After the split from Parker, Sparky was not happy. Rather than letting him perch on her shoulder like usual, Lasair needed to hold him tightly as she walked. If she let go for even a moment, he would try to fly away. After a few minutes of him tearing up her tunic with his claws, she had to hold him by the chest arm’s length away. While dangling from her hands, he tried scratching her, but the way she held him kept his front legs in place, and he couldn’t reach with his hind legs. He beat his wings, trying to pull himself away, but was no match for her iron grip. He flailed wildly to try and loosen it, but only succeeded in wearing himself out. She could feel his tiny lungs heaving in her hands.

Just when she thought he’d quit it, he bit her. His teeth dug deep into her forearm. She regretted not having any armor there, but doubted it would’ve done anything to block his razor-sharp teeth. He didn’t hold back. The bite hurt, and the instant he let go, gas starting spraying out.

“ NO! Bad! No biting!” She yelled, batting him on the snout.

Lasair adjusted her grip and pushed him down, holding his head and body flat to the ground with her injured arm. With her other arm, she reached into her bag for bandages. She pulled out a roll of dried and pressed deer intestine spun around a spool and wrapped it around the holes, forming an airtight seal. With gas flowing through their veins rather than blood, it was critical to cover the hole to prevent it from escaping. Cleaned intestine worked well to create an airtight seal, and there wasn’t much use for it otherwise.

With her injury taken care of, she looked back to Sparky and saw him clutching his snout. She looked a little closer and noticed a gleam in his eye. He was crying! She must’ve hit him too hard!

Well, it was payback for him biting her. Maybe now he’d know better than to do that again. She was shocked that he was willing to do that to get away from her, especially with how much he seemed to like her before.

Honestly, it hurt. Even more so than the bite. All that time spent feeding him and carrying him around, and he wanted to go with Parker? What did he ever do? He had no idea how to care for an animal! The whole time, he just sat there, drawing in his notebook, while SHE did everything! When Alex ambushed them, SHE ran in to protect him, not Parker! And after the confrontation, all Parker did was look at those rings, while she consoled Sparky! Why did he deserve affection and not her?!

She took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Getting mad wasn’t going to help.

She looked back down to Sparky, who was still holding his snout and whimpering. Well, she wasn’t gonna get him to like her more by hitting him. He lifted her hand off his back, and rather than scampering away, he laid on the ground, rubbing his nose.

“I don’t get it. What’s wrong with me? Why did you want to go with him?

She stared at him and got no response. Not even a little twitch.

“Great. Now I’m talking to you too. See what you’ve done?”

Just then, she remembered something, and her eyes went wide with shock.

“Wait, you don’t really understand me, right? If you do, I don’t actually want to cut you up and make stew out of you!”

Judging from the silence, she decided that wasn’t the case.

“Well, of course you can’t.”

Lasair sat down and crossed her legs, picking up Sparky and putting him in her lap. He tried crawling out, but she kept him in place, stroking his head. This time, he struggled much less and eventually settled.

“I shouldn’t have hit you.”

Sparky looked up and met her gaze. He wasn’t crying anymore, and he seemed to have calmed down.

Sitting there, she took in the scenery. They were in a wide-open field, covered in short green grass. They had made it quite a distance from the forest. Based on the stories, she expected there to be more flowers. Off in the distance, she could see goats and sheep wandering about. A dog chased them, and they huddled together, rushing away as it nipped at their feet. She watched as they ran into a large fenced-in area next to a wooden hut. She suddenly realized something.

Her group consisted of an orc and a dragon, they were out in a field, and there was a human settlement nearby.

They were completely exposed.

This was a new feeling for Lasair. Her whole life, her vision was limited by the thick trees. She wasn’t used to being able to see things more than 40 feet away. While it was amazing, it also had a pretty major drawback. Anything that wanted to get to them also had that privilege.

This sense of danger excited her. Unlike Parker, she had the critical thinking skills to keep her equipment rather than dropping all the important stuff and running. With her gear, she could live off the land indefinitely.

Yet, she felt something was missing.

She was probably just hungry. She was running low on food, so now it was a good time to think about hunting. Without a bow, killing game in the field would be difficult, but she would manage.

“Ok, I’m gonna let you go now. Promise not to run away?”

As expected, all she got was a weird look.

She raised her hands off Sparky, and he hopped out of her lap. If he didn’t understand her directly, he at least knew what she meant. He didn’t take off and fly away, but he also didn’t hop onto her shoulder like usual. As long as he didn’t run away, it was fine.

It took almost the whole day before she found any game to hunt. It was much harder to sneak up on something when there was nothing at all standing between it and you.

The prey she decided upon was an overconfident ram. Rather than running away, it stood its ground when it saw her approach. Once it became obvious the ram wouldn’t run, Lasair grinned. Finally, she would get to have a real fight! Parker never put up any resistance, and Alex was almost invincible when powered up by those rings. She bet without them he would have no chance against her.

Once she got too close, the ram kicked up dirt and began to charge. Rather than dodging the charge, she grabbed the ram by its horns and used its momentum to flip it over onto its back. Before it had the chance to get back up, she pulled out her axe and chopped off the beast’s head.

She then turned to Sparky, who watched from the sidelines.

“You see that? This is why you should listen to me!”

She wasted no time cleaning the carcass, and Sparky seemed a bit too eager to help. He must’ve been ready to eat this thing. Lasair didn’t even need to take out her knife; Sparky made all the cuts necessary to skin the ram. After pulling the hide free, she reached into her bag to get more of his special meat. It was a shame crimson mint tasted so awful; it was terrific at preserving food. She had about a third of what she started, and Sparky made quick work of it. It had taken him three whole days to eat the other two thirds, and he ate the rest in just one sitting. Once he finished scraping the meat clean off the bone, he started gnawing on the bone.

