She awoke the next day, after a rather restless night. It wasn't as bad like when she was chained in the slavers' truck, but worse than sharing a small bunk. It reminded her of one of the few times she had a cold and her nose was so stuffy that no air came through. What would be if she had a cold now? She would suffocate. But if her nose was stuffy, her owner would probably take the gag out. She had to prepare breakfast. Maybe he would let her take the rag out after he had eaten. It was killing her.

As she went to prepare breakfast, her stomach rumbled. She took some bread, which was a good basic food. This particular type of bread was rye bread. Her village used to regularly plant rye, along with wheat and oat. The cereals where transported away, the main food source were potatoes, since these could be planted almost anywhere. Maka had always wondered where the cereals that her village used to produce went. As far as she knew, it went to more industrial settlements, where they forged weapons and machinery for the president, since these settlements produced no food. What would happen to those now that her village had stopped producing food? The food production was carefully balanced, with one village completely wiped off the map, there would be shortages. Did Dr. Eisenberg destroy the fields with the unharvested crops, too, or did he only burn down the village. If the crops were safe, they would be able to salvage them. Then they would need to rebuild the village. How would they replace the lost population? Since the village's population had been scattered throughout New Nevada, therefore basically irrecoverable, they would probably do the same thing like they did when half of the population of another village was killed in a mudslide. They sent small squads of the Goverment Interest and Safety Department, also known as GISD, into other villages and take a randomly selected portion of the population and used them to repopulate the destroyed village. Then, after they would have restored her village's population, food production would be able to resume.

After she had cut several slices of bread, she put butter on the bread. Butter was very tasty, a good addition to any bread. Back in her village, butter was plentiful, the most common animal product after milk, to be exact. They only had to hand a small amount of the production over to the government, the rest they could use in any way they wanted. But they only wanted to eat it. They would never waste food, while they enjoyed a nutritious diet, they couldn't afford to waste food. It was a shock for Maka when she was ordered to throw out food by her owner. He must be a rich man.

After she had smeared butter on the bread, she but strawberry jam on it. Strawberry jam was also a common food in her village, due to the fact that it tasted good and could be stored for long periods of time. They couldn't grow many strawberries, because they needed the fields to grow cereals. However, there were plenty of wild strawberries around her village. She often spend days searching for strawberries and other berries, like raspberries, then Meme's mother would make jam out of them and give half of the jars to Maka's father. She would love to eat a bread of strawberry jam right now, but she would have to remain hungry. How long would she have to live with this dirty rag in her mouth. She should probably stop thinking about food, or her hunger would get worse. But it was so difficult not to think about food while one was preparing a meal.

Once she had finished the bread, she had to fight to take her attention of the food. How she wished she could eat it right now. Would her owner catch her? Theoretically he could come down any moment. But most likely he would come down in a three quarters of an hour. But he had told her that he would know if she took the gag out. In fact, if she ate now, it would count as two offenses. She leaned against the cold closet. Her back hurt from the whipping she had received yesterday. She definitively wanted to avoid another whipping. She went to check whether there was any mail, to stop herself from thinking about food.

There was plenty of mail in the mailbox. Maka wondered what kind of mail her owner received. She would have to restrain her curiosity. But maybe it was worth risking her life over the information contained in his mail. Or was it? Her owner was a lawyer. The mail he received were probably related to the cases he was working on. Knowing about what his clients were accused of would be completely useless. She would probably be not at all interested in this mail if she wasn't forbidden from opening it on pain of death. The paper however, was already open. She could read the headline without anyone noticing. It read "N-e-[?]-C-o-n-[?]-e-d-e-r-a-t-e-s-[?]-i-n-[?]-a-t -t-l-e". It took Maka some time to figure out what this headline meant. So the new Confederates had won a battle, bad news. This was either dumb luck or the paper was biased. Or the new confederates had similar troubles with warlords like her homeland and taken care of one. Even if they had won a battle, they would not win the war, West Wyoming's army had already advanced deep into their territory. It was impossible that the new Confederates won the war. West Wyoming had the best strategist of the world at it's disposal. The war was only a slight inconvenience for them, nothing serious. Maka could hear her owner moving around on the upper floor, so she quickly put down the paper and the rest of the mail and started to prepare the tea, it could not be long until her owner came down. And in fact, it was ten before seven. She would be able to finish making the tea before her owner came down. She wondered what kind of tea he wanted, so she prepared the apple tea she had made yesterday.