Surviving in the woods on my own proved much harder than I could’ve ever imagined. I’d been scavenging for food for six weeks now, growing increasingly hungrier every day.
After losing my knife to a scary looking snake-medusa creature in the swamp about a week ago, I had no weapons. I’d been eating mostly berries and mushrooms, but only the kind I could recognize. Since I wasn’t thoroughly familiar with the localplant life, I was afraid of eating something poisonous and dying, which would be a sad ending to my far-from-wonderful life.
The orc had been a busy man. If I could even call an orc a man, of course. Coming from the Avilet Kingdom in the world of Helfallow, I had never seen a bog orc before. They were a reclusive kind, living in the remote Wetlands. I’d read about them, and knew that they were primitive creatures, living in the mostly uncivilized Wetlands, in a tribally structured society. Or in other words, they were sentient beings but hardly intelligent.
This one seemed to live on his own. I hadn’t seen anyone else around his cabin. His dwelling was old, made with thick oak logs darkened by time. But the orc kept the place clean. In addition to the fire pit with a metal grate where the orc had cooked most of his meals, there was a wide wooden barrel tub propped over a river rock oven.
After killing the boar, he’d hauled it to his cabin, butchered it, and had been processing and preserving the meat ever since. The orc clearly didn’t shy away from hard physical labor and worked tirelessly, taking no breaks, which gave me no chance to steal even a morsel of food.
Yesterday, he’d soaked and cleaned the intestines and seasoned the boar’s blood with herbs and garlic in a bucket. Today, he seemed to be ready to make some blood sausage with it.
“Looks good,” he approved, stirring the mixture of the seasoned blood and cooked buckwheat with a large wooden spoon.
He’d been talking to himself often during the day, and I wondered if he needed to break up the silence because he wasn’t used to being alone. I’d done that myself while working on my projects back home…when I still had a home.
Watching him proved mesmerizing. The orc worked methodically, organizing his tasks in a very efficient way.
My order-loving mind appreciated his neatness and attention to detail.
My food-starved stomach, however, spasmed impatiently, urging me to finally steal something to eat.
From watching him kill that boar, I knew the orc could move fast. I also saw how strong he was. He’d smashed the boar’s skull in with a couple of blows. He could surely snap my neck between his fingers, too, if he caught me stealing from him.
“Well, let’s do this,” he said in a deep rumbling voice, rolling up the long sleeves of his embroidered linen tunic.
He filled the boar’s intestines with the seasoned blood and buckwheat mixture, then fried the blood sausage over the coals in a covered cast iron pan.
A mouth-watering aroma filled the air. My empty stomach twisted in painful knots, making me feel like crying. I was so hungry, I could eat my own tongue.
Entranced, I watched as he put a piece of fried blood sausage on a plate along with a thick slice of bread and a generous heap of pickled cabbage. At the sight of food, my mouth watered so much, I had to swallow nonstop, lest I drown in my own saliva.
Sitting by the fire, the orc cut the sausage with a large hunting knife, then ate it piece by piece. My eyes followed every morsel of food he put in his mouth, while I was practically whimpering inside from hunger.
This was torture.
I prayed he’d go inside the cabin to fetch something, so I could grab a piece of sausage too, but he remained by the fire, cleaning up after dinner.
To the right of the fire pit was a wide wooden barrel on a built-in stove. The orc filled the barrel with water from the creek nearby, looking like he had no plans to leave the clearing any time soon. He didn’t even take the leftover sausage in, just putthe thick appetizing coils of it into a wide ceramic pot, covered it with the matching lid, then set the pot on the steps by the door.
My attention stayed with the pot while my mind was working on a plan to get to it.
The orc used a big flat rock by the fire pit as a stepping stool to get to the wooden barrel on top and check the water.
“Good enough,” he muttered, getting off the rock.
Next, he pulled his tunic off. And for a moment, I even forgot about the pot with the sausage, staring at the undressing orc with stunned fascination.
The orc was built almost like a boar himself, with wide shoulders and a huge barrel chest. A scar crossed his face. His skull was bald like my knee, but all his hair seemed to have migrated downwards, covering his chest with a thick rug of short pine-green curls.
I closed my eyes when he pulled down his pants, but curiosity got the best of me. I’d never seen a bog orc before, certainly not a naked one. As if on its own, one of my eyelids lifted a little, then the other one followed.
Butt-naked like the day he was born, save for the golden hoops and chains in his pointy ears, the orc was climbing into the large, wide barrel over the stove, with the obvious intention of using it as a bathtub.
Seeing a naked human man would likely send me running for the hills. But the differences in the orc’s appearance compared to a human intrigued me. His hard, round behind came in my view as he bent down and lifted a leg over the edge of the tub. I tilted my head in admiration of the thick muscles moving under his forest-green skin.
With a long, contented grunt, the orc stretched in the tub. The water splashed out, steaming when it hit the hot oven below.
Envy gripped me when I imagined how wonderful that bath must feel. I hadn’t bathed for weeks now. My skin itched underthe bear hide I’d been wearing, since my fine clothes had long turned to rags. Silk and lace didn’t hold well when one kept falling into swamps or had to run from predators through underbrush on a daily basis.
