Day 48

you ever feel the time just blur by, like you're doing one thing then the next then when you look up the sun's setting, your pet dog is asleep, and your starving because you were busy skinning a dragon. I might have lost the metaphor, but you get the sentiment right? Fuck I hope someone finds these journals, else I'm only vividly describing my days to myself, but I guess it can help distract me from other things. God, I miss vegetables, and fruit, and beer, fuck I could go for a Quinness, ice-cold, poured just right, with some expensive beef ramen, now I just miss carbs. My stomach has flattened out, with the details of muscles slowly appearing, I guess I had accidentally gotten on a Keto diet on this wild world.

I was chewing on dragon jerky, savoring the heady beer taste, but wishing I could drink the real thing, I can cook and everything, but brewing is just a foreign concept to me, and id more than likely poison myself than make something drinkable. I need to find some sort of town, they'll have a beer, right? And bread, and fruits, and veggies, and just something other than this goddamn meat!

I was just about done skinning and removing the bones of the dragon thing when I noticed the sun was almost below the horizon, and I had to take my whole operation inside. I whistled for Lupe, no longer having to leave him on a leash, and he came running, the marker above his head visible from over a mile away, it could probably go further but that was the distance I was willing to test it. I tossed him some dragon meat, he caught it mid-air, leaping three feet, and started tearing in, standing by the door as I carried the table over, and trotted in, curling up by the main fire.

I maneuvered the table in, and dragged everything else in, piling everything in their respective spots, the meat snow cave, acting like a freezer, the leatherwork pile, which was still pretty full. The bone pile, the claw pile, and the surprisingly large pile of four wings taking up a fair amount of space. Lastly, there was the normal organ pile and the special organ section. So far I only had what appeared to be a gas sack and flint strikers from the dragon thing, but I had been careful with them, keeping them in the same orientation as when I carefully carved them out, not wanting a repeat of the snake venom and acid. The container was hastily built from stone, packed with snow, and left in a smaller hut I made, about three by three and five feet tall, quickly made to house such things, and built about 50 feet away from me, in case of explosion or acid mixtures.

I ate some stew, flavorful, and all, but you can only have the same thing so many times until its bland, and in the next couple of days, I was going to get sick of this. Thankfully I had half the dragon left, and its flavor would help add variety. I threw some bones in the long stew pot, along with snow to the brim, and a couple of logs under, and went to bed, passing out before I could even start meditating.

I had a similar dream as last time, a replay of the breakup and the hospital talk, still the modified version rather than the normal one, besides that it seemed the same as the burn-induced vision. I woke up to Lupe licking my Manaphage face bits, making me once again wish I had a mirror, maybe if I could get enough supplies, I could get a car mirror, the reflection from my phone was nice, but it didn't show the full extent of the damage, and maybe I could actually bring my car out, it would be nice to have, if anything I could at least leave it in the cave, right by the entrance, speaking of, I should go check that out, make sure I can still find it.

I rolled out of bed, cradling Lupe as I did, and got to my feet, rubbing his head in my arms, and walked out of my room into the main room, setting Lupe down, and grabbing the ladle, filling our food bowls, and going outside and filling two bowls with snow. I should make a pitcher or something. I melted the snow down into the water for Lupe and filled my cup the same way. Digging into the stew, I found that the beer flavor had blended well with the sweet-spicy lemon-mint, etc. that or I was much more desperate for something new than I thought.

I found that swallowing was different than before, since half my neck was now stone, moving and stretching, it still felt weird. It was one thing to use an arm that had a clear delineation between stone and flesh, but having part of my face be stone and flesh, stretching and moving felt weird, the balance felt off, the weight of the stone, it all felt different like I had less feeling in that part, and I found myself slightly slack-jawed from the weight difference.

I pulled on my robe, only to have it fall off, the burned part hadn't magically fixed itself last night, as much as I wished it had. I threw it on the table, and got to work. I grabbed some dragon hide, having found that the underside of it wasn't that rough, and cut off a piece large enough to be a sleeve and the upper portion of the chest. Then I carefully removed the burnt portions, the frayed leather having a crispy texture, and cut it out with the cat claw knife, its small curved shape easily cutting the leather and glided through the seams. I didn't take nearly as long as I thought, only about 30 minutes, and I was already mostly done.

I was on the last step, and quickly attached the dragon scale hide, it's dark gray complimenting the purple-blue of the leather, and honestly looked pretty good, for a coat made of untanned monster parts, and made in a shack on a freezing cold mountain. Anyway, I threw it on, finding that it felt perfect, the patch didn't seem to be chaffing, at least not on the Manaphage, so it was fine. I grabbed a large square of leather, and with a few deft movements made a simple satchel with a fair amount of room, and filled it with the meat paste stew, absolutely slopping in more than half of it in the bag, the warmth of it against my leg comforting. I added enough snow and meat and bones to fill it back to the brim, and added some logs, and left the hut.

I called Lupe to me, and started up the mountainside, the Manaphage letting me create handholds in the stone, allowing my slippery ascent with ease, and soon enough I made it up, and started forward, the snow up here slowly getting deeper, until it was waist high, and slowed my progress down to a crawl, with Lupe running around on the icy crust, watching me struggle along, a hint of laughter in his eyes, and the emoticon above his head showed a laughing face, so I wasn't too surprised. I made good progress, when the sun was at the horizon, marking the end of my progress for the day. I then got to work, carefully carving out space below the icy crust, letting it act as a makeshift roof, pulling Lupe close once I had made a decent cave with vents, and wrapped us up in my improved leather robe, the other layers helping a little to cushion me, the Manaphage on my body acting as a heater, warming me and Lupe, as the wind above whistled away. I quickly entered into meditation and fell asleep.