1.06 (1/2)
Erin woke up with one back against the inn’s front door. Her neck was aching and her hand was burning. It was morning.
“Ow.”
She held her hand. It was hurting—
“Feels like it’s worse than yesterday. Which is probably my imagination.”
She sat cradling her hand for a full minute. Then she remembered why she was sitting there and shot to her feet.
“Skeleton? Goblins.”
Where was it? Erin stood up and hobbled over to a table. There. Two daggers on the tabletop.
“At this rate I’m going to start a collection.”
Erin mumbled to herself as she poked one of the hilts with a finger. But it proved she hadn’t been dreaming.
“No skeleton? No problem. I hope.”
She sighed and then sniffed.
“What’s that smell?”
Something smelled really bad. And it was coming from the kitchen. The instant Erin opened the door she groaned aloud.
The fish lay on the cutting board, covered in dry blood and reeking in the sunlight. It stank. Actually, it smelled worse than a stink.
“This. This is disgusting.”
Erin stared at the fish for a few more seconds. She had absolutely no desire to touch it. On the other hand…
A few black things crawled out of the fish’s mouth. Erin stared at the small things, gagged, and then ran outside before she hurled. That was the start of her day.
—-
How do you get rid of a fish? Erin put it outside on the ground and stared at it.
“I could bury it. If I had a shovel. And I could burn it. If I had a way to make fire. Or…I could leave it over there.”
She walked for about fifteen minutes before she was sure she was far enough away from the inn. Then Erin unceremoniously dumped the rotting fish off the cutting board. That was a mistake.
As the fish hit the ground it exploded. Something inside of it broke or squished, and suddenly a host of little black and green insects exited the fish’s body from every orifice. Erin took one look, screamed, and ran. She was getting good at it.
—-
It took her a long time before she found the courage to return. And even then, it was just to run in, grab the cutting board and leg it to the stream.
“Ew, ew, ew.”
Erin thrust the plank of wood in the water and watched fish guts and insects sweep away into the current. It wasn’t the dead fish she objected to. Well, not as much as the live bugs that clung stubbornly to the wood.
“You. Get off.”
The tenacious fly seemed to have the strength of ten bugs because it refused to let the current drag if off. It was black with a green butt—abdomen, and looked like nothing Erin had ever seen before.
“Another weird creature. Wonderful.”
Reluctantly she looked closer. Know thy enemy, right? She supposed she should also know her bug.
“That’s definitely a bug. And it’s really ugly.”
Swish. Swish. The bug clung to the wet wood despite Erin’s best attempts to shake it off.
“…Why’s it got four legs? I thought bugs had six.”
Annoyed, Erin finally pulled the cutting board out of the water. The insect fanned its wings as she stared at it. It was really mostly like a beetle, except that its backside was glowing green. A cross between a freaky firefly and a beetle. Better than a cockroach, but there was only one way to deal with bugs like that.
Erin curled her finger and gave the bug a damn good flick. It exploded.
The insect’s green abdomen burst into a splatter of green liquid as the rest of it flew off into the stream. Erin blinked as the green liquid covered the cutting board and splashed into the water.
Some of it landed on Erin’s arm.
“Ahh! Owowowowowow!”
Her arm plunged into the water. It was an instinctive reaction but it made the pain vanish. Still, Erin frantically scrubbed at the spot until all of the burning pain vanished.
“Acid flies. Okay, that’s completely wrong.”
—-
Her skin was red and sore from the brief contact with acid, but she was fine. Nevertheless, she washed both her body and the cutting board until she felt completely clean. This was less fun because Erin was also watching out for strange shadows in the water.
“Great. My arm hurts, and now my hand hurts.”
Erin stared at the dead fish as she walked back to the inn. The fish’s body was swarming with those little acid flies. They were probably laying eggs in it or something equally fun.
Briefly, Erin considered dragging the fish into the stream and letting all the buggers drown. Then she considered what would happen if all the flies landed on her and exploded.
