No matter how much food I consumed the craving was always there in the back of my mind.
Yet I had no idea what it was I was craving for.
I am far past the spoilt milk.
I need protein and not just fish.
I am growing much faster than any of the other children, due to infusing myself with energy.
I still found hunger to be a pain.
When my stomach and intestines are empty for a long time they release a hormone into my blood sending signals to my hypothalamus making me feel hunger pains.
The energy from the atmosphere rejuvenated me but the effects wore off unless I ate and slept.
I could go about two weeks without eating or drinking but I would be in a sorry state.
It wasn't long before I caught a rabbit, the little creature was searching for food looking for small patches of red grass that were not too high or too hard for it to nibble on.
I followed it back to its den.
Reaching in with an energy tentacle, I wrap around it and drag it out.
I might have looked at it like a pet in my first life but at this point, I need to eat.
Fortunately for me, the young humanoid I had stolen memories from was taught to hunt and clean game.
I condense my energy outside of my hand and compress it into a thin blade sharpening the tip with my concentration molding a sharp knife.
It looks like a white blade when my energy is condensed into this form.
I immediately chop its head off with the energy knife and hang it with an energy tentacle until the blood is drained.
Quickly I skin it and remove its organs starting from the bowels.
I took a stone of flint I found near the stream and collected stalks of grass.
Starting a fire I rotated the rabbit above the fire like a rotisserie.
The smell was amazing and even with no seasoning it tasted delicious.
I think it might have to do with the atmospheric energy, I could tell that like me, the rabbit's organs are robust and it's blood-thick.
I had my senses out while I was making this to make sure that no one would sneak up on me.
The new technique I devised to hide my energy is called masking.
I was quite far about a football field away from the house so I wasn't too worried.
After finishing my meal, I dig a hole with my tentacle and bury the "evidence".
If someone were to watch a five-year-old gut and skin so effectively they might get suspicious I chuckled to myself.
Walking back, I step into the house and go directly to the room to rest under the covers, I don't see many children out.
After a day of work and not a lot of food the children sleep early after a meal.
Only older children who can hunt and eat from the wild are usually out and about, talking or coming back from the stream.
When I stepped into the room I looked over at Isla and Silla walking past their two beds that face each other I headed over to my corner near the window when Isla sat up and looked at me.
You missed food" she whispered, I am sure the boys didn't even notice as they ate her share by the looks of how tired she seemed. I smiled at her like I usually do and replied, "Food time now'?
Silla got up at this point and glared at the both of us signaling us it was time for her to sleep and that if we wanted to make noise to go outside.
Even with my share she is quite hungry she is growing a lot faster her breasts starting to peek out of her rags, even though she was growing fast her nutrition was not keeping up and she looked like a beanpole with lumps.
Isla gives me another worried look not wanting to get back into her covers and find me something to eat. I smile at her again and walk over to my bed getting underneath.
It was not long before Silla was taken away, I saw it coming but what I did not expect was for the boys to be so savage as soon as she left.
Without someone bigger putting them in check they bullied Isla and me heavily.
We didn't get any food if we wanted anything to eat in the morning we would have to get up before the boys.
Isla made the stew as Silla showed her, and we stuffed our faces before the boys got up making sure not to eat too much as the beatings were coming with a closed fist.
We rationed two pieces of bread each, it was not bad. That was until Kirle was in charge of picking up the rations of bread that were sent to us occasionally.
The fat man was still the one to come by after all these years.
Since I was now almost six and filling out, I was tasked with bringing back the cart of grass from the fields to the center of the cul de sac more often.
It was tiring but I relished the experience as it gave me a chance to exercise my muscles and get stronger.
After having a body for the first time in hundreds of years I was constantly overwhelmed and had a deep urge to reach my physical peak.
Often when I am to switch out with Kirle or Tume they would load up my cart and tell me to go back or walk away after loading it not switching with me at all.
I responded by keeping my head down and when talked to, smiling and nodding my head like an idiot, none the wiser.
With this increase in physical labor, I had an increase in consumption.
Because the eating times were so far in between I learned to stuff as much food as I could at night, going so far as to wait a few hours and eat again.
Nightly training was spent absorbing energy into my sore limbs.
When starting a fire, I would trap the smoke and smoke as much meat as I could wrapping it in the grass and stashing it in between my pillows to eat at night.
