The elders could protest all they wanted, but the mind of the youngest one had been made long before the conversation even started. As she stepped to her left under the shawl, it was as if the cloth split into two, much like those tiny bacteria that Kitty had once seen through a microscope, not into half, but into two separate, whole garments: one spotless and in bright colors and the other discolored and worn by age. At the same time, the two older women seemed to fade into the background, their voices mumbled and their motion barely observable as they continued to stir the pot.<br/><br/>“Nothing good will come out of this,” the middle-aged woman’s voice was barely comprehensible.<br/><br/>“Big mistake, she’ll<i>will’ll make…</i>” the distorted mutter of the oldest one was still saying just before it became completely silent in the room, and the youngest of the women, who now appeared more real than anything the sisters had seen since their walk on the college yard, span around and greeted the girls with a bright, wide smile on her heavily freckled face. In her hands, there was a bowl of soup, perhaps one that she’d made earlier, for the soup in the pot would not be ready for another long, long while.<br/><br/>“I made soup,” she said and hurried to the table, almost as if hovering over the floor under the long hem of her dark-brown robe. It appeared as new as the checkered shawl of multiple shades of green over her shoulders, and everything else about her was just as neat and clean. When she lowered the bowl on the table, a cool breeze from an open window fluttered the long, loose locks of her coffee-brown hair and she had to quickly grab them with both hands and shift them aside from curtaining her eyes.<br/><br/>“Did I ask one of you for a dance?” the woman said after a short moment of merely eyeing each girl in turn.<br/><br/>“Umm… Sort of?” Kitty replied and then shifted her focus onto the soup that she could tell delicious just by the way it looked, even before she inhaled its fumes.<br/><br/>“No matter,” the woman said and sprung up into full posture, “I’ll go fetch you some cups and spoons.”<br/><br/>Just as she began to turn and head for the cabinets, Kitty had a strange sensation that the room was about to change yet again, but couldn’t quite put her mind into telling why. Were there two other women in the background of the room? Was the shawl on the youngest one fading?<br/><br/>“We dance later,” the woman said, took another step, and went on as her tone began to change, “You should eat, before they<i>came in through the door. Oh-no! I had nearly forgotten!</i>”<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>