Blood Inheritance (ON HOLD)

twenty one: ash root and dreams

Hey guys! Here's the next chapter :) Sorry for my absence...

p.o.v: fox goldtree

I prepared our feast of dried rabbit's meat and cooked Ash Root. The root came from a plant known as the Ash Flower, which typically was grey or blue in colour and liked to grow in ashes, though it also grew near certain trees in the forest. When you killed it for its roots, you were supposed to discard the leaves and flowers into the fire you cooked the root in, so that the plant would grow again from the ashes.

The plant, when raw, was poisonous. The root tasted horribly bitter and was pretty much inedible; so much so that healers used it to force people to vomit when they had consumed the plant, even though the raw root itself was also poisonous. But this could only save someone if the toxins hadn't already reached the bloodstream.

To cook it and make it edible, you skewered the root with a stick and held it above the flames. This way, the toxins would drip from the root into the fire and burn. Cooked, the root was mellow, and high in fibre and essential vitamins. It was also carbohydrate heavy, great for travelling long distances. But you had to make sure you had cooked it through, otherwise you might be poisoned and die.

Jove had taught me this.

Elias, Kai and Luka chomped into the root as we sat around the fire, happy to eat something more sustainable then just dried meat. Luka was the only one blissfully ignorant of the possibility of being poisoned.

I was barely content. The Ash Root reminded me of Jove and everything that had happened, and I struggled not to slip into my memories.

Everyone was so hungry, that there was no talk, until Luka, across from me, finished and spoke up.

"How long will it take us to get to the City?"

"A few days," Kai said, glancing to his right at Luka.

"How many days is a few?"

"About four."

"Five or six with Luka," I intervened, even though I knew it would bother him. We had barely reached this destination today, and there was no way he would continue that pace over the next few days. Perhaps tomorrow we'd just manage it again, but the sudden change in diet and amount of exercise would wear him down.

I could just see Luka frown from the light flickering over his face, but he wasn't upset. He was smart, he knew he was much less fit than us, and foreign to this sort of environment.

Elias, on my left, gave me a scolding sort of look, to which I shrugged, and Kai chuckled, as he always does whenever I say anything vaguely blunt.

Kai pulled a spade from his satchel. "I'm going to the toilet!"

"What?" Luka stared at him, "how?"

"What ya do is you go behind a tree, dig a hole, do your business, and bury it!"

Luka pulled a look of disgust. "What about toilet paper?"

"Doesn't exist here. Leaves are a good substitute."

Luka groaned, lying onto his back, swinging his arms out and almost hitting Elias in the process. "I can't believe it. This place is literally medieval."

"That's the truest thing I've ever heard you say." Kai observed, then disappeared behind the trees.

"Goodnight." I said, copying Luka and lying down.

"Sleep well, Fox, Luka." Elias said, and I heard him shuffling around.

"Elias..." Luka murmured.