"Meat," Sol thought, his stomach giving a treacherous growl, he didn’t know how long has it been since this body tasted meat.
"I’ll get the pot," Lyra said, moving efficiently. "I’ll cook them up right away. A good stew will help you heal earlier."
Sol nodded absentmindedly, but immediately a memory surfaced from the depths of his predecessor’s brain. He recalled the "stew."
It wasn’t a stew, it was a fucking culinary crime. Lyra, bless her heart, had only one method of cooking: throw everything... skin, roots, and bitter greens...into a pot of water and boil it until it turned into a grey, flavorless sludge that tasted like hot mud and despair.
Sol shuddered just thinking about it.
But when he thought of everyone eating happily, he understood that to the people of this primitive era, food was just fuel. Taste was a luxury they didn’t understand. But Sol? He was a man from the modern era. His palate had been refined by centuries of culinary evolution, by flavor science, by the glorious excess of spices and MSG. The idea of eating that grey sludge made his soul wither.
"Wait!"
Sol hurriedly stepped in front of her, blocking the path to the cooking pot.
"No," he said, perhaps a little too forcefully. "I will cook today."
Lyra blinked, confused. The girls looked up, surprised. While there weren’t strict gender roles about cooking in the tribe...everyone did what was needed to survive... Sol had never once offered to touch a cooking utensil in his life. Like all glorious males of the modern era, he was usually the one waiting to be fed.
"No need," Lyra said, trying to step around him. "You are recovering. Sit down. I can cook."
"No, really," Sol insisted, gently taking the rabbit-creatures from her hands. "You’ve been working all day in the jungle. You rest. Let me handle this. I-i also want to... contribute."
Seeing his persistence, and perhaps too tired to argue, Lyra hesitated. "Okay... but do you know how? It’s just... fire and water."
"I’ll figure it out," Sol said with a confident grin. "Trust me."
He turned to the fire, inspecting the ingredients. In his mind, he was already categorizing them. The purple tubers needed roasting to caramelize the sugars. The rabbit-things needed to be skinned, gutted, and seared, definitely not boiled alive. He spotted some wild herbs in Arelia’s pile that smelled like wild garlic and lemon grass.
Jackpot.
"Alright," he thought, cracking his knuckles. "Let’s see what we’re working with."
He scanned the small prep area Lyra used. There was a clay pot for boiling water. A stone bowl. The obsidian knife. And... that was it.
"Salt?" he muttered, rummaging through a small pouch hanging near the fire. Empty.
"Herbs?" He picked up the leaves Arelia had been grinding. They smelled medicinal, like bitter antiseptic. Not exactly oregano.
He searched the woven basket frantically, hoping for anything—a wild onion, a ginger root, a peppercorn. But there was nothing. Just bland, starchy roots and bitter greens.
"Damn," Sol sighed internally. "This world really is in the Stone Age. No spices. No seasoning. Just raw calories."
As he stared at the bland ingredients, a memory from his predecessor flickered in his mind like a warning beacon.
He remembered walking near the edge of the thorny thicket a few months ago. He had seen a bush covered in small, bright red, curved berries. They looked juicy. The previous Sol, being hungry and stupid, had popped one into his mouth and chewed.
The burning.
It felt like he had swallowed a coal. His mouth had swelled, his eyes watered, and he had spent the next hour dunking his head in the river, screaming that he was dying. The Elders had slapped him when he got back, warning him never to touch the "Fire-Devil’s Droppings" again. They said it was a deadly poison that burned the stomach lining and rotted the gut.
Sol’s eyes lit up in the dim hut.
"Capsaicin," he whispered, a grin threatening to split his face. "It wasn’t poison. It was a chili pepper. A glorious, spicy, tongue-numbing chili."
The tribe thought it was death, but of course, he knew it was life.
"Tomorrow," he promised himself. "I’m finding that bush. But for tonight... technique will have to do."
He couldn’t make it flavorful, but he could at least make it edible.
He ignored the clay pot of water Lyra had already prepped. Instead, he took the crude bone knife and expertly skinned the rabbits. He carefully sliced off the thick layers of yellow fat clinging to the kidneys and the back.
"What are you doing?" Liora asked, peeking over his shoulder, her nose wrinkling. "You’re supposed to put the fat in the water to make the broth thick."
"Not today," Sol said mysteriously.
"You’ve been acting weird since you woke up."
Suddenly, the voice cut through the hut, sharp and suspicious. Sol froze, his hand hovering over the rabbit, he didn’t look up immediately, as his heart skipped a beat.
He turned slowly. Veyra was staring at him across the fire, her eyes narrowed into skeptical slits. She was leaning back against the wall, arms crossed, studying him like he was a puzzle she didn’t like.
"Weird how?" Sol asked, keeping his voice steady.
"Everything," Veyra said, ticking points off on her fingers. "You talk different. You walk different. "You stood up to Vurok. You talked back to Aunt. You volunteered to go into the jungle. And now... this." She pointed at the food. "You’ve never cooked a day in your life. You used to cry if smoke got in your eyes. Now you’re skinning rabbits like a skilled and talking about ’flavor’."
She leaned forward, the firelight casting sharp shadows on her angular face.
"Who are you trying to fool?"
The room seems to go silent, or maybe it was just his imagination.Anyways, it looked like Liora looked between them nervously and Arelia paused in her grinding of herbs.
Sol’s heart hammered against his ribs. Sharp, he thought. She’s too damn sharp.