Chapter 160: Tasteless Meat
Liraya woke to the grey-gold light of early dawn filtering through the thick canopy. She lay curled under the rock shelf overhang she had found last night.
After defeating the boars, she had tried to get some sleep, but then the storm hit. So, everything around her felt damp now. Water dripped steadily from leaves overhead. The ground smelled of wet earth and crushed plants.
Though her makeshift shelter of branches and broad leaves had mostly held together through the night, one corner still had collapsed under the rain, but the rest stayed in place. That’s how she managed to get past the night.
She stared at it for a moment and felt a small, tired sense of relief, thinking at least she was alive.
She pushed herself up slowly. Her body protested with every movement. Muscles she had never truly felt before ached deep in her arms and back from the fight with the boar. Her hands were scraped and dirty. The cut on her palm from yesterday throbbed under the strip of cloth she had tied around it.
The dead boar still lay where it had fallen. After the brutal fight with it, the second one had not returned during the night. She noted that fact with quiet satisfaction. Her guess about the creatures had been correct for once. Small victories like this were all she had right now.
Then the hunger slammed into her properly.
It started as a sharp twist in her stomach, stronger than the dull ache from yesterday morning. This felt urgent, demanding. Her body had burned through everything it had during the fight and the storm. Now it wanted payment.
She sat there for a long moment, pressing a hand against her belly as if that could quiet it. She had watched mortals complain about hunger for thousands of years. But she had never understood how vicious it could feel until it clawed at her now from the inside.
She looked at the boar again. Almost instantly, she knew what needed to happen. Skin it. Butcher it. Cook whatever she could salvage.
But even though she was willing to sacrifice her pride to eat this beast, she had nothing. No knife. No tools. Nothing but her bare hands and whatever stones she could find on the ground to use as a knife.
So, she started searching. Something she could use as a knife to skin the beast and possibly cut its meat.
She picked up rocks one after another, testing their weight and edges. The first three shattered uselessly when she tried to shape them. Sharp fragments flew everywhere. The fourth gave her a decent flake, but she grabbed it wrong, and it sliced deep into her palm. Fresh blood welled up fast, mixing with the dried blood already there. She cursed under her breath and tore another strip from the bottom of her already ruined dress. The fabric was already torn in so many places that it barely counted as clothing anymore. She wrapped the cut tightly, wincing as the cloth pressed against the wound.
"Damn it all," she muttered, her voice was small, only for her to hear. "This body is useless."
Even though she was complaining, she still kept working. Each failure taught her hands something new. The angle. The pressure. The way the stone needed to break. Her mind already knew the theory perfectly, but her fingers had to learn through pain and mistakes.
By the time she finally held something that resembled a crude blade, ugly, uneven, and unlikely to last more than a few cuts, she guessed an hour had passed. Her shoulders burned with fatigue. Her cut palm stung worse than before. Sweat was mixed with dirt on her face. But she didn’t care for beauty at this point. Hunger was making her body go numb as time passed.
She moved to the boar.
The skinning was brutal. The blade slipped constantly. Her hands kept making the wrong motions before her brain could correct them. Blood and fat coated her fingers. The foul smell of dried blood filled her nose and made her stomach turn even as the hunger gnawed harder.
Sometimes she cut too deeply in places and wasted good meat. She even sliced her own fingers twice more. Each time she stopped, she wrapped the new cuts with more strips of her dress and kept going. The work was slow, messy, and exhausting.
After the first fifteen minutes, she had almost nothing usable. But she did not stop. She adjusted and learned. By the time she finished carving off the first decent portions, her arms shook and trembled, and her knees felt weak.
Even with those weak legs, she gathered dry twigs and branches that had fallen during the storm last night. Starting the fire took fourteen attempts today instead of the twenty-seven from yesterday. Each failed spark made her jaw clench tighter. When the flames finally caught, she piled on larger pieces and sat back, staring at the small blaze. The heat felt good against her cold, damp skin.
Then she cooked the raw meat directly over the flames.
When it was done, it came out tough, stringy, and completely tasteless. With no salt, no seasoning, the meat was just charred flesh.
She still tore off pieces with her teeth and chewed slowly. It was the best thing she had tasted since waking up in this weak mortal body.
While she ate silently and hungrily as if she hadn’t eaten for days, her thoughts drifted.
She remembered the Pantheon. The long table where the gods would gather, even though none of them needed to eat. They did it for the warmth, the company, and the simple pleasure of sharing a meal. She could almost feel the wooden bench under her, hear the low murmur of voices, smell the rich, well-seasoned food that had always been there, even though she never appreciated it.
One particular evening stood out in her memory. The table had felt especially full that night. There was warm light. Laughter mixed with serious talk. She could not remember the exact words spoken at that table anymore. Only the feeling of belonging there was left inside her mortal brain. The feeling of not being alone.
A tear slipped down her cheek without her wanting to. She wiped it away roughly with the back of her hand, the one not holding the piece of meat, and kept chewing the hard meat. She refused to give the tear any more attention than that.
"Stupid body," she whispered bitterly. "Making me feel all this weakness."
She thought about Kronos. The one who had thrown her into this mess. The one who had stripped her of her divine power and left her here to survive like a mortal. Anger flared hot in her chest, mixing with the hunger.
"Damn you, Kronos," she muttered under her breath, her voice was low and venomous. "You wanted me to learn what it means to struggle? Fine. I’m struggling. I’m bleeding and starving and crying over nothing. Is this what you wanted to see?"
Another tear fell. She wiped it away harder this time and tore off another piece of meat with more force than necessary.
She was still eating, jaw working steadily, when something moved in the bushes directly ahead of her.
Liraya froze mid-bite. Her eyes locked onto the spot where the leaves shook. The half-eaten meat suddenly felt heavy in her hand. Every muscle in her body tensed as she stared into the dense undergrowth.
The bushes rustled again, harder this time. Branches snapped.
Whatever was coming, it was big.
Author note: If you’ve already come to this point, then please leave a rating for my story. I would appreciate it very much. Also, if you like my Chapters, then please support me by giving me power stones.
