Necessities and Sage

     Fritz’s eyes snapped open and he dully realized that he was still laying on the floor. For a moment he considered that he had just had a feverish dream that spawned the fox woman and the other half-humans that he had seen. Not to mention that crazy fashion magazine rag with the science fiction weather devices in it. Unfortunately, he was too exhausted to maintain the charade of denial and he slowly accepted that it was something he would have to get used to… eventually.

     Denial was not something that he could manage, anyhow. Not with the woman crouched over him with a perplexed and inquisitive expression. The Chemist reasoned he must have not been out for that long, maybe only a minute or two had the fatigue taken him down. He wanted to get up and he would have; if not for the overwhelming nausea and complete weakness that he felt. Instead he stared at the floor that he was parallel to and wondered if there were any wasted meals in his past that he could regret.

     “Fitz is okay?”

     Her voice wasn’t grating and if it weren’t for her broken language it wouldn’t have been peculiar for it to be heard narrating a documentary. Fritz wondered where she learned what she knew, surely such a primitive people would pass on such a powerful thing, but, why was it so similar to his own? Why is it a decayed version of his language? If it was an emergent feature of their people why wasn’t it different? Did they learn it from writing but then… how would they know what the characters sounded like?

     Closing his eyes and pushing the questions away he slurred lightly: “Yes, but, I’m not sure for how much longer.”

     He finally noticed how uncomfortable he was in his position, his side digging into his satchel and all the items inside jabbing back. With some effort he shifted himself till his back was on the floor and the satchel was right side up. His father had told him that a person could last weeks without food but his diet had been so meager that he felt like he couldn’t make one more day… perhaps two if he didn’t move any more. What’s more, is that his stomach was so starved that if his next meal was too rich, it would give him ulcers at best and at worst: it would kill him. It was a wretched thing his father had experienced in his poverty stricken youth. He said it was called ‘Re-feeding Syndrome’ and it killed many who had gotten their hands on a meal after starving for weeks.

     So lost in his thoughts he didn’t notice that his host was still staring at him intently, waiting for him to say something more. He didn’t realize she had gotten up and returned, at least until she held something in his vision and asked him a simple question.

     “What is this is?”

     She was holding up a large butane lighter, similar to one that he’d seen on some kind of chef television show. He wasn’t too confused by it but he wondered why it had taken this woman’s fancy. It just seemed out of place but, no matter, it would help with fire-starting if his own lighter ran out of fuel.

     “That is a lighter. It has a… kind of ‘water’ inside it that makes fire.”

     He was sure he saw her hair stand on end at the mention of fire but it was gone so quickly he was sure it was his imagination.

      “Fire… how does it… is fire? Do Odd-Ear know is how to… make nice?”

      The Chemist wasn’t exactly sure how or which question he should answer. He would have rather taken the effort to think about how he should gather food when his nausea faded. Then, he was struck by a rather sly and somewhat conniving idea. Perhaps he could use her thirst for knowledge to his advantage… just a little bit till he was feeling more well. Maybe it wasn’t as despicable as he thought, he rationalized; he was providing her something that she wanted while getting something in return. But, for now, he just wanted his stomach to stop feeling like it was strangling his other organs.

      “Fire… is… ah…” He wanted to go into a the scientific process of how fire words, but he was afraid she wouldn’t quite understand: “It’s when things get very hot, fire comes from it and starts to eat and breath. But fire will only eat what is hot, so for fire to stay ‘nice’ it needs to be fed slowly and be away from things that fire likes to eat.”

     It perhaps wasn’t the best of explanations. Surely, it wouldn’t have won him any adoring gazes from students at a lecture, but, the fox woman seemed to have understood him. In fact, by the rapid swishing of her tail it seemed to Fritz that he has, to her, divulged a deep and intrinsic secret of the universe.

      She brought the lighter closer to her face too look at it with a new found interest. Yet, in another moment, she had stood back up and lost her fascination in place of rummaging through her stockpile of artifacts. Before too long she returned and held up another item for him to classify for her.

