Bastet has already gone inside with the cubs, so Fenrir, River, and I follow them in. On the way into the cave Kalanthia hails me.

Lathani and I are going hunting, she informs me. We should be back by dawn.

“Thanks for telling me,” I reply, nodding at her as she walks out, Lathani trotting at her heels.

River looks at me inquisitively so I relay the message – apparently Kalanthia directed it to me specifically for some reason. “Are you hungry?” I check with him, Fenrir, and Bastet – who isn’t asleep, just curled up with the cubs near the embers of the fire. I get a series of negative answers from the three – apparently they’ve gorged themselves sufficiently for now. I suppose I don’t need to ask them when there are a pile of corpses outside – they all know to help themselves. Still, it makes me feel better to know they’re doing OK.

Fenrir stops to curl up near the doorway, on guard as usual. River lies down on the bed and closes his eyes. I’m feeling pretty tired too, the long trip into the forest along with the fight and subsequent Battle of Wills exhausting. Still, there’s something else to do, the prospect of which makes me rub my hands together excitedly. Food!

And more than just food – different food. I haven’t taken the time yet today to go through the edible plants I collected. The non-edible ones I’ve already given to River to have a go making some of the potions and poisons he knows; surprisingly, one of the potions he knows for healing actually uses an unexpected cocktail of poisons to work. He seemed pretty happy about the offering and spent most of the time I was healing the kiinas experimenting with them. I’ll check with him tomorrow about the potions he’s made.

That, of course, leaves me with at least twenty different plants which were all ‘edible’ according to Inspect Flora. I quickly cast Inspect again, just to check which bits of each plant are identified as edible, not wanting to accidentally eat the bits that aren’t.

Using my knife, I separate the plants into leaves, roots, stalks, flowers, berries, and in one case, the seeds.

“Right, which one to start with?” I murmur to myself. I might prefer a juicy steak over a side-salad ninety-nine times out of a hundred, but even so the lack of variety in my diet has been very wearing. If Lucy could see how excited I am over plants, she’d laugh until she cried.

A memory slides into my mind unbidden, one where she and I were mock-arguing over choosing which restaurant to go to. She kept jokingly insisting on going to a salad bar – just because she knew I’d hate it. To get my own back, I equally insisted in going to Carnivore’s Paradise, a restaurant which only served a token lettuce leaf to the side of their massive portions of meat and chips.

Of course, we ended up going to a completely different restaurant which would suit both of us.

I find my lips turning up at the memory, mirth mixing with the inevitable pain. Strangely enough, though, I find myself able to concentrate more on the fond amusement I had felt at the time than the regretful agony which I usually feel about any of the good memories I have of Lucy.

I wonder why that is. Am I getting used to it? Or am I slowly getting over her? Has being in this world where death is sometimes only a wrong move away helped me put things into perspective?

While I’d love for Lucy to be here with me…no, that’s not quite true. Part of me yearns for her to be here, but part of me is also glad she’s not. Lucy was no more an outdoor girl than I was an outdoor guy. I don’t know how she’d have dealt with it. Worse than me? Better? Perhaps there’s a little spiteful part of me that is glad she’s not here: I’ve discovered things about myself that I would never have thought existed; have improved in ways I never thought were possible. I don’t really want to share that with her.

Here, I’m carving out a new life. It’s a hard one, completely empty of so many luxuries I took for granted. But it’s mine. Everything I have now is due to my own efforts and the relationships I’ve built. Yes, I’ve been given things, and my Bound have been absolutely key to what I’ve achieved. I’ve also made mistakes – many of them. But if I hadn’t made the choices I did, I wouldn’t be sitting here. Though some of those choices were a bit questionable, and there was luck involved too, I’m still here. So far, I’ve survived everything this world has thrown at me.

With that lingering feeling of victory going through me, I pick up the first berry and pop it in my mouth. I hope Inspect Flora is reliable since I don’t have a hankering to discover how to heal a poison with myself as a test subject! Although I’m not following the proper procedure to check whether a new food is edible or not, I do take a bit of time over chewing the berry.

It’s tart, but there’s a hint of sweetness which soothes an ache I hadn’t realised I’d been craving. It’s not like I ate lots of sweets or chocolate before coming to this world. I will admit to adding a spoonful of sugar to my coffee on a regular basis, and liking the occasional cake or biscuit. But sugar is so much a part of modern life that my body has had to go on a bit of detox since being here, even though I hadn’t realised I was so addicted. So the touch of sugar in the berry is surprisingly welcome.

I let the berry sit in my mouth for a good minute or so before swallowing. Sitting quietly for a couple of minutes, I actually dive into my own body, curious as to whether I’ll be able to detect any problems before I would normally be able to feel them.

As it is, it appears that the berry is perfectly fine for me so I pull out of my body after a short time watching the digestive process of my stomach. Surprisingly interesting, actually.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Next I pick a leaf. Chewing it, my eyebrows shoot up at the taste. It’s like something between mint and basil. An odd combination, but one which will definitely add some flavour to my soups and roasted meat. It might even make decent herbal tea. Once more repeating the slow chewing, swallowing, and then monitoring, I’m glad to see that there don’t appear to be any negative consequences of it.

