The two of us continued to walk even after fighting the rat. Though my arm was fucked, It wasn’t really that bad, since it would be completely healed within a day or two.

At some point, after noticing the side effect of healing kicking in, I used the same technique as a few days ago, where I ‘borrowed’ some of the spider's sense of stability.

As Night started to fall, we began to make our way towards the village.

*You think they’ll let me in at some point soon?* 

her question was pretty deflating to ‘feel’ since, while she was hopeful, she was already aware that it was unlikely. 

“I’ll.. I’ll see what I can do,” while my words were meant to be hopeful, her being able to feel my emotions, made the words pretty empty. 

Trying to escape the sour atmosphere, I looked over to her, hoping to find an out.

As she towered over me, my eyes were drawn to the rat, whose corpse swung in her mouth as she walked. 

Her dinner.

While I wasn’t all too disturbed by the idea of eating rat (we had been eating monsters for a while now anyway) I still didn’t like the idea of eating it raw.

“You really okay with eating it like that?” I asked. 

It was a question I came to regret.

*You want to cook it? I wouldn’t mind trying ‘your’ ‘cooked food’.* 

She knew full well that I wasn’t trying to offer and was just looking for an excuse to ask me. 

Though, I guess it is a dumb question to ask if that wasn’t what I was going for. 

I hesitated, unsure of what I was getting myself into,

 “Why not? No idea how to cook ‘rat’, especially ‘monster rat’, but no harm in trying right?” 

 

After agreeing to cook, I decided I’d cook a stew since it was what I knew best. But I still needed a place to cook.

Instead of going back into the inhabited area, I figured taking stuff from around here would be easier.

There was a house close by so I decided to just look for stuff in there.  Actually, with the size of the building, It would be safer to call it a small manor.

Rummaging through the building, I realised how accustomed to taking stuff from random houses I had become.  It wasn’t like I was ‘really’ stealing, since no one lived there anymore, but it still wasn’t my house. I guess you do something enough times, and It’ll eventually become the norm. 

*Does your arm still hurt?* The spider asked, wanting to fill the void.

While bending down to check one of the cupboards, I replied “Yeah, It’ll take at least 2 days for it to get better. And it isn’t like Cooking for you will make it any better.” 

*You don’t need to whine abou- Oh, you found it?* She cut herself off, noticing my attention shift. 

“Yep, well, I still need to find onions, but I’m not sure If they would still be edible since they would’ve been here for at least 4 weeks. Actually, they’d definitely be off by now.”

 

After looking around the house with no luck, I decided to try my luck in the garden. 

I had seen some of the gardens through the windows, but they didn’t give it enough credit, as there were not one, not 2 but a total of 10 vegetable patches, each the size of a small hut.

The garden was enormous, easily covering more than double the area of the already large house. And with so many vegetable patches, it was perfect for plundering apart from the fact that most of the plants were wilting, including what I could recognise as onion bulbs. 

It wasn’t like I was a big garden person, but I was pretty sure that they’d still be edible, even if they had dried out, but I figured I’d find that out. 

I picked a couple of plants, and though some of them looked dead, I was lucky enough to find some seemingly edible ones.

The spider had followed me into the garden, so was stood towering above me. I was somewhat thankful since her shadow was covering me from the sun. 

“I’m just warning you, I can’t say if it’ll be any good, so-”

*it's not like it can be that bad, can it?* she cut me off.

“No, food can get very bad, actually, especially uncooked meat. Though I guess that’s not an iss-” a sudden realisation dawned on me:

“I’m going to need to cut that aren't I” I groaned, eyeing the rat she had slumped on the ground.

“I don’t even know where to start,”

I got started trying to cut it up, but I had absolutely no experience in doing so ever. Also, I had no idea how to gut the thing or anything like that.

So after a revolting hour of stabbing into the rat's stomach while holding the urge to gag, I decided to just cook the legs. 

Obviously ‘Just’ was the wrong word for it, since even trying to cut the thing was hard enough. Why I decided to agree to cooking was beyond me.

The spider, getting impatient with the cooking, decided to start eating the rat's torso while she waited. She was nice enough to make some distance between us though, since I was still queezy from trying to gut it. 

After nearly another hour or two, I finally managed to fully skin and cut the thing’s legs, though I had cut off tons of exes meat in the process.

The rest of the prep took no time, and since my parents had taught me how to make a fire, I hadn’t spent that long doing that either. 

After all that hassle, I had managed to fill up every pot from the house with the stew.

By the time the stew had cooked through, the sun had begun to set.

*Is it actually done? I thought I’d need to hunt tonight with how things were going.* 

“You could be a little grateful, I did just spend over 4 hours for you,”

She hesitated for a second, before sincerely answering, *yeah, thank you.*.

Then immediately to *Sooo…  can I eat it?* 

I was going to mess with her by holding off, but with her impatience seeping over to me, I also just wanted to try it.

So taking the pots off the fires, I dramatically pulled the lid off.

Oh, the smell.

My god the smell.

It was absolutely horrendous. I had no idea what I had done to it, but the smell was so bad I immediately took a step back and away. I didn’t think myself to have a light stomach, but this was disgusting.  

