The First Runner

Maze? More Like Amazing...ly Awful

Dinner slapped.

I don't even know how to explain it without sounding unhinged, but I swear this pork changed my DNA.

Which is wild, because I don't even remember ever eating pork before this. Like—I might've? At some school barbecue? Or maybe that one buffet where everything tasted vaguely like sadness and sneeze? But this? This wasn't pork. This was divine intervention in meat form.

I sat cross-legged on the floor like a caveman with emotional damage, shoveling food into my mouth while Bark lay across from me with his own personal meat trophy. Not even scraps—an actual, respectable slab of pork. He looked at it like someone had just proposed to him.

"Go on, king," I whispered. "Eat like the prince you are."

He didn't hesitate. He went full demon mode—snarling, chewing, occasionally stopping to snort like a warthog at a five-star resort. Bark was living his best life, and honestly? Same.

I took a bite.

"Oh my god," I gasped. "Oh my actual God in heaven with angels and everything. Is this legal?"

I couldn't tell if I was going to cry or levitate. Possibly both. I chewed, eyes watering, heart full. "Why does this taste like forgiveness? Like if my childhood trauma wore a chef's hat and said 'I'm sorry, bestie'?"

Bark sneezed pork juice onto the floor and kept going.

I groaned, half-laughing. "I'm not even sure I like pork. What even is pork? Is it pig? I mean—yes, obviously. But like... why does it taste like a warm hug and a tax refund?"

Bark flopped sideways and started licking the plate. I leaned back, chewing slowly, trying to process the fact that I might've just awakened a new religion.

"This is what people mean when they say food is healing," I muttered, licking sauce off my fingers like some feral raccoon monk. "This is therapy. This is pork-based therapy."

We sat there for a while, a girl and her chaos dog, bathed in warm light, smelling like victory and meat grease. I couldn't stop smiling.

"I don't even care if we're cursed," I said aloud. "This was worth it."

Bark let out a satisfied grunt that said I would die for this meat.

Honestly? Me too.

I didn't so much finish eating as I reached a spiritual plateau. A moment where my stomach sighed, my soul exhaled, and my whole body slumped backward in full-bellied glory. I lay there on the kitchen floor like a medieval noblewoman fainting after too much roast, staring at the wood-paneled ceiling like it held answers to the universe.

Bark was still chewing—slow, methodical, like he'd entered a trance. There was a smear of pork grease on his left ear. He looked like a toddler after a birthday cake: messy, unapologetic, and absolutely blissed out.

I let my hand rest on my belly, which now felt three times its normal size. "I'm gonna explode," I murmured to no one in particular. "But like, in a glamorous way. Glitter and pork confetti."

The kitchen was warm and quiet now. There was the occasional snap of the fire in the hearth, the soft clink of Bark's teeth against bone, and the faint hum of night outside the little cottage walls. I'd never eaten that much meat in one sitting before. I didn't even know I could. But it was as if something had unlatched in me—some survival switch that said we eat now, and I'd just... listened.

Eventually, I sat up, wiped my hands on a rag, and padded barefoot across the creaky wooden floor to the side table where I'd dumped the notebook I found earlier. It was old, leather-bound, with a spine that cracked when I bent it open, and pages the color of chamomile tea. Honestly, it felt too nice to be writing in while still mildly covered in pork juice. But I grabbed it anyway, along with a stubby pencil that had seen better days.