One by one, I test the different plants. After tasting them raw, I next cook them one by one to find out the results. I try both boiling and grilling, just to see what happens. For obvious reasons, most of the leaves don’t do very well on the grill, and they don’t necessarily do that well when boiled either, but I figure it’s a good experiment. Maybe if I find a plant where the leaves are more densely packed together that would work better on the grill.

By the end I have settled on seventeen that I’m determined to collect more of. Some of them are just very tasty and will easily flavour the food I cook. Others are nice enough to eat by themselves, like the berries and another type of root which doesn’t taste like much raw, but when I shove it into the fire, takes on a delicate nutty flavour. One of the leaves which shrivelled into practically nothing on the grill actually disintegrated in the water. However, when it did that, it created a surprisingly savoury-tasting broth which I can see being very appealing as the base of a soup.

The last four which I decide not to bother with for now are simply either too tough, even after cooking, too dull-tasting, or, in one case, just tasted bad. Like rotten meat, I’d say. I did bother to cook it just in case the cooking broke down whatever made it taste so awful, but to no avail. Ah well. Though I do resolve to give the first three another go at some point. Possibly stewing them will deal with the toughness and the dull-tasting leaves could be mixed with other – tastier – things while still providing some nutrition.

I also test whether there’s any noticeable difference between the plants stored in my Inventory and the ones I kept out of it. Honestly, I can’t tell any difference. But then, I can’t seem to tell the difference between meat I’ve had in my Inventory and the meat I’ve carried separately. Not unless I get a percentage towards the next level out of it. I’ll check with River tomorrow about whether he’s noticed any differences in his potion-making: I made sure to indicate clearly which plants were which.

My belly full and my taste-buds finally satisfied – I even had dessert in the form of the rest of the berries – I lie down next to the already slumbering River. I’m tired, but my mind is still active. I’ve got so many things to do and I keep adding to my list, it seems.

However, being tired won’t do me any good or help me to achieve them. I resolve to make my to-do list tomorrow morning as soon as I wake up.

For now, I lie back and try to relax. Easier said than done. There have been many times when I’ve wished I had an ‘off’ button like a computer; now is one of those times. Sighing, I sink into meditation. Not going into my Core space, and keeping my eyes closed, I’m aware of the connections around me, but they’re not as obvious as when I have my eyes open.

In fact, I find them almost relaxing once I get used to them – a bit like white noise. The links with my Bound are mostly soothing and warm, the only exceptions being my two newest. Those add a small cold spot of wariness and uncertainty. Hopefully that will change as they get used to our group.

I do feel a bit of guilt over killing the first kiina, especially when I could arguably have just disabled it like we did the other two. But then I remind myself that they attacked us. That might not be enough justification in a human society to kill someone, but even there self-defence is an accepted explanation for violent action.

In the jungle self-defence isn’t only an accepted justification, but necessary. Being a pacifist is a quick way of getting killed. Yes, I could have not Bound the two remaining kiina to their partner’s killer, but at the same time I didn’t coerce them. They had a choice. It wasn’t a good one – as injured as they were, they may not have survived much beyond another predator coming across them – but that was the consequence of them choosing to attack a more-powerful foe.

A knot of guilt remains in my belly, but I know that it’s only an emotional response born of growing up in a kinder, more structured society. One where taking the law into one’s own hands was actively discouraged. If I try to live by those standards now, I’ll die – and maybe kill my Bound along with me.

Trying to move past my feelings of lingering guilt, I actively seek out the other connections, the ones which are less obvious than those of my Bound. The warmth of the fire which caresses my skin is mimicked in the gentle movement of the connections which tantalise and stroke against me.

Mentally following them back to their source, I see them in my mind’s eye, even though my eyes themselves are closed. The fire is as hungry as ever, the flame busy with consuming the fuel I added to it during and after my cooking experiments.

Starting to get sleepy, I let my mind sink into the fire, like I would a hot bath – oh, that sounds wonderful. With flames licking at my mind, I’m enveloped by the warm blanket of sleep.

*****

That night my dreams are filled with fire.

I dance amid the flames, the flames licking at my skin. Sometimes the fire burns, sometimes it caresses. It feels like I’m dancing with a partner, one who is always a hair’s breadth from choosing to immolate me. There’s a thrill to the danger which I’ve never felt before.

I speak to my partner, but my words are lost in the crackle of the flame so thoroughly that even I don’t remember what I said. I am walking on fire, surrounded by it. It forms the hall around me, a ballroom of white-hot pillars and vaulted arches of red and orange, constantly moving.

We spin and my partner dips close enough to whisper in my ear, but all I hear are the snap, crackle, and pop of the flame in her voice.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper back. Her expression becomes frustrated and she speaks again at a normal volume.

This time, her voice is the roar of an inferno, but is no more understandable than the first time.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I tell her, genuinely distressed at my inability to communicate with my wonderful dance partner.

A third time she tries to talk to me, stopping our dance and shouting, her expression twisted in frustration and anger. Her voice is the crack and rumble of something unable to take the intense heat and finally giving way. A house that has withstood an era being consumed by a fire; a rock which has endured for aeons being melted and broken in a lava flow. It’s an awesome sound, yet still not one which I can interpret.

Wordlessly, I shake my head.

My partner erupts into incandescent rage, the fire of her being turning white-hot and blue-tinged. I cry out as what had before simply been the threat of burning becomes the reality of it.

I jerk awake as the pain mounts, only to discover that the fire wasn’t only in my dreams.