      This time it was a small goose-necked tea kettle, maybe large enough to hold a pint of hot liquid and made of stainless steel. The Chemist couldn’t help but smirk at the sight of something that suddenly became so critically vital. He’d been wishing for a metal vessel to purify water in since his thirst on the first day; it would stand up to heating better than glass. Especially, in a time like this, it would be easier to make a thin broth for him to eat in a kettle rather than a wine bottle.

     “Oh… that is a ‘kettle.’ You put water in it and then put it over a fire. It makes the water hot. Uh… ‘Odd-Ears’ often put certain kinds of leaves or seeds into it to change the flavour of the water. When the water boils, it will whistle to let you know it is hot enough.”

     The woman tilted her head in a bit of confusion, running her hands over the vessel as if it would grant her a wish: “Boil? Wistle? Hows it… do that?”

     He grimaced and brought a hand up to wipe his face as he suddenly realized the magnitude of the task he had brought upon himself. She certainly got the better part of the deal, that is, if she agreed to his following proposition.

      He also realized he was starting to gather a bit more stubble upon his cheeks and chin in his inattention. To be on a lookout for a razor would be another goal he would have to seek out as time went on. That thought brought on some introspection at his health. He was starting to feel like he could only focus on a singular thought at a time and it had been a struggle to even conceptualize it. His focus was coming in and out like the tides and he was becoming lost in sidetracked branches of thought. It was time to give the wager.

      “Listen… oh…,” His mind immediately blanked as he realized that she had never told him her name: “Sorry, what’s your name?”

      She tucked the kettle under her arm and pointed at herself: “Me.”

      ‘Good god, she doesn’t have a name. I can’t just refer to her by that.’ He needed a name for her more than she needed one, that was clear. He would feel a bit rude and demanding if he had to continue calling her ‘You’ or ‘Hey.’

     “Okay, well… I’m not sure I understand. You asked me my name earlier, right?”

      She shook her head: “No… who’r yu.”

      His eyes narrowed and he turned his head to look back up at the ceiling: “Ah. I see.”

      He let out a groan as he sat up and propped himself up against one of the tables so he could better look the woman in the eye: “You’re going to need a name, Like I have. But, before that… Listen, I am very, very weak. I haven’t had anything to eat in days.”

      This next part was hard for him to actually say. It was so simple in his mind - all things were - but now here he was, at the end of his rope. He would have to do the hardest thing there was for a headstrong man to do and that was admit defeat and relinquish control into the hands of another. Circumstance had pushed him too far and now he had to rely on another in order to have a chance at survival.

      He grimaced as he said it: “If… you can go out and gather me food, at least till I am back to full strength, I’ll tell you more about all the things you like… at least as much as I know.”

     She seemed a bit confused at first, perhaps by the look on his face. However, in the next moment, her face brightened up with the look of unrivaled delight. Setting the kettle down and then rocketing up from her crouched position she gathered her crude bag and slung it over her head, already halfway towards the door: “I get Fitz food!”

     She paused for a moment and pointed at the lighter that she had left at the edge of the table: “Show…. Show me how fire lives.”

     And, with that, she vanished into the hallways, the sound of her bare feet slapping against the ground receding towards the building’s entrance. Fritz, meanwhile, was going through the herculean feat of pulling himself into a standing position.

     “Yes… I’ve certainly brought more trouble upon myself in this deal…” He predicted as he shakily found his footing.

      ‘I wonder how sharp her sense of smell is.’ The thought had come from nowhere and he considered how much of her physiology different to his own beyond her animal characteristics. ‘I imagine she can hear quite well with those ears… my sister would certainly be dying to study these bizarre attributes, were she here.’

     He would have shaken his head in an attempt to clear his mind if he wasn’t so sure he would wind back on the floor again. The best he could manage was to grab up the kettle that she had left behind at the cost of having to blink the stars away from his eyes after stooping to retrieve it. With the kettle and a quick look around for firewood he should have all he would need for a broth, save for his hunter coming back with food. If she ran to that orchard they had passed earlier he could make some kind of fruit tea with the skins after drinking the juices. Hopefully, he fretted, that wouldn’t be too harsh on his stomach.