“Right. Well, there’s only one thing to do in a situation like this.”
Erin raised first one, then both her middle fingers. Her injured right hand hurt like fire, but it still made her feel better.
“That’s for all of you.”
Then she went back to the inn.
—-
“I really should have brought a bucket.”
Erin stared at the ingredients lined up on the kitchen counter. Her stomach was rumbling, and she was in the mood for food. But she didn’t really want another breakfast, lunch, and dinner of blue fruit. Today she was in the mood for bread. Freshly baked bread.
Unfortunately that required water. And Erin really didn’t want to walk to the stream and back with a heavy bucket. But she needed water. She knew that. Somehow.
Was it instinct? Erin frowned and knocked on her skull. She had never made food, not really. Well, she’d made Mac and Cheese and instant ramen but that didn’t count. And that went for microwaves and ovens too. So why did she know that to make bread she needed flour, oil, salt, sugar, yeast, and some water? It had to be magic.
Or a skill.
“[Basic Cooking], huh?”
Erin stared at the washed cutting board. Yes, all the ingredients were here. It made sense; this was a kitchen. Kitchens had ingredients. Therefore she could make bread. Or dough. To make bread she’d have to bake it in an oven. Handily, this kitchen had an old oven that Erin’s instincts told her she could use. But to use the oven she needed fire.
She had no idea how to make a fire.
Whatever new ability she had to make food, it did not extend to making fire. Erin stared at the empty fireplace in the oven and thought.
“Sticks. You hit sticks together. Or rocks.”
She looked around. She had wood. There were lots of chairs and tables. What she didn’t have was matches. Or a lighter. Or a can full of gasoline and a flamethrower.
Erin went back to the kitchen. There had to be something to start fires in there. How else would you cook things?
“Right. Rummage time. I knew I saw a shelf full of weird stuff somewhere…”
She went back through the shelves. In her first search through the kitchen she’d put everything vaguely useful or non-rusted in the cupboard next to the food.
“Let’s see. Frying pan? No. Tongs? No. Hammer? Why does a kitchen need a hammer?”
Erin set the hammer aside and squinted. Behind that was something she hadn’t quite figured out. Well, two things. It was a rock and something else. Something weird.
“Is that…a horseshoe?”
No. It was way too small to be a horseshoe, and the wrong shape. Unless this world had really weird, small horses that was. But even then, why have horseshoes in a kitchen?
“Unless they ate horses.”
Erin stared at the horseshoe-thing. She stared at the rock. Slowly she slid the rock along the fire striker and watched sparks fly.
“Huh. So that’s what flint and steel looks like. It actually does look like Minecraft!”
Erin paused. She sighed and slapped herself gently.
“I’m an idiot.”
—-
Flint and steel was actually pretty fun to use. So long as you didn’t burn down the flammable, wooden inn around you by accident.
Erin peered in the large fireplace and fumbled with the flint and steel again.
“Dried grass…check. Broken chair…check. Fire?”
She slid the flint across the steel quickly and flinched as the sparks flew.
“Ow. Hot!”
The shower of sparks descended on the dry grass like a swarm of angry fireflies. And the tinder caught fire in places, and the fire grew.
Erin held her breath. Then she exhaled, blowing at the small flames like she’d seen television campers do.
“Damn. It went out.”
She struck the flint and steel again. This time she let the fires grow a bit and did not blow on them. Slowly, the small fires grew. She fed the small flame pieces of wood and grinned.
“Fire! Call me Promethus…Promethea.”
The warmth on her front became a little too hot so Erin scooted back. But she was grinning. Well, she was grinning until she sat on her bad hand.
“Okay. Pain. But now I can make bread! I’ve got all the ingredients. Right? Right. I just need flour, yeast, butter, a bit of salt and sugar and—”
Erin sighed.
“Oh yeah. Water. Great. Well, I can just go out and get some. It’s not like there’s a time limit or anything—”
She looked back at the fire she’d just started.
“Dammit.”
—-