But just before I could give my apologies to the spider, 

I noticed she wasn’t fazed.

*you think it smells bad?* she asked. 

“Erm,” I muttered, trying not to open my mouth to the poison gas forming from the concoction, “You.. You sure you -chough- wanna eat that?”.

*I thought you said it was rude not to eat food made for you though?*

“Well, that's only if what they’ve made -urch- is food”

*Ah, ok. Well, I still want to try it.*

“ Well, guess I won’t stop you from poisoning yourself. But you’re going to need to leave it a minute to cool down since I doubt you’re immune to boiling water.” 

While talking, I had been steadily evacuating to under a tree some distance away. 

She started eating from one of the pots, and to my surprise, continued to eat from it. I don’t know how she could stomach it, but I guess different biology or something. 

She had gotten to the second last pot, and by that time I had gotten a little restless, just sitting back and doing nothing. And with how much she was enjoying it, I couldn’t hold myself back, I had to try it a bit. Smells can often be deceiving. 

I hesitated when I got within smelling distance,  but the smell caught me off guard. It was the same odour, but it didn’t seem nearly as bad as it had done before.

I could point to exactly why, She was infecting my sanity!

Inching my way forward, I picked up one of the spoons lying on the table and dipped it into my concoction. I pulled the spoon out and stared at it laying on my spoon. 

I brought it to my mouth like it was a dead rat and put it in. 

And immediately spat it out.

*You’re just being overdramatic!* the spider jested and even pushed me with one of her legs, which, since it was the limb of a semi-truck, actually flung me forward, narrowly letting me dodge the hot stew pot I otherwise would have headed into. 

Sliding into the ground, I luckily fell properly, landing on my ass instead of my face or back.  

“Wha- Cough..” I started to cough and inhale violently, “huuuuuhhhhh….cough, huh, cough,” it felt like someone had driven into me.  

I couldn’t concentrate on anything around me and continued to cough my lungs out. Eventually getting my bearings, I could focus. And I was Pissed.

“What The Fuck Was That?!?! Are You Trying To Fucking Kill me?!?” the spider, who could feel my anger clearly, responded in kind. 

*What!? What Did I Do?!? I Just Tried to pat You!?*.

“Your big enough to stand over a fucking Car, Your ‘pat’ is a fucking murder!”

*Oh yeah right, It wasn’t that bad, you're just being a crybaby, like always*

“Realy? Really? The one who can’t wait five ‘chough’ minutes without whining that it's boring is calling me the child?”

*Yeah,*

“You do fucking realise that if your ‘Pat’ had been a tiny bit closer to my spine, I’d be crippled for life right!?”

I, noticing what was happening, tried to calm down, which also helped her do the same. 

*Oh my- I really didn’t mean to ‘shout’ at you, I didn’t know that It got so… intense* 

Talking about feeling my emotions.

She then noticed something and became even more apologetic, *s… so… sorry, didn’t mean t-* 

I interrupted her “I know. It's fine just… You should probably not ‘touch’ people.” I figured I should probably add “Before you can control that strength that is.”

I was still wondering how the fuck she thought it was a good idea, but it was difficult to hold onto it when I could feel her honest apologeticness. Feeling apologetic towards myself was pretty weird though.

 

I realised how messy that might become’. I was pretty sure that I knew what happened. Since I got angry, she felt angry, and so she also got angry. Since she was angry, now along with my anger, I could also feel her anger, leading me to get more angry. 

I figured I might as well name it something, so I decided on ‘emotional feedback loop’ 

 

After the stress had worn out, she eventually continued to eat the substance I had brewed. The only difference was I was now sitting upright against the same tree after crawling there, building the courage to stand, which took about an hour. 

While the spider had finished eating quickly, she didn’t try to rush me up like she would have normally done. 

This was more than partly because she was still embarrassed about nearly committing manslaughter.

Though she had quieted down for a while, she didn’t stay that way for long, as she started talking normally as soon as I stood up. 

 

I started seeing the border in my view, and my stomach rumbled since I hadn’t had anything to eat after all that effort. 

The spider started to notice something, but I did before her. 

The guards were gone.

There was always at least one person walking around this area on lookout duty, but no one was there. Though it wasn’t much, It left me uneasy. 

“Can you-” 

*I’ll take a lap around,* she took the words out of my mouth. I guess in some sense, she did. 

The two of us ran in different directions, I into the village. 

There were people, but the mood was panicked. My hand immediately moved to the knife on my side, as I ran towards where the commotion seemed to be coming from. 

I picked up my pace, the general atmosphere making me anxious. Turning to the corner, I reached the centre of the commotion. The opening where I sleep. I pushed through. I could see a large crowd gathered around in a circle. And a faint light shining from its centre. 

Moving to the edge of the crowd, I leveraged my height to see what was going on in the centre. I could see the top of Nathen’s head but nothing else. But based on that, I could confirm what was happening.  But why did someone need healing?

Luckily I didn’t need to ask, since the mutter of a woman gave me the answer. 

“I said it. I said it! That ‘thing’ wasn’t human. If they had listened, ‘It’ wouldn’t have gotten away, I can’t bele….”

I had heard someone with the same voice before, talking poorly about Eric.

Had Eric bitten someone?