      Making his own way back into the hallway Fritz figured that tonight would be a repeat of the previous one. His first objective was to find a safe area to contain a fire but he wanted to find a good place to sleep before it got too dark outside. In his previous life he rather enjoyed his time in university, in particular, the lectures and experiments he was privy too. Yet, here, he had a few doubts that he would be able to experience anything similar to his cultivation of knowledge like back then. This place, just like the city, felt oddly stripped of the regular objects that one would expect. The difference here, was, that it felt like the place had been looted rather than systematically cleaned out.

     As he shuffled through the unattended hallways, noticing the disturbed furniture and various posters and other hallway decorations in various states of disrepair from time or molestation by some figure in the past. The rooms he took the moments to peek into were much the same: desks and chairs toppled over or broken, shelves empty or with odd bits of disturbed trash, even the occasional broken window or rare hole in the wall. So far he had not found a place that he would be comfortable with spending the night in, hoping to find something with a bench or a couch, or at the very least a room with carpet to lay down on.

     It had taken him a few minutes, but, he decided that his search for a resting place could continue later. There were, after all, more floors and an entire wing of the building to search after he prepared a fire. He paused and ducked into one of the classrooms he had passed and grabbed a steel mesh trash bin he had seen earlier. It would be easier to cook or boil something on top of it rather than sticking it in the coals of a fire… at least in terms of retrieving it from the embers. Now it was time to find a place for the fire.

      There wasn’t really much of an area in front of the building, unless he wanted to start a fire in the streets… but then it would be a bastard and a half to drag all the wood out there.

      “Perhaps out back there would be more space.” He muttered as he turned left down another hallway. Out in front of him there was a glass door with light streaming through it and his suspicions were confirmed.

      This exit lead to a rather impressive courtyard, he wasn’t sure why, but the adjective ‘Victorian’ jumped to mind as he first looked over the garden. There were several bushes, trees, flowers and tall grasses, every single plant overgrown and fighting for resources in the absence of cultivation. In the middle of the yard there was a large, proud oak tree that was surrounded by a cobblestone walkway, the roots of the tree dislodging a few of the pavers. The paths and some of the special, more aesthetically pleasing bushes and flowers were guarded by wrought iron fences shaped into pleasant rows that showed the care and dedication that was once shown to the garden.

      It pained him to see it in such a - albeit, wildly beautiful - state of disrepair and neglect.

      Perhaps, he considered, he could bring it back to it’s former glory. Though, he was hardly a gardener nor a botanist, it could be something he could do while he waited to find his own end. Fritz reasoned he could teach that woman how to care for the garden and, in a more ambitious fantasy of his: the rest of the building that surrounded it.

      He shrugged and made his way towards the mighty oak tree, dragging the trash bin along with him before setting it in a reasonably clear area. It was still quite warm under the early afternoon sun but the wide canopy of the tree shaded the area well enough that there was a patch of bare earth in one section of the courtyard. He dumped his equipment and his satchel down in the area and set about the task of gathering wood; this time the supply came from the ample amounts of dead branches shed from the hardwood giant.

      Thankfully, much of the timber was rather dry and in good quantities. In a few minutes he had a few arm-loads stacked up beside the overturned bin and he set about breaking off the small twigs and bits of bark to make a bed of kindling. Fritz then turned his attention to the bin, pulling his multi-tool from the bag as he tilted the mesh can to take a look at it. It would be a pain to do, but, cutting a door in the side of it would make it easier to feed in sticks to keep the fire going.

      After he exposed the wire cutters on the tool he paused for a moment, wondering if it was worth the effort. The brief instance of hesitation, however, was quickly brushed aside and be began to cut though each link in the mesh with the cutters. It was tedious, sure, but sitting on the ground in the shade was a nice way to break up the day. He hadn’t quite realized it till now, but this was the first day in quite a while that he had to sit down and rest from all of his running.

      The breeze was light, the bugs that buzzed around and inspected the plants were docile and only rarely bothered him and there was the floral aroma of many kinds of flowers in the air. He had managed to cut about midway down the bin when another particular scent popped out of the swirling odours. Another nostalgic scent, but, this one was much kinder and more beautiful than the previous one he experienced. It was his mum’s favorite flower: Sage.

