Cooking with Wild Game (with my Greyhound-Monster-Dog Thing)

I had acquired the metal needed to make a knife or any other pointy objects that might need constructing, now I need something to heat them over. Barry was being uncooperative, preferring to curl up on the other side of the crater a ways away from me. I could see him keeping one eye open. I’m sure I could at least count on him to guard against any truant prey that wandered close by.

I began my preparation by lighting a fire. I had plenty of kindling thanks to my experimenting earlier. And by a stroke of luck I figured out that I could light the wood on fire by dragging it across the ground really hard and fast. I’d like to thank my super strength for that.

The fire was going. I dragged the Poison Deer over to the fire, I swear I wasn’t going to eat it. As I brought it over I could feel Barry’s anticipation. He really wanted me to bite it didn’t he, both literally and then figuratively?

I wasn’t as concerned about keeping the Poising deer in tact so I took it’s teeth and stabbed into it’s ghostly white pelt. If It has silver teeth than that might indicate…aha! It’s bones were the same. What the hell was this thing, and more importantly, how was my new pet able to take it down. The dog raised an eyebrow as though reading my mind.

I wasn’t super fond of dogs, I’ll admit it. I was a cat person in my previous life. I just couldn’t see the appeal of them and as I got older a dog would have been damn near impossible to take care of. They were loud and always wanted attention and couldn’t use the bathroom by themselves. You literally can’t go anywhere or get anything done with them around. My brother’s family had four and he wonders why I never visited him; I kid, that was only one of the reasons.

The Poison Deer’s blood was blue which reminded me of a classic film from the golden age of entertainment, I forget the name of the movie but it involved aliens with blue blood. It was pretty funny. Movies from that era had a levity that movies and shows nowadays couldn’t quite capture. Hollywood, California was a nostalgic name for modern film buffs. Natural disaster after natural disaster pelted America’s west coast and eventually they moved most movie productions to Canada. Hollywood’s elite moved out to whole bunch of different places, buying land hoping to reestablish the entertainment capital of the world by their own hands. Hollywood, Pensylvania. Hollywood, Ohio. Hollywood, Arizona. Hollywood, Massachusetts. Burton, North Carolina. Del Toro, Nevada. Evansville, Tennessee. Cage Town, Louisiana. These were just a few of the places established to become new movie hubs. It was even more contentious than the “steaming wars” of old.

A stinging pain snapped me out of my reminiscing. The blue blood had gotten on my hands and was starting to burn. I ran over to the lake and washed it off. It seemed the blood was highly acidic. I went back to retrieving the creature’s bones.

I finally finished getting out all the big ones. It’s legs were half my whole body, it was kind of jarring. I think It could safely be said between the dog, the squirrel, and this deer that the size of an average animal here was 2-3 times larger than the animals I was used to back home. I was also half my original size, so the size difference was stark.

I placed the bones over the fire making sure that very little air could escape, then watched and carefully tended the fire. I wanted to get it as hot as possible and then allow it to cool down.

Once all that was done, I lifted up the bones to reveal the charcoal.

I set up the fire once more with the charcoal at the center. It was getting pretty late by this point. Barry was fast asleep and he’d managed to get over himself enough to scooch up beside the fire. It must have been approaching midnight. I hadn’t stayed up this late in a looooong time. The benefits of being in a younger body.

My stomach growled louder than any beast I’d heard around the forest. I felt the urge to shush it. Turned out making dinner in the woods with no utensils was a more involved process than I’d initially thought it would be. The things we took for granted.

It was time to get to work. I picked up the gravel around the fire and used my immense strength to mold a wall around my fire to block the wind. It was really very breezy tonight but it was better to be safe. The large bones were heating a bit more evenly after that. I set the teeth on top of the thicker bones. Theoretically a fire with charcoal as fuel should burn far over the required melting point, however this was an alien planet so perhaps this wasn’t normal silver.

There were so many unknowns. I had to examine every single detail of my new life and environment.

The silver teeth began to soften. While watching the fire and the teeth I suddenly realized I had no way of removing or shaping the molten silver.

My brain went vegitative for a second, all that work and it was all for nothing. I never claimed to be smart or to know anything about anything, and apparently this was the limit of my knowledge and resourcefulness.

Common sense and cultural osmosis can only get you so far. It should also be noted I’ve been out of education for over a century. I was barely able to think at all for the last few years. It shouldn’t have been all that surprising that I had to stop there, in fact it was more surprising that I could remember any of it.

“Motherf*****!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. Barry jumped up in shock.

I kicked over the fire I’d made.

“Barry! Lay down!” He immediately did as I commanded. He laid flat on the ground. I rested my head on his stomach. It was late and I was grouchy, “If you bite me, you die.” It was too late for this nonsense, this had to be my old man brain peeking it’s head out. I’d noticed that my mannerisms and way of speaking and thinking had changed it bit since I’d gotten here. I was still me. Or was I? There was a comic book I read in that entertainment course, called “Swamp Guy” or “Monster Thing” or something like that, and in it some guy died in a swamp and a monster with all his memories took his place. The monster believed he had been that guy, so is he still technically the same person? Maybe I was like that.

There was something about that tugging at my brain as I drifted off to sleep for the night.

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Birds chirped their morning greetings as I groggily sat up. My pillow was vibrating for some reason.

Oh right, I fell asleep on Barry. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes. What was wrong? I lazily looked him over, noticing his legs crossed tight it dawned on me, “You have to go to the bathroom?”

Barry whimpered. “Well, go.” I waved him off and he bolted back up the hill.

Everything I’d set up last night was laying in a pile. I had a toppled pile of dirt and a toppled pile of silver bones and a toppled pile of charcoal.

What was I going to do. My stomach was beginning to hurt. I suppose if meat was temporarily out of my grasp that I could see if some salad would ease my hunger.

I traversed up the crater and gathered some harmless looking leaves and grass. The thought of putting this stuff in my mouth wasn’t really appetizing. Salads weren’t my go to food in my previous life. Ramen and sushi flowed through my veins. Curry was excellent as well. Rice, bread, pizza, pudding, I suddenly started daydreaming about all the foods I hadn’t been able to eat in decades. Given time I’d start going down the list alphabetically.

Once Barry got back from his toilet break, I had him sniff the stuff I’d gathered and made sure he knew what he’d get if he lied. All stick and no carrot was the name of the game when it came to Barry…carrots…carrots...

I quickly stuffed the green bundle into my mouth, chewed it without tasting it and swallowed. It caught in my throat and made me gag but I chased it down with water.

After about five minutes the pain from my stomach subsided. I immediately got up and fetched more.

20 minutes later I’d stripped an entire tree. Even I was astonished at the amount of leaves I’d eaten and there were no longer any weeds along the lip of the crater. And I was finally full. Barry stared in astonishment.

I couldn’t stop myself. It wasn’t that it tasted very good, it was just compulsion. I mean I hadn’t eaten in almost three days, and who know how long this girl had gone since eating before that.

Still, it was impressive. I just kept imagining that I was eating actual food and once I’d started it was hard to stop.

After another 20 minutes of lounging around and then a quick bath, I was ready to set out.

I really wanted to finish my cooking utensils so that I could properly eat meat. I felt it was even more important that the meat be properly cooked since I was part herbivore. Eating raw meat felt dangerous. Plus, I wanted to feel a sense of accomplishment, this was my first “quest” here in the new world. So, the first objective was finding a heat resistant material that I could use to shape my new knives.

I stuck a few of the teeth and bones in the pockets of my overalls and whistled for Barry to join me. “Your lead, Barry.” He hung his head sadly.

It was time to officially start my adventure into a new world!