Two winters had now passed since the sudden and tragic death of Lilis mother. During this time she had grown somewhat as had her hair that was already touching the middle part of her back. During this time she had also constructed herself a new home on the other side of the yard opposite to where her old house was.
Due to her small stature and poor strength, she hadnt managed to move her mothers corpse out of the house. With a heavy heart, she had decided to leave her mother unburied and instead, she turned her old home into her mothers tomb. There her mother now had been lying for the past two winters, a constant reminder to her of her loss. So instead now she was living with the chickens in an even smaller home made out of sticks and straw that she had collected from the lakeside.
Left alone in the forest with nothing but the chickens as her companions, Lilis life suddenly turned into a real life-and-death struggle. Now she was forced to take care of the garden every day alone which proved to be extremely hard. Despite her best efforts small pests, rabbits and even deer kept coming to eat her food. Due to her small size, the animals were not intimidated in the slightest by her and more often than not she actually found herself fearing for her own life when faced with the big deer. Only thanks to Terminators assistance was she able to save some of the garden plants for herself.
Like so her everyday rations had quickly become small especially as she shared them with the chickens as well. During winters she had even resorted to eating bugs and worms. But by some miracle, she had survived through these two winters, although her body had now become extremely skinny and frail. She also hadnt grown much at all in height and feared that her growth might have been greatly affected by this lack of food.
Luckily her teeth had now almost completely developed so she could start to eat some better nutritious foods. The first target on her list was the rabbits who always tried to eat her cabbages. She had attempted to build a sharp stick fence around her garden, but it seemed to have little effect, especially on the deer who simply walked over it, but they would be a target of hers later once she became a bit stronger and taller. For now, she had decided to focus on the rabbits.
With this in mind, she had quickly decided to start digging holes and placing sharp sticks in them. After that, she would cover them with small sticks and leaves as she placed a small piece of cabbage on top as bait. Like so many traps were set around the nearby forest.
Along with this rabbit trap, she also started to work on a small primitive fish trap. She was slowly assembling stones into a circle on the shoreline of the small lake in hopes that once the fish would go in she could simply close it up with a single stone and trap them all inside. After that, the fish would be easy pickings for her and her wooden spear.
Other than that a lot of her time now was spent on trying to make rope out of plant fibers and learning how to start a fire with a simple stick and a piece of wood. Some of these things she knew something about but a lot of things required lots of thinking and learning for her.
Like so she had slowly started to educate herself on these primitive survival techniques. Soon as the fourth winter started to come around she found that her new life had turned into more work and hardship than her previous life ever was. Here she constantly found herself having to worry about the most basic of things like not dying of starvation, not getting stomped to death by a deer or eaten by a fox or something worse also during many cold winter nights she constantly felt like she was about to freeze to death and as such spent many sleepless nights attending to keeping a fire lit.
Also, there was the fear of injury or sickness. Her mother had already died of sickness because there were no medical supplies here or doctors. The only thing she could rely on was herself nobody was coming to save her if something bad were to happen here. By some miracle, none of these things had yet to occur to her and she had managed to keep herself somewhat healthy and alive so far.
Thinking all of this she did find herself a lot of the time wondering what her purpose here was. Why would she be reincarnated to this world only to suffer alone in the forest? Was this all just a big joke by god or just a punishment, or maybe this was the afterlife and she was living in hell without knowing it?
Many of these thoughts haunted her and the few dreams she had, but luckily she managed to keep herself constantly busy had kept most of these dark thoughts away from her mind. In the end, she found that life here in the forest with the chickens wasnt all that bad. It wasnt easy but it had its own type of charm to it as well.
Here the air was clean, there were no planes flying in the sky and polluting the air. Only the sounds of birds singing and the light breeze of the wind rustling the trees and bushes could be heard. Also, she didnt need to answer to anybody, she was her own boss and she could do whatever she wanted to do. She didnt need to pay anything for this land, this land was her land by the simple right of conquest. She had built something on this land and taken it for herself. Nobody was going to stop her, how could they since there wasnt anybody else here?
Despite her boasting, she still did find herself being lonely sometimes only having the chickens to talk to wasnt good for her mental health since they didnt even say anything back. At this rate, she feared her skills in reading, writing and even speaking were going to disappear. What if she one day met a person again would she seem like some primitive ape to them incapable of even speaking? What if she truly was alone in this world? What happened to Frank? Where was this bodies father, surely if he were still alive he would come to visit her at some point.
In frustration of these thoughts, she had decided to take her fate into her own hands and so she started exploring her surroundings. She had done this for at least a good couple of months. But she was still young and the forest was dense and hard to traverse. If she wasnt careful she might get lost or hurt badly. So with that in mind, she had set out to explore the forest only during the daytime and always with great care so as not to get lost or hurt.