     He smiled to himself as he allowed his mind to take itself back to it’s memories of Mom. She just adored the plant, using the dried leaves to make potpourri and light teas as well as decorating the garden with the living plant with it’s blue, violet and pink flower buds. Fritz also recalled photos of the younger versions of his parents on their hikes, the flower present on the straps of his father’s pack and in his mother’s hair.

      As he clipped away more of the mesh, a shoddy ‘door’ began to form in the side of the waste basket. His hand was starting to cramp a bit from using the knife. It, after all, was designed to have many tools built into it; however, that came at the price of being less comfortable and effective at doing the jobs the individual tools would have excelled at.

      ‘No matter,’ He thought, as he let his focus and eyes wander. It wasn’t too big of a deal and it would be temporary until a better solution was found. As he let his sight drift he noticed the clump of sage that he had been smelling, sitting in a patch of sunlight just at the very edge of the oak’s shade. It looked a bit out of place to him, considering how well planned the gardens were. It was just off one of the cobbled paths where grasses would normally grow and the plant was growing around one of the iron fence posts. Perhaps some lucky seeds dropped from a bird made it grow there? It was unlikely but not impossible.

     However, as he payed more attention he noticed there were several similar groupings of the plant throughout the courtyard. He was a bit confused but he didn’t think more of it and finished up his bit of vandalism to the bin. A younger child version of himself would have placed it onto his head like some kind of pretend knight’s helmet. He let a slight smile come to his face again as he placed it in the dirt and began stacking up the tinder on top of the kindling and then placed the progressively heavier firewood in a ‘tent’ above that.

     Around this time Sage had come back, her return heralded by the squeaking hydraulic arm on the glass door that lead into the yard. He turned to acknowledge her arrival but was immediately gob-smacked with surprise. The expectation he had was for her to return with fruits but, instead, her mouth and hands were tinged with red and clutched in the fingers of one of them were two rabbits.

      Fritz was a little bit shocked and a light chill of fear scuttled down his spine at the sight, like the look of a predator after a kill. He suddenly realized that was precisely what he was looking at. Sage was most certainly an efficient and confident hunter, a clear truth now that she had, apparently, ran down and killed rabbits in such a short length of time. Yet, she smiled in an unintentionally macabre way, the viscera in sharp contrast to her… previously unnoticed and sharp teeth. She had teeth similar to that as the average human but her canines were much longer and came to finer points, slotting neatly against the bicuspids. It was… a bit unnerving and uncanny to see on a person once you’ve noticed it.

     “See! Fitz! Fassmeat.” She presented the rabbits proudly before passing them off into her other hand and reaching into her bag and pulling out an orange: “and tree meats.”

     The Chemist swallowed his surprise and the mild, primal terror and attempted to return her smile: “That… is great, um… why did you get rabbits?”

      She looked at the small, lifeless mammals for a moment before sitting down next to Fritz and laying them out before him: “Rahbits? Oh…”

      “Hungry too,” The Fox Woman said, pointing to herself before she dumped the rest of her harvest from her hide bag.

      “Ahh… I see. Do you happen to eat those… raw?” Fritz said with another wave of nausea rising up his chest to his throat.

      “Rah?”

       “Yes, raw, uncooked. It… ah… hmm,” He paused as he tried to think of a way to explain what ‘cooking’ was to this woman but, he realized, it would be better to just show her.

       “I’ll show you and explain. Just watch and don’t touch this;” He gestured to the trashcan with the unlit fire: “It will get very hot, though you can’t see it.”

      She nodded quietly, the pupils of her eyes widening a bit and her tail swishing a few times across the soil. The ‘rabbits’ were easier enough to catch… if she caught something more difficult… maybe she would learn something even more interesting. She wasn’t sure if that is how the Oddear shared things, but, Fritz seemed to understand. Certainly much more than her.

      He cleared his throat and dragged the bottles filled with water out of the satchel and began pouring the liquid into the kettle. After he set the kettle on the underside of the overturned waste bin he fished the lighter from his bag and sparked the flammable gas into a small, blue flame. Fritz heard a sharp gasp of either fright or excitement from his side as the tinder ignited and he then slowly coaxed the embers into flame by feeding the thin twigs into the heart of it and gently blowing onto the new coals. It took a few moments for the flame to grow into it’s own sustaining fire, but it hungrily consumed the sticks and the licking tendrils of heat began to stroke the bottom of the trash bin.

