Please, read the end note <3
From the bottom of my heart, thank you to my p4tr0ns: Morpheaus, and RTB <3 <3 <3 Become a p4tr0n too and read up to FOUR chapters ahead!:
h t t p s : / / w w w . p a t r e o n . c o m / t r a s h w i t h g l a s s e s
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I woke up early. And I mean early. It was barely day when someone stepped on my back.
"Wake up. It's time to go get some water", The girl with a ponytail frowned at me while she carried two clay pots.
"…Okay", I sighed, grabbed one of the pots from her hand, and started to follow her.
The last night had ended up confusing and contradicting: at the same time I was met with obvious discontent and the ponytail girl refused to talk with me, and instructed her sisters to not talk with me either, she offered me dinner, and allowed me to sleep outside her hut, near the fire once I told her I'd be sleeping in the forest for the next few days.
I guessed carrying one or two pots of water for her wouldn't be a big deal to pay her back for the (reluctant) kindness. It wasn't like I had lost my ability to feel comfortable once I unlocked my seals, after all.
We walked into the forest around the clearing and marched through the dead leaves and fallen branches in silence. The morning mist hadn't dissipated yet, and the forest around was humid, with lots of rotting foliage on the ground muffling the sounds of our steps, and slightly chilly, constantly emanating a pleasant rain smell.
We stumbled upon a berry bush, and the girl with a ponytail collected a couple of them, and threw one to me, which I caught easily and quickly ate it.
A burbling noise grew louder by the minute, and after some time, we were crouched by the river, filling up the jars with running fresh water.
On our way back, the girl signalized with one hand for both of us to stop. While eating the berries from the same bush she collected fruits before, a deer looked around, as cautious as the species seemed to always be.
The girl with a ponytail crouched down, put her pot to the side, slowly took the bow from her back, readied an arrow, and… shot!
She missed, however, and the deer immediately stopped what it was doing, and got on running.
Not much interested in any of that, I threw a look to the girl's face, and noticed her disappointed expression. It was only a deer, but it looked almost like she almost looked like those who failed to become apprentices in the Bear Mountain during the Selection festival.
I huffed, pointed my index finger to the running deer, and then pointed the finger to the skies. At the same time, eighteen meters away from us, right from beneath the deer, a stone spike sprouted from the ground, as sharp as a needle, and pierced the creature straight through its head, killing it instantly.
"Ah!", the girl with a ponytail gasped, eyes going wide at the event.
I walked towards the dead dear, and with just one hand, I threw it over my shoulder, barely even feeling the weight.
I nodded to the girl, and she shook her head from one side to the other, seeming to get hold of herself again.
"Wait", she called for me once I was already going back to the hut. "We prepare the body here. So not to attract creatures to the clearing."
It was a messy job, to skin all of the deer and remove its entrails, and then wash all of the blood staining our clothes and hands by the river once more, and my brute strength and magical skills didn't help me much then.
I tried to help the girl, but I ended up exploding one organ or two, and then she told me to just wait as she took care of that.
When we finally got back to the hut, it was finally properly morning, with the sun in the sky, and the Coyote encampment full of life again. I thought we finally would have some time to rest, but right as I was sitting by the fire again, the girl put a stone bowl and pestle before me.
"Grind", she threw me a corn and started to crush another vegetable herself.
I used magic to control the pestle and grind the corns automatically, but once more when I thought the work was done, the girl said, while staring at the pestles moving by themselves: "Hphm. Perfect. Now go collect firewood and lit the fire, it's time to cook."
"I don't need it", I lit the bonfire with magic, and kept it burning. "I can keep it indeterminately, as long as it's within 20 meters away from me."
"Then you need to catch firewood."
I almost sighed when I walked back into the forest and found myself collecting sticks and dried branches.
Once I got back from the quick trip and had the fire going on, however, the girl with a ponytail asked me with slightly more curiosity on her face than animosity: "Can you create dough too?"
"Maybe. But it's not recommended to eat food made with magic since it will suddenly disappear from inside of you at one point."
"Then, cut and roast the deer", she instructed me again and started to mix ingredients and prepare some kind of cornbread.
And there I went again, conjuring a metal knife and cutting through the meat and bone as if it wasn't even there. When I had everything cut and filling up a couple of buckets and I was about to start to roast everything, having the meat floating in the air and about to conjure a spike to go through it, the girl stopped me again: "Don't roast them all, just a couple of parts. We'll dry the rest with smoke."
I did as she said, and she threw the dough she knitted onto flat rocks near the fire, and I watched as they grew up just slightly.
I was about to sit down again, when the girl with a ponytail got up from her seat and announced: "Now, we go wash the clothes."
"Wha? Why didn't we do it before, when we went to the river?"
"If I knew you had super strength maybe we could have done it. But I didn't" It really seemed I wouldn't take a break for that day… "Joyline, take care of the cooking of meat and bread. You may each one bread each as breakfast" The girl entered her hut and woke up her little sisters.
"Mhm… Okay, big sis", a sleepy voice replied, and a girl too similar to Piri came out of the hut and carrying a doll, but with her hair tied on the right side of her head.
The little girl walked close to the fire, and sat down, watching the cooking food closely.
"I already know how to grind the corn too, big sis, you can ask me for help too."
"You sweety, don't worry about it and just sleep well, and grow up strong", the older sister hugged her younger sister from behind and kissed her on the forehead.
"But I want to be like big sister!"
"I used to sleep the entire day back when I was your age!"
"…Liar, you're always working."
"Uaaah… Where's the shaman, big sis?", Piri seemed to finally wake up.
"He's helping me with some tasks, Spirit-of-Happiness."
"Shaman, shaman! Look at this!", the little girl came running toward me, and hugged my leg, before backing down and getting serious all of a sudden. "Badie monster defeating magic! Hya!", she opened her arms and legs wide, and rolled on the ground, ending up on the same position as before. Then, with a big toothless smile, she explained: "I still don't know how to create magics, but I already have invented, like, a bunch of them!"
"…Cool. I bet you'll grow up and become a great shaman."
"Come on, let's go!", the older sister with a ponytail grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me away from her hut and her sisters. "And Spirit-of-Happiness… Just-Just don't bring any weird 'magical object' back home, okay?"
"Okaaaay!"
As I expected, that day I only rested at night. And though I didn't need to, I slept soundly.
*
"…Something exploded this spear finger's head too. It's just like the cave lion from before", my general examined the decomposing corpse.
"It doesn't matter, if the responsible for that get in our way, we kill it too", I replied, hitting the ground with the butt of my spear. "We shall continue marching. We're almost there… The coyote tribe! And I will have my revenge", I concluded gripping the clothes over my chest, hiding the many burning marks under itself.
"Yes, leader…", my general got up from the ground and signalized for the rest of the excursion to follow him with one of his two spears. Thirty strong warriors, all bear-mean.