Through her explorations, she had found out that the lake was indeed small with no streams leading away from it and all the surroundings around her house were nothing but forests all around. A truly disappointing discovery in her eyes which is why when her 4th winter approached she had decided to just wait in the safety of her shabby home for her fathers return. Surely the man would come at some point.
Then one night as she was warming next to her campfire, she suddenly heard the pained squeak of some animal in the dark forest. Grabbing a burning stick from the fire she immediately dashed into the forest with the stick acting as her torch to guide the way.
Running through the forest she couldnt hear the sound of the animal anymore, but soon she came to a stop at one of her straps that had been broken. Looking into the hole she could see that a rabbit was lying there.
Seeing this she felt mixed emotions on one hand she was happy to see that her trap had worked and that now she could eat, but on the other hand, she felt sad seeing the cute dead bunny lying there. There was a reason why she still held on to all the chickens despite being in need of food herself and that was because she had never killed an animal in her past life before. The thought of it just felt wrong to her. Sure the chickens produced eggs that she ate, but due to them not eating well the eggs were few and far between.
In defiance of these soft feelings, she shook her head and steeled her heart as she said.
" No, get a grip of yourself, Lili. You aint no girl your a boy, no your a man. I need to do this, this is a question of survival. I just have to pretend that this rabbit is just another one of those evil gang bangers who deserved to die. "
With Terminator covering her back once more she then proceeded to pull the dead rabbit out of the hole after which she removed the sharp sticks that were still stuck in its body and proceeded to drag the rabbit back to her home.
Once back in her yard, she proceeded to ready the rabbit for cooking. Remembering her past life she recalled having a conversation about this particular subject, how does one ready an animal for eating and how do you skin it? She remembered that the most important thing of all was bleeding the animal dry first.
Climbing onto a low-hanging branch Lili proceeded to tie a rope she had made onto it. Getting off the three she then tied the rabbit back feet to the rope so that the rabbit was left hanging in the air. After that, she needed to cut its head off so that the blood would then flow out of its body. With the blood spilling out the rabbit its meat should last longer.
Looking at the rabbit hanging there Lili gulped nervously. All she had was the small knife, with careful maintenance she had managed to keep it clean and sharp, but to cut through a rabbits head would not be easy. Especially she worried about cutting the spine.
Standing to her side were Terminator and his wives who seemed to be looking at her with great curiousity. Not wanting to seem weak in their eyes Lili once more took a deep breath and steeled her heart as she then stabbed the blade into the rabbit.
For the next hour or so she managed to skin the rabbit with a surprising amount of skill. After cutting the head she had to simply cut the skin around each back foot and carefully slit (or tear) the hide inside each leg while making sure not to damage the meat underneath.
After that she stripped the skin from the carcass by gently pulling downward. The motion was somewhat like that used when peeling a banana but a bit more forceful. Using her fingers she loosened any difficult spots she came across.
With the hide now loose she turned it inside out so that the fur was on the inside and the meaty part on the outside. Then came the simple part of putting the fur into cool water to soak. Using her fish trap that held no fish she placed the hide in there to soak. Soon she would need to clean it fully but now she was hungry.
Taking a deep breath of relief she then proceeded to the part she was most excited about. Looking at the rabbit head she hesitated for a moment. Right now she wasnt sure if she should have actually cut the entire head off or not.
Nonetheless, she then skinned the head and started to prepare a pot of boiling water. First, she tossed the entire head into the boiling water. Usually, she would not eat such things, but in nature, she didnt have the luxury of being picky or wasteful with her food.
After that, she needed to remove the intestines from the rabbit and separate the meat into smaller bits of meat. With no place to store her food, Lili tossed everything into the pot and left it there to boil except the intestines. The intestines were then dropped into the fish trap to soak alongside the rabbit pelt. Intestines would need to be washed thoroughly and then boiled for at least 15 minutes to cleanse them of any disease-causing bacteria. After that, they could be fried to soften them up for eating, but right now it was dark and she didnt have the time.
Returning to the pot she then used her wooden scoop to scoop out the rabbit head. Looking at it and its fleshy ears she felt like puking. Managing to hold it in she closed her eyes and blindly bit into its ear.
The next day as she awoke with a satisfied belly still full of rabbit meat, she found the rabbit meat still safe and soud soaking in the pot full of water. Walking to the lake shore she was met with a surprising sight. Her fish trap was full of fish that were nibbling on the intestines and the rabbit pelt.
Seeing this she quickly grabbed a large stone and blocked the fishes escape. In her trap, she could see at least 10 small fishes swimming in a circle. Looking at this scene she couldnt help but smile in joy. It seemed that she was finally going to eat well and maybe even survive this coming winter.