      Turning his attention to the oranges he peeled one and - not able to control himself any longer - squeezed the juices of it into his mouth. His lips puckered at the citrus liquid and an unbidden groan of euphoria escaped from him as the flavour exploded across his tongue. Fresh fruit… another luxury that he had forgotten and taken for granted until now. He then began to drop the pulp and the rind into the pot before pausing, noticing some flowers nestled along with the oranges.

      “Huh… more Sage.” He murmured, picking up one of the flowers delicately between thumb and fore-finger. It was curious that she had brought back a few of them.

      Fritz exchanged the flower for another fruit to to exsanguinate, looking at the woman for a few moments while he thought and consumed. She was being a bit fidgety, her eyes darting between himself and the fire that was slowly growing in intensity, the blood around her mouth slowly drying and becoming crusty. Frankly, he couldn’t bear to take the spatter of blood seriously anymore and he tore apart the orange and tossed it in the kettle before pulling another bottle of water and a rag from the satchel.

      Dousing the rag with the water he turned to the fox woman, presenting the dampened cloth to her: “Here, wipe the blood from your face.”

      With a nod she took the cloth and began to delicately scrub the gore from her face while Fritz continued to talk: “So, I take it you have planted all of the Sage in this garden. Do you like this kind of flower? Is that why you gathered them?”

      She gave another nod: “Like how they look… also smell.” Then she paused for a moment, the blood wiped from her face before she grabbed one of the flowers.

      “Whats ‘plant’? ‘N ‘flower’? They have names?”

       Fritz stood up and moved to one of the sage patches to pluck a few of the leaves from the stocks, speaking as he did so: “By ‘plant’ I mean the action of placing a plant in the ground so it can grow. Some of them grow flowers and, yes, us ‘Oddears’ like to name things so that we have a better understanding about them and how they connect with other things. At least… it makes it easier to understand them, which is still a difficult process… an unending, but fulfilling process.”

     He returned to the kettle, the water letting off slight tendrils of steam from it’s open top and he dropped the leaves inside: “How do you like the name of this plant? Sage… would you like to share that name?”

     Her ears flicked once and she looked down at the flower in her blood flecked fingers: “Things… can share names?”

     The Chemist allowed himself another light smile and he nodded to her before turning to kneel before the fire to stoke it with more fuel: “Yes, that they can. It’s common for thousands of Oddears to be given the same name by their parents. Sage, as well, is a name given to a lot of related plants, though, they have more names we use to tell them apart.”

     Replacing the kettle lid, he sat back and began to peal open another fruit to eat, the rediscovered pleasure of flavour overriding his worry about eating too much food. The tea, he had hoped, would help his stomach. All in all, he thought, this wasn’t the worst thing he had faced, even if the starvation was the closest thing to killing him… aside from being gunned down.

     “Alright, can you pull the skin off of the rabbits? I’ll show you what cooking is.” He gestured to the two dead rodents and then grabbed one of the longer sticks he had gathered and began to sharpen one of the ends into a shallow point.

      Sage set about as she was ordered, though her method was a bit barbaric: using her teeth to rip open the pelt behind the neck before ripping off the skin with the ease of someone taking off a soaked sock. Presented to him were the naked animals before he had even finished his whittling, their bare muscle glistening in the air. Fritz, trying to recall his father’s attempt at training him on how to dress an animal, flicked out the blade on his knife and began to cut out the internal organs of the creature. All he needed to do, he remembered, was not to cut open the stomach or intestines and taint the meat.

     After a bit, he had pulled all of the gibbets and viscera from what was once the animal’s chest and abdominal cavity, pausing for a moment to pull out what he was reasonably sure was the heart and the liver. Then, satisfied that he had done to the best of his skills, he spitted the rabbit and propped the end of the stick against the back of the cut trash bin and waited for the flesh to cook. He set about gutting the next one, placing the livers in the kettle and leaving the hearts on the the flat metal bottom of the bin to cook, the water in the kettle bubbling and starting to become a roiling boil.

