Saul’s house was packed to the rafters with toilet paper, jugs of water, bins of freeze-dried food, and bags upon bags of clothing. The house had almost no furniture, and no decorations aside from a large wooden cross above the hearth. There were a couple of stools arranged around a crate on the ground, which seemed to serve as an improvised coffee table. Saul sat them down, left for a moment, and came back with a hot French press filled with coffee.

“I’d suggest drinking your fill. It’s hard to come by in the Kingdom right now. Most things are, I’m afraid.”

“I’m not scared of hardship!” she said, a little too loud. You sounded like a little kid. Keep your stupid mouth shut or they’ll think you can’t handle it. Saul was conspicuously silent, but Jonah spoke up. “She handled herself well out in the woods,” he said. “Not bad, for a city girl. Didn’t have a lot of woodcraft but did have an open heart. Y’took to it well, ma’am.”

Saul chuckled as he began to pour and hand out cups of coffee. First to her, and then to Jonah. Sasha wasn’t entirely sure why, but she waited until both men had taken their first sips to take hers. She didn’t know much about coffee, but she was pretty sure this wasn’t the beverage at its best.

“Would you like to pray with us, Ms. Marion?” Saul asked.

“Uh– of course.”

He extended his hands out on either side. So did Jonah. Sasha took Saul’s left and Jonah’s right.

“Heavenly father,” Saul began, “bless this young woman who comes to you with a full heart from a land of sin and shirk. She’s given up all pretense of control and yielded herself fully to your grace, Lord. Please guide her in this next journey. We pray that she makes it safely to your Kingdom and into the arms of her husband-to-be,” Sasha almost peed. Where did he hear that?

She and Alexander hadn’t even met yet. There’d been no proposal. Was he just speaking in the general hope that she’d get married, or had Alexander told him something?

“…May she obey him as she does you, Heavenly Father, and may you quicken her womb like Rachel, so that she delivers a new Joseph to our cause.”

That didn’t sit well, either. Sasha wanted children very badly. She knew they were in her future. But not now. Certainly not soon enough that’d she’d be praying for them already. She was grateful that they had their heads bowed in prayer; if any of this had come up in conversation first she was sure she’d have reacted in obvious shock. But Sasha calmed herself, thought of her duty to God, and centered her mind just as the prayer ended.