With him distracted, Lasair no longer had a helper. She sighed, and continued working alone.

Butchering the ram took up the rest of the day. It wasn’t a lot of work. Lasair was just not very good at it. She’d gotten them plenty of usable meat, but there was probably an equal amount left that they couldn’t use.

It didn’t matter. There was no way they could eat all that before it went bad anyway. The rest would get picked away by scavengers.

After collecting her spoils, She realized something vital. While, yes, she did bring her equipment, she did not bring anything capable of carrying almost 100 pounds of raw meat. They would have to leave most of it behind. She also realized she hadn’t been paying attention to Sparky.

She searched frantically, before seeing him in the exact same spot she left him, chewing on the last bit of bone. It had started at nearly the same length as him, and now it was short enough to fit just in his mouth.

That kept him busy. She would try to remember that for later.

Before smoking the meat, Lasair faced another unforeseen issue. Unlike in the forest, they were not surrounded by trees, and couldn’t make a fire by chopping one down. There weren’t even any sticks on the ground to use. She spent all that time finding a way to escape the forest, and she already needed to go back.

She sighed and wrapped as much meat as she could in the rawhide of the ram. If she hadn’t been so hasty, she could’ve just carried the thing to wherever they set up camp, but now she had to lug around this bloody makeshift sack filled with raw meat. Hopefully, she could get it cooked before the flies laid any eggs in it. She walked over to Sparky, still lost in his own little world gnawing on the bone, and poked him.

“Come on. Let’s go.” There was disappointment in her voice.

Sparky snapped out of his trance and spat out the remnant of the bone. He seemed disgusted for some reason. When Lasair began walking towards the forest, she was reassured to see him follow.

Once they reached the forest, she took out her axe and started cutting down a small tree, small enough where it wouldn’t take long, but big enough for smoking the meat. Once she finished chopping the logs down to wedges, she noticed Sparky had already set up a small fire. How he knew how to do this was still a mystery to her, but it wasn’t worth investigating. She figured she’d just struck gold with her companion.

Using the fire Sparky started, Lasair placed a layer of logs on top. Then, she surrounded the bottom layer in a box of logs 3 high. This created a chamber for the meat to smoke in. She pulled a metal grill that was much too large to fit out of her bag and placed it between the second and third log layers. She pulled out the largest chunks of ram meat she could find and covered the grill with a layer of it. She felt something poke her side, and turned to see Sparky, carrying a large branch from a different kind of tree in his mouth.

“Uh, thanks, but I already have enough wood.” She acknowledged.

Sparky dropped the branch and nudged it towards the fire.

“I don’t need it.” She was starting to get a little annoyed. He was just trying to help, but he didn’t know when to stop.

Lasair got up to find as many leafy branches as she could. They were necessary to stop the smoke from escaping the chamber. When she returned with an armful of branches to cover the makeshift smoker, she saw Sparky had pulled a log from the box. He was taking broken off bits of the branch he found and sliding them under into the fire. She sprinted over to their camp.

“Hey! Stop messing with that! You don’t know what you’re doing,” she chastised as she pulled him back from the fire.

Luckily, he hadn’t smothered the fire, or worse, collapsed the smoking chamber.

Now that she thought about it, maybe he did know what he was doing. He knew how to make that strange smokeless fire the night before, so why not this too? After investigating his work, she found he had sliced most of the branch off into chips and had pushed them under the grill. That’s when she realized she had completely forgotten the most important part of smoking meat—the wood choice.

She had just picked a random tree and made a fire out of it, and Sparky took the time to find an oak tree, cut it into chips, and put them into the fire. How did he know oak was good for long smokes? Now she was starting to get curious. How did he know all of this?

She glanced over to him, and he was laying down arms crossed, grumbling to himself. Had she been too harsh on him again?

She got his attention and made a show of putting the rest of the oak chips into the fire. He put on a show of still being upset, but his wagging tail told her otherwise.

After layering down branch after branch until the original fire couldn’t be seen under the foliage, Lasair took a seat. Now came the fun part. They got to wait overnight for the meat to smoke before getting to eat it.

In the meantime, she started setting up a spot to sleep. She stayed close to the fire to protect it. If any wild wolves or bears smelled it, she would be able to fight them off. The edge of the woods had much fewer branches and leaves covering the ground, so clearing a spot for her sleeping back didn’t take much time. She pulled her sleeping bag out of her knapsack and laid it on the ground. She was already tired from lugging around meat and logs, and a little rest until the food was done was pretty endearing to her.

She grabbed Sparky and pulled him with her into the sleeping bag. This time when he pulled himself out, she didn’t try to stop him. If he wanted to sleep alone, she wouldn’t stop him this time.

Before she knew it, she awoke the next morning. The sun had risen above the rolling hills in the distance. She shot out of her sleeping bag. She had overslept! All that work for that meat, and now it was all burnt away! She never even got the chance to smoke the rest of it!

She rushed over to the smoking chamber and found it was empty. The grill had been taken out, and the rawhide covered it. She lifted the covering and peered under, seeing the meat had been taken out while she was asleep. Except, some of the meat was missing.

Sparky must’ve taken it off the fire and eaten some. Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen him yet. She looked around for any signs of him and found nothing. She sat at the camp for over an hour, waiting for his return, before finally realizing he’d left her alone.