     As the fire burn down to blistering hot coals and the juices of the rabbit dripped down onto them, an intoxicating aroma began to envelop the two squatting around the fire. Fritz’s own mouth was threatening to spill a river of saliva from the smell and Sage seemed to be in a similar yet a more novel state of anticipation of the meal. He wondered what it would be like to have eaten everything raw for your entire life and to, for the very first time, witness your food being cooked and to wonder what it tasted like.

      She turned to him, pointing at the browning meat on the stick: “Wh-what makes it smell like… this?”

      Swallowing the saliva he nodded at the cooking meat: “Cooking meat or… cooking anything to eat, breaks down the proteins and fats…” he trailed off, noticing the confusion on his companion’s face before revising his lecture: “See… it… makes the meat… less tough so it’s easier to eat and your stomach… get’s full quicker. That smell is it cooking.”

      He scowled at himself, trying to figure out some way to tell her that breaking down the complex proteins in meat makes it easier to digest. He can’t quite recall from where he heard it - most likely from somewhere in his university schooling - but, it was that cooking food allowed our stomaches to grow smaller so our brains could grow bigger. Less effort by our bodies to process food meant more time to spend on recognizing patterns and honing our tool use.

     However, Sage seemed to understand, nodding enthusiastically: “Whens it done?”

     Fritz shook his head, his self doubt fading a slight amount as he looked to his watch; suddenly realizing that was worthless as he had never cooked over an open flame. As he looked up from his watch the kettle began to lightly whistle before becoming a keen whistle, a white blast of steam coming from the goose-neck spout. He jumped up and took the kettle off the homemade hob and set it on the ground, the whistle dying with a whimper as he set it to the side to cool.

     Before too long, after pulling the meat off the coals several times to cut it open to check if it was done, the rabbit eventually was. He gave the lot to Sage to eat while he poured the brew into one of the empty bottles, taking a cautious swig of the hot beverage. It was of a bizarre flavour, the combination of liver, herb and citrus giving him pause as to what he was thinking for making such a concoction. He was hungry enough to not care over much, but, in better times this would be the last thing he would consider doing to a perfectly good kettle.

     Sage, on the other hand, was wolfing down the rabbit with ecstatic glee and Fritz spitted the other rabbit and placed it over the coals so that she could have it when it was cooked. From the long walk this morning to the more recent culinary endeavors, the chemist was feeling close to collapse from all the little events of the day. He sat back against the massive trunk of the oak and slowly drank his strange tea.

     In another thirty minutes the fire was put out and all the food and tea was consumed. Sage had experienced the first meal of what would become a life-long habit of cooked food and the use of fire. To say that she was elated would be a complete understatement, the smoked taste of the meat and the warmth it had while she ate it was a revelation. The fascination she had with Oddears would be more valuable to her than she could have ever known.

     Fritz, finding some luck as he continued his previous search for a place to sleep, found a teachers lounge of sorts. It didn’t have any windows, which gave him some peace of mind, but, that meant there was hardly any light. What it lacked in light it made up for with shelving, some dead appliances and, most importantly, a couch in what appeared to be decent condition. From here he fantasized in his drowsy state: he would scavenge and build up a neat and tidy ‘post-apocalyptic’ home base of sorts. The kind of thing that showed up in those movies in the movies and books his father adored.

     For the first time in a while, perhaps due to the lack of security and comfort over these past years, he truly felt as though he was where he belonged. There was no danger from society here, just the threat of the natural world. It was a predictable, honorable danger that never smote you in the back or slowly crushed you down over your life. Here, with no one to hold obligations and responsibility to, he truly was free and left to his own devices. With his knowledge and supplies; along with the decaying ruins of this foreign civilization he could, in time, build anything he desired to create. The power and materials where all there for Fritz alone to exploit.

     As he laid on the couch, fading into a comfortable, warm sleep he had a thought that made him clownishly giddy. Though, he could scarcely remember what made him so happy come the morning.

       ‘Maybe I was wrong… perhaps this is my Heaven.’