Wumu waited off to the side, waiting for Song Xu to catch the glowing insects, but after waiting for a long time, he only saw her standing far away, occasionally letting out “wow” sounds.
Why wasn’t she catching them anymore? Hadn’t she caught several glowing insects before and put them in the stone cave?
Wumu glanced at the butterflies fluttering about, then at Song Xu, guessing that maybe she couldn’t catch these flying insects, so he swam into the center of the butterfly cluster and reached out to grab several.
The butterflies he caught struggled between his fingers, their luminescent wings flapping as they scattered glowing dust that dyed his fingertips with specks of blue.
Some of the startled butterflies flew away and landed on tree trunks, while others chased after Wumu, this intruder, circling around his hair and cheeks, with a few even landing on his tail.
When he swam back toward Song Xu holding the butterflies, the scene was so dreamlike, just like the forest princess she used to watch as a child.
Several unlucky little butterflies were delivered right in front of Song Xu, and Wumu motioned for her to take them.
Song Xu hadn’t intended to break the mood, but who knew Wumu would make the first move. She pinched one butterfly and examined it closely. Unfortunately, once the butterfly was in her hand, the glowing powder on its body dimmed after only a short while. Song Xu regretfully loosened her fingers and let it fly away.
Wumu didn’t have any deliberate romantic thoughts. He had simply brought Song Xu out to play, just like going to the water’s edge to play as usual. When Song Xu had played enough, he took her back.
From time to time, bird calls sounded overhead. These sounds seemed to travel farther at night in the forest, with stronger penetration.
Having just finished looking at butterflies, Song Xu’s mood was rarely a little subtle, like the first time she went out strolling with a male classmate. She kept a certain distance from Wumu as they walked, but as all kinds of strange sounds appeared around them, she drew closer and closer to Wumu, and in the end hooked his arm and held it tightly in her arms.
“Is there something moving behind that tree over there?” Song Xu asked.
Wumu: “……”
“Isn’t there a human shadow over there?” Song Xu asked again.
Wumu: “……”
“What is that calling? It sounds really close to us!” Song Xu twisted her head alertly, gripping Wumu’s arm tightly. “Really, there’s a shadow moving there, and it’s making hmm-hmm sounds!”
Wumu expressionlessly flicked out his tongue, catching the scent of a wild boar.
It was a wild boar turning over soil to look for food. He wasn’t very hungry right now and didn’t intend to bother with it, but Song Xu was about to twist his arm into a knot, so Wumu had no choice but to respond.
He thought for a while about what to call that thing. “……pig wild……pig.”
Song Xu: “Ah, a wild boar? Hah!”
Her fear disappeared in a second, and her courage doubled instead. From her tone, she even sounded a bit disappointed.
“It looks like it’s eating a late-night snack. What is it eating? Come on, let’s go take a look!”
Song Xu leaned over. The wild boar, which had only taken a couple of bites of its late-night snack, sensed danger approaching and immediately turned and ran off with snorting sounds. Song Xu, who had interrupted someone’s meal, didn’t care about its muttered complaints as it fled. She squatted by the pit of soil that had been pried open by the boar’s tusks and unexpectedly discovered a corner of a plant tuber.
This root had been gnawed off at one corner. When Song Xu pulled it up together with the soil, she found several more connected root pieces in the pit.
It was edible, a new type of food she hadn’t discovered before!
Song Xu excitedly dug at the soil, pulling out all the tubers in that pit, large and small. The big ones were as large as her palm, while the small ones were only about the size of ping-pong balls. At first glance, the tubers looked like sweet potatoes, but upon closer inspection in her hand, they didn’t quite seem like it.
Forget it, as long as it’s edible. She hadn’t expected an unexpected harvest from an evening walk. Song Xu happily hugged a pile of food back to the stone cave to study how to eat it, completely throwing the butterflies out of her mind.
One raw, one boiled, one roasted.
Song Xu arranged it clearly, began to try them one by one, and sincerely invited Snake Snake to taste them together.
In the middle of the night, she lit a fire to cook something to eat. Snake Snake was already sleepy, and she forcibly held his head and woke him up.
“Something tasty, try it!”
Wumu was stuffed with a mouthful of food. The soft, glutinous texture with a hint of sweetness felt somewhat familiar to him, reminding him that he had eaten this kind of food in the tribe before.
He wasn’t the type to only swallow prey whole like an ordinary big snake. In the past, he would also eat cooked meat and plant fruits like the beastmen. It was just that before Song Xu appeared, he had maintained the simplest survival standards for a very long time.
His throat moved as he swallowed the food in his mouth. Wumu blankly