Nothing came to me.
What I did notice was that the wood Noctorno brought in was very dry. It went up like tinder and to keep the fire going I was using a lot of it. Not to mention, he’d been gone a long time.
But the wood was dry, it was also split so someone had prepared it, so he hadn’t gone out into the rain and gathered it. And he didn’t have to go very far to get it so perhaps there was a stash somewhere. And if he was gone much longer, the supply he left me would be gone, the fire would go out and he’d get pissed.
I didn’t like him pissed (which seemed to be his only emotion) so I didn’t want to make him more pissed.
Therefore, since I needed something to do, and I didn’t particularly relish freezing to death in this world (or any world for that matter), I decided to see if I could find the wood stash.
It wasn’t hard. I pulled aside the hides, noticed the thunder and lightning were gone, as was the driving rain, but the day was still gray, dreary and a persistent drizzle was falling. The mouth of the cave was huge, the preliminary space, though, was wide but not vast. There were two hide covered antechambers, the one I was in and another one I discovered which was full of split logs, kindling and more weapons – these, lances, knives, daggers, hatchets, hammers, clubs and a couple more swords.
Hmm. Seeing as his cave was heavily armed, it seemed Noctorno earned that scar through his lifestyle.
Picking my way carefully on my bare feet, five times (with much smaller loads than Noctorno could bear) across the rough surface of the main space of the cave and back, I replenished the wood stock, threw a couple more logs on the fire and climbed back under the hides.
I barely got them settled over me when I heard the snort of a horse and hooves on the stones outside.
Noctorno was home.
Drat.
Not long after, the pelt at the opening was thrown back and Noctorno was there.
I looked at him. He looked at me.
Then he looked at the fire.
His head turned and he looked at the reloaded stash of wood.
Then his head swung back in my direction and he didn’t try to hide his surprise.
Jeez, how lazy was I in this world? Only a moron, or someone really idle, would hang in a dark, damp, cold cave and not keep the fire burning.
Noctorno moved to the fire and I noticed he was carrying something over his shoulder. He swung it around and dropped two small, bloody, skinless carcasses that were hanging on a stick to the stone floor by the fire.
I stared at the carcasses.
Holy crap!
“Are those… rabbits?” I asked, sounding as aghast as I was.
He had been moving toward the table but stopped, his gaze sliced back to me and his lip curled.
“My deepest apologies, Cora, I didn’t bag your favored venison,” he stated sarcastically.
I stared at him in horror.
We were already having Thumper for lunch and he was apologizing that we weren’t eating Bambi.
Ick!
I couldn’t eat rabbit. And furthermore, I wasn’t hungry. Not for rabbit, not for anything.
This was a first. I could always eat. But no way was I eating Thumper.
He continued to the table, grabbed the iron rods from the bottom shelf and moved back to the fire and I decided not to share the state of my appetite seeing as he was wet, he looked (still) angry and he’d gone out to kill a couple furry critters so we wouldn’t starve to death in a cave. Therefore, I figured I should keep my mouth shut on that score.
He set up the apparatus which was, essentially, a rotisserie, over the fire and he set this up with the rabbit carcasses on it. Then he added more logs to the fire. Then he left and came back (three times) with even more logs to reload the pile.