My body was quickly changing I noticed that shortly after my physical labor started picking up, I was not panting as much or getting tired dragging the cart.
When they see that I keep struggling to move one of the older children instead of taking over the cart would just dump a couple of bales, making it just manageable for me to push.
When I couldn't push it anymore I turned around and pulled it exercising all of my muscles.
I found that as I grew so did my white core.
My potential to house and condense more energy in my white core grew daily, and my hazy outer core was getting a milky streak around it, becoming purer and purer.
When my white ball is full, it spins slowly and purifies the outer core's energy.
Another major change was Isla and I's relationship.
Being the only two in the room now she was able to talk to me asking me about my thoughts and feelings.
She was curious, telling me her ideas of what was beyond the grass and where they take the big kids.
She was opening up about how scared she was of the boys.
We were both alike, we kept quiet and did not socialize with other children.
But we still overheard some things, most of the conversation was about out of the fields and finding out what was out there.
Some children suspected that the older ones were taken to work on a bigger field and eating meat.
Some thought they would be working with adults in the houses.
I heard different conjectures from working to being eaten by the adults, I didn't mind it, but it was time to make plans to leave seriously.
I shared my food with Isla often, so she didn't starve.
She was looking healthier than most of the kids around because she got to eat meat almost daily, but her dirt-covered face and thick tangled hair covered that.
She was growing to be a good girl.
We were surrounded by poverty and abandonment, but she never forgot her kindness.
I forgot there are people like her, roses that grow in concrete.
I was fishing at the lake, a rare opportunity now that I am considered a "big kid" and am part of the labor routine officially.
Sneaking away from the group I came with was easy enough, as no one paid much attention to me anyway, and now that I am bigger, I am not afraid to run into groups of children.
I still avoid them if I have a game with me, wouldn't want to start a fight for nothing.
I had just finished a training routine lifting myself above the ground, I found that I could move about for three minutes without being drained.
I could not test it out too high, for fear of being spotted, but it felt good knowing that I could make an immediate escape in the worst case.
As I send my tentacle deeper and deeper into the lake, I am not making any contact with fish. This confused me as I never lacked fish.
At this point, I don't use more energy than necessary to search out pure habit but since the water had a different environment, I had to exert more effort to search.
My wide tentacle is fifty yards long wiggling around trying to brush up against anything I can digest.
That is when it brushed against another layer of energy, after encompassing it with my tentacle it revealed a large egg shape that immediately darted towards me moving astonishingly fast in the water.
I rescind my energy, masking it until there is no trace of it besides the dim haze of my masked inner core hiding in my diaphragm.
At the rate that figure was swimming, they would get here before I could hit the red grass and hide, hell they might be able to just leap out of the water.
As I thought this a figure emerged from the water going as high as fifteen feet before landing on the surface, a thick white energy emerging and pinning me in place.
I stare at it, or her. It is a woman with pure white skin almost translucent. Her pitch-black hair dripped down her back with her eyes were completely black with pupils made of shimmer.
She had stunning features.
If it weren't for her skin being so pale you could see her veins, I would consider her the greatest beauty I have ever seen.
When she confirms that I am not moving she starts craning her head pupils widening and contracting.
Not finding what she was looking for she turned to me focusing all her attention.
I can feel her energy pressing against my skin wiggling like tiny parasites, my body is rejecting it fiercely my pores start to close, and I start to shake due to the pressure that surrounds me.
"You are quite strong little one" I am sure she can sense my muscle definition and how tightly she has me wound.
Her energy is much purer than my outer core but not as pure as my inner core.
I do not know if she has an inner core or not but the moment, she applies any more pressure breaking into my skin I was ready to retaliate
"Thank you" I replied calmly.
She raised a thin eyebrow.
"You don't seem too shocked to see me… was that your mana that was in our territory"? she asked.
"What is mana"?
"And where is your territory?" I calmly ask.
She smiles and I feel the pressure ease up on me although it is still there.
"Mana is the energy around us, and the great Sylph territory is below these very waters".
"We have a treaty with your Kingdoms and Mage associations, but someone seems to have been breaking it for a couple of fish no less".
I remain silent.
She stares at me for a long while before asking me "What are you called"?
"They call me Runt" I replied without missing a beat, "That's a horrible name," she said.
"It's better than not having one" At that she goes into a fit of laughter.
"Interesting boy, my name is Mislin".