Day 27

It took me an hour and a half of walking to get back, the body of the snake dragging on the ground, making a noticeable path behind me. The sun was setting at this point, and I started dissecting the snake. I removed what appeared to be a poison sac that was connected to its hollow fangs and another sac that was in the back of its throat, probably the one that contained the acid. I carefully placed the acid and poison sack in the stone bowl for storage, not knowing of any better place. The rest of the snake was built the same as the smaller one, just larger, and I hadn't absorbed it to a husk, so it was somewhat easier to process, the meat hadn't dried on to the scales, and peeled away much easier.

Eventually, I removed everything and separated it into piles like the bird-beast. I started roasting some of the snake meat on the fire, hoping it would taste just as good as the bird-beast when cooked. It took a much shorter time than the other meat and was quickly cooked to well done. Quickly, I pulled it away from the fire and grabbed it with the Manaphage, willing it to cool down. I waited for a second, then tested it, I had frozen it solid. Surprised, I tried taking a bite of the meat Popsicle and found it was frozen all the way through. So I tried heating it up again, slowly this time, with the Manaphage, and soon, it was warmed back up to body temp. I stopped it there, and took a bite, savoring the taste of the lemon and mint meat. It was kind of flaky closer to the center, where it seemed like it wasn't completely well done I guess. It was delicious, and I quickly gobbled up the rest.

I sat back when I was done eating, passively absorbing the light snow around my campsite and relaxing quietly, waiting for the sun to fully set, contemplating what I would do the next day. Idly, I pulled out my phone and noticed the green bar had appeared again, half full, on the right side of the screen. My options were still lit up, inviting me to click one. I thought about it, and almost tapped the diamond one, when I thought of something, and instead of tapping the diamond, I long held the speech bubble, thinking that I might pull up a separate menu like it would on my normal phone.

Instead, I started coughing violently, my vision went blurry, and my ears started ringing. I dropped my phone and clutched my head with my hand and the Manaphage doubled over by the sudden sensory overload. I could barely tell when the headache started but I felt it come to the forefront of my attention like a spike driven into my forehead right between the eyes. I curled up into a ball next to my fire for a while, eventually, the pain started to die down after who knows how long, because by the time it subsided enough, the moon was well overhead, and the air was much colder than during the day.

I shivered, even though I was close to the fire, I felt sick, and started coughing again, spitting out a large chunk of something that looked like black tar. I speared it with a stick, penetrating it all the way through, whatever it was, it wasn't living at least. Coughing again, I cleared out my throat of phlegm and spat some more, no more chunks of ... something coming up. I eventually sat up, feeling drowsy, when I smelled something chemical, like a mix of bleach and sulfur, mixed into a stomach rotting smell, thinking it was the chunk of tar stuff, I sniffed it and pulled my face away revolted, it smelled like puke and shit and all sorts of nasty human smells, but not like chemicals. I threw the tar stuff to the side, and looked at the stone bowl, seeing a small column of smoke coming out of it, quickly I got up, and looked into it from afar, expecting the worst. The sac of acid must have melted or leaked, and ate through the poison sac, mixing together to create the nauseating smell.

Quickly, I threw some snow in, hoping to dilute it or something. As much as I trusted the Manaphage, I didn't want to absorb the acid or try my luck with the poison again. I took a deep breath, before running over to the bowl, and picked it up, and rushed it over to the forest, maybe 100 feet from my campsite, and poured it out on a tree. I threw the bowl to the side and rushed away, taking a breath when I was well away from the stench. I heard it crackling when it hit the tree, I was going to have to investigate that in the morning, and tiredly entered my hut, first meditating, then I went to bed.

I noticed no change in my mindscape, maybe the waterfall had expanded, but not to a noticeable degree, as I sat atop it, looking over the forest. I drifted into sleep there and had an unremarkable dream. I got up soon enough, waking up feeling groggy, and laid there, to tired to get up, but to awake to fall asleep. It took a couple of minutes before I crawled out of bed, and got up. Pulling myself out of the hut to find it was an overcast day, for the first time I saw that big of clouds, hanging low in the sky, thick and dark, filling me with a feeling of dread. Quickly now, I started up my fire, wanting to be able to eat breakfast before it started raining or snowing. As I roasted my meat, I quickly walked over to the bowl and chemical spill.

The tree had a large splotch of rotten black wood, eating into it at the base, and the bowl was almost fully hallowed out. There wasn't a hole in the bottom, but the bowl had gotten melted a fair amount it seemed, only a half-inch of material left throughout the whole bowl, making it much lighter. I carefully picked it up, worried the acid was still in it. I filled it with snow and brought it back to camp, the wind had started picking up, and the now partially rotten tree was creaking.

I was back at camp when it started snowing, coming down lightly at first, but slowly getting thicker. I grabbed the other wing, and with some finagling, propped it up over the fire, covering it enough to block the snowfall and winds, both of which started picking up. Thinking quickly, I took a bunch of snow, and melted it on the wing, drenching it quickly enough, then when it and the sticks it was on were thoroughly covered in water, I froze it all together, hopefully successfully attaching it to the ground and stopping it from blowing away. I then did the same thing to my hut, not wanting to suddenly lose my roof again, especially during what looked to be a snowstorm. Hunkering down in my hut, I checked my phone, having grabbed it earlier, and saw that there was no change to the screen save the symbols had changed in the back, they were blurry now, and all the icons were dark again. i was watching my fire through my curtain, I waited through the day, and well into the night, going back through my journal entries, editing them, and looking over what I had gone through, marveling that I had actually lived through all of that nonsense.