Hmmm, what should she do? What would her parents do? Well... probably nothing. Her parents would probably see this as not their business or problem. Persephone so often said that people needed to look after themselves. But... as far as Makaria could tell sometimes people couldn’t look after themselves. Makaria had learned a lot of things while on the surface – although she knew it was hardly anything compared to all there was to learn – but one of those things was that people needed to help each other or sometimes nothing good would ever happen.
And Makaria wasn’t people but- well, she liked people. She thought people were good and kind and interesting and maybe it was not so bad to be like people. Some of them were mean, but maybe even if you were nice to the mean ones they could stop being so mean.
This man on the train didn’t seem mean though. He just seemed like one of the people who needed help for good things to happen.
“I have a drink in here,” Makaria said, reaching into one of the bags and finding the bottle of grape Fanta she’d been saving for later. “Here,” she said, sort of slotting it into his hands where they rested in his lap. “You can have this. In case you’re thirsty.” She hoped he didn’t have diabetes. (Diabetes was a disease where you weren’t allowed to have sugar anymore, and Fanta had a lot of sugar. Which was why it was so good. Having come from an island of the dead with only dead versions of ancient Greek foods, sugary soft drinks still made Makaria start giggling uncontrollably and feel like she could run a marathon. (And now when they said ‘marathon’ they just meant a long run, and no one even had to die. Which was lovely, especially for the people running it.))