you?" she mentioned.
The grief on my face instantly turned into near endless relief as I raised my eyes to the saintess.
Before I could express my gratitude for sparing my last bottle of a carbonated drink, something strange happened.
Just like before when she created fire out of nothing, the saintess cupped her hands together before bringing them up to her mouth in pretty much the same manner people would cup their hands to their mouth during cold winter months to warm their cold fingers with their breath.
Her throat and jaws moved, twitched a bit, as if she spoke some words at speeds so fast, the frequency of her voice reached levels my ears couldn't register. And then, those cupped hands of hers started to shake.
Not shake like someone trying to play the dice nor like the hands of someone with late-stage Parkinson's disease.
Her hands, for but a brief moment, turned blurry, as if they were vibrating in place at a rate much greater than what frames per second my eyes could see and my brain process.
A moment later, her hands finally froze still, only for the saintess to gently pull them apart from the top, revealing a considerable bit of boiling water within the cup of her palms!
For a moment, I could only stare at this marvel, struggling not to gulp my saliva like some sort of ignorant idiot.
My initial reaction was to rush forth and pull the saintess's hands apart before the boiling water would scald her palms, an instinct I thankfully managed to suppress before making myself into an idiot.
Judging how the girl showed absolutely no reaction to the presence of the boiling water in her hands, who was I to assume she was hurt by it?
Still, struggling to watch something like this, I hurriedly pulled the lid to the cup halfway to the back only to reach out with my hand and tilt the cup just enough to allow the saintess a peek inside.
"See?" I spoke while giving the cup a little shake to rattle the powder and tiny cubes of dehydrated bacon inside. "In its current form, it's hardly edible. But…"
I forced a smile on my lips, pretending as if I couldn't see the saintess literally holding boiling water in her cupped hands.
"If you could now pour the boiling water inside, all the way to this small line painted on the package…"
Either unaware or caring not for my worries, the saintess moved her hands forth before gently tilting them down, allowing the water to slowly pour into the cup.
The cup warmed up pretty much the moment the water started to mix with the powder, proving that the boiling water in the saintess's hands wasn't just some parlor trick.
No, judging by how I struggled to even hold the cup in place due to how hot it had gotten, it was the real deal!
Still,
If watching the saintess hold boiling water in her hands had to be on a level of a mental torture, then watching how the water slowly poured down from her hands, as if she was a sculpture of a goddess elevated to the top of a fountain in some grand park…
This time, I couldn't stop myself from swallowing my spit down my throat.
The perfect shape of the girl's hands, the way her skin tightly wrapped around the slight cushions of her flesh…
'If only she could go back to Earth, she would make a killing as a hand model,' I thought, only to quickly pull the cup away when I saw the water reach the necessary level.
"Now, we stir…" I added a small bit of commentary as I hid my fluster by using some random broken piece of long plastic I found in my bag to stir the mixture within the cup before finishing the process by pulling the cup's lid back over its opening.
"And in three minutes, it will be ready."
As if to mark my words with some action, I made sure to put the cup down to the ground and cross my arms over my chest, showcasing how I had no plans to take any further action.
"What are those… minutes you spoke of?" the saintess asked, giving me a slightly weirded-out look.
I looked up, stared at her innocent face and those huge, deeply blue eyes of hers… and sighed.
"A measure of time," I replied with a gentle shake of my head while driving my eyes down towards the cup. "It's only going to take a moment, so just wait until it's done, please."
The seconds trickled by while I lowered my eyelids so as to not get distracted by the saintess's beauty while taking care to count seconds in my mind.
Soon, though, as the slight smell of the meal started to rise from the cup with the steam, the saintess's stare grew so intense I could no longer ignore it. And when my count was only ten seconds away from the end, I could swear I saw a drop of drool appear in the corner of the saintess's mouth!
'Zero.'
I reached out for the cup the very moment the count in my head concluded.
Then, with a swift and perfectly trained move, I peeled the lid away, careful not to let the hot, rising steam scald my fingers. Then, with a small sleight of hand, I pulled out my personal spork I prepared beforehand before pushing it into the yellowish sludge inside the cup.
"I would say to be careful since it's hot…" I hesitated for a moment before opting to stay true to my decision from earlier and remain as honest as one could get, "but seeing how you poured boiling water directly from your hands, I don't think this is going to be any problem for you at all."