The meadow grass parted under Harold's boots as he stooped low, fingers working through the long stems.
He yanked them out in rough bundles, the roots clinging stubbornly to the soil.
Dry, fibrous, and brittle—perfect for kindling.
He shook each bunch free of dirt before tucking it under one arm.
"Alright," he muttered, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. "Step one: grass. Step two: sticks. Step three: don't die."
He forced a chuckle, though it fell flat against the heavy silence of the field.
The forest loomed just beyond the meadow.
Its shadows swallowed the ground, a green-black wall that looked less like trees and more like the open jaws of a predator.
Harold shifted the grass bundle under his arm, took a breath, and stepped inside.
The air cooled instantly.
Damp earth and moss filled his nose.
Leaves rustled overhead, alive with unseen things.
"Just sticks," Harold told himself, forcing his pace slow and deliberate. "Just firewood. Nothing with teeth."
He bent to scoop fallen branches, testing each with a snap of his wrist.
Some crumbled to rot.
Others rang dry and clean, breaking sharp and quick. Those went into his growing pile.
When he had an armful, he paused and looked up.
Shafts of pale light broke through the canopy, glimmering against bark and fern.
It would be enough fuel for one cooking, maybe two.
Not nearly enough to last.
With a sigh, Harold set the pile aside and began searching again.
That's when he saw them.
Red.
Tiny beads of red, scattered across a low shrub.
His stomach lurched before his brain caught up.
Berries.
He crouched, running a thumb across the plump surface of one.
They glistened like drops of blood, skin taut and thin.
Could be poison.
Could be food.
"Jini'll know," he muttered, tugging a few loose and stuffing them into his pocket.
The juice smeared across his palm, staining it crimson.
"She'll tell me if I'm about to commit berry-based suicide."
He moved on, keeping an eye out for more.
Before long, his other pocket bulged with a handful of small, nut-like shells pried from a crooked tree's branches.
Hard, oval, faintly sweet-smelling.
Another maybe-food.
Another maybe-death sentence.
By the time he circled back to his original pile of sticks, Harold's arms ached from carrying wood and his pockets sagged with his dubious haul.
Sweat plastered his shirt to his back.
Every rustle in the underbrush sent a shiver up his spine, but nothing lunged.
Nothing hunted him.
Not yet at least.
When the cave mouth finally appeared through the trees, Harold let out a shaky laugh of relief.
"Home sweet hole in the wall."
He adjusted his armful of sticks and trudged inside.
The smell hit him first.
Copper and musk.
Wet flesh and blood.
Jini was still at the doorway where he'd left her, crouched over the Rellak carcass.
Strips of meat lay neatly beside her, while heaps of bone and offal piled to her other side, with a show of a massacre like painting the dirt just before here.
The starving earth having gulped up most of the blood, but a thin layer still lingering on the surface.
Her clawed hand moved with surgical precision, slicing cleanly through sinew as though she'd been born with a scalpel.
Her gaze flicked up the instant Harold stepped through.
And just like that, the weight of the forest, the sweat, the aching arms—all of it felt small compared to the way she scowled at him.
He shifted awkwardly, hugging the bundle of firewood to his chest.
"…I brought sticks," Harold said lamely.
Her pupils narrowed to slits.
"You took too long," she snapped.
"I was—" he began, then stopped, biting back his defense.
She wasn't wrong.
He had lingered, distracted by berries and nuts like some forager instead of focusing only on firewood.
"I was thorough," he finished instead, forcing steadiness into his tone.
He nudged his pockets, where the foraged goods weighed heavy.
"Might've found us other food too. Or poison. Haven't decided yet."
Her eyes followed the motion, but her scowl didn't ease.
"You are slow," she said again, as if the point needed hammering.
Harold set the bundle down with a heavy exhale, shaking out his sore arms.
"Yeah, well," he muttered, "slow's better than dead."
Jini said nothing, only bent back over the carcass, her claw glinting wet in the glow of the cave fungi.
The sound of flesh being parted filled the silence.
Harold sat back against the wall, letting the tension bleed out of him.
For now, he was back.
For now, he had wood.
For now, his stomach might get something besides hollow grumbling.
He glanced at her again—still working, still scowling, every line of her body radiating irritation.
Somehow, he thought, that look meant he'd done something right.
Setting the sticks and reeds down in their own piles, he moved out steeling his stomach as he quickly summoned up one of the dowel rods used for casting before striking into the earth a short distance away from the cave entrance.
Moving with purpose, though from the corner of his eye he could tell Jini had questions about if he'd gone made.
After using the stick to dig out enough of a hole, he grabbed up the discarded parts and threw them into the garbage hole he'd dug, before covering it up with soil.
"That'll help, but eventually the smell will get out." Her voice laced with condesention rippled through the air.
"Hey better than nothing." he quipped back.
"Not like we couldnt just burn what we werent going to eat ourselves or anything..."
Oh... yeah guess she is right, god im an idiot trying to compete with an actual survivalist in this world.
Choosing not to dwell on it, Harold got up before making his way back over to the entrance, setting up a simple stone ringed fire pit, after digging another small hole in the ground.
Then with hope beyond hope in his heart he turned to look at Jini who had just finished dismantling the beast, and was washing her hands with a waterskin from her bag.