>>6052686>>6052562You look around a little bit. The place is parched, but not dying, not just yet. One of the mutants smells your imperfectly tanned hides, figures you may have meat on you, and asks you for food. He's missing half his face. You push him off; he snarls, but this doesn't start a fight.
As the day gets hotter people retire to their homes for a midday meal, those who can afford it, anyway -- you estimate about half the population fits into that category.
One thing you notice is that this hamlet used to have a greenhouse; you see what's left of it near the path that leads to the rest of the Arid Zone, glass panels smashed, plastic sheets too scratched or decayed to let through any light anymore. You wonder what happened there.
The trade house, such as it is, is tiny -- it's half of a yurt, the other half likely where the woman running it lives. She looks at you wary; you can't guess if normally there are guards and they're gone now, or if she can't afford them. She's pale, with a young face but clumpy white hair.
"You don't look like a trapper, what's your deal?" she asks you. Both of you glance at a battered pitcher of water, with part of a brick on top of it to stop evaporation. She nods, and pours you a tiny bit of it in a shotglass. "Wet your lips so we may talk" she says. She doesn't pour herself any. She's about half your size, and clearly a little intimidated.
Many customs about things like water and tea have gone out of the window with the drought, of course -- these days showing hospitality simply means sharing the shade.
> Accept the water. > Politely refuse, since you're good on that for now.There isn't much to buy or sell -- rope, half ancient plastic fibers and half hemp woven in when it grew. It looks like it'll hold your weight. A rake, hammered together. An incongruously pristine pre-Doom teddy bear that looks like it'll fall apart if someone moves it from its little brick pedestal. A window, painstakingly leaded together by some smith somewhere out of fragments of other windows, catching a little sun and making pretty reflections on the side of the yurt. That sort of thing.
> Barter.> Make conversation.> Scare her off some of her goods. 