Essentia Animus

32-Paining Hunger

The morning continued to pass, leaving the girls unoccupied in their growing boredom. Lunch was quickly approaching, something which would come with new challenges.

Sryine checked over their supplies, realizing that they would need to set up some sort of campfire in order to heat up their food. She really did not like this idea in the least, not only because the food they would be heating up was helpings of the classic hunter gruel. The simple concept of sitting by a campfire still bothered her, the burning fire inspiring thoughts of dread. They had some other rations to work with, even if such bars had a taste and texture about as interesting as tree bark. They might not even be nearly as filling either, but they were at least supposed to be nutritious, and wouldn't involve any complicated preparation processes.

"Here you go, some food to get you by. Riyxia, I've got some for you too." "What is this? I've worked with woodcrafts that look more edible." "It's supposed to still be food, good for the trails and everything." "But, what about actual food? Even the usual stuff, I've at least gotten used to it." "Oh that? Well, we have that too, but think about it. Getting such stuff ready is going to take a bit of work, stuff that might be kinda distracting, would have us let down our guard and everything. It might even attract some unwanted attention." "So we get our food and something to do. How is that a problem again?" "Vwyx, stop being so irrational. You know that distractions are a huge deal. That's how Riyxia got hurt last time." Sryine might be leading with much of the other excuses to have Vwyx settle down, but they were still really good excuses. Vwyx was feeling like they were wasting their time, like they should consider finding another location and trying to get something done there. Mentioning food in the process only made her irritation worse, as the need for lunch loomed over them. Riyxia took her own offering without verbalizing any complaints, though she really didn't like when Sryine brought up such unwanted reminders of her previous failures. Her spectre didn't even stop it's duty as she tried to herself both keep watch and eat at the same time, pushing herself to not mess things up.

Vwyx ate her bar in silence, finding that arguing her perspective was proving to be too challenging. The bar was especially dry too, making her parched even after drinking some of her supply of water. Overall, she was fairly unsatisfied with her circumstances. Sure, this was supposed to be some kind of training in patience and discipline, that made sense. She'd gone through plenty of such trials in the past, waiting for things to happen. A bunch of her woodworking projects had involved patience, in deliveries, discussions, even wood drying from tasks such as painting. Waiting for paint to dry was itself a very trying task, but it still felt like things were going somewhere. Here, they weren't waiting on anything specific, it felt instead like they were avoiding getting work done. If she knew something would be coming eventually, she could at least feel a bit better about the circumstances, but as things stood there was all the possibility that they would simply be sitting here until it was time to pack up and go home, everything being completed. The distant sound of conflict she could faintly hear with her human ears did not help this point, places she could go to find people she could help. Suffering all this on an empty stomach probably didn't help either, the bar being similarly unsatisfying as well.

Taking from Riyxia's example, Vwyx looked for a better location to keep watch, the idea of at least keeping watch hopefully being at least more productive than simply waiting. She found a simple enough perch to reach and settled in observantly. To keep herself further occupied, she started also forming a nearby rock into a series of perfectly round spheres. Left to this pattern, a giant pile of throwing spheres developed beside her. As she picked up a new rock, she failed to notice the whirl of a figure fade back away underground as it's hiding spot was revealed. A few more spheres later, and her pile shifted under its own rounded weight, a few spheres bouncing away and falling into a nearby hole. When one of the spheres connected with the eye of one of the underground beasts, it was startled and then irritated. Taking to its example, the pack of beasts swarmed to the surface, exposing their serpentine scales to the sun as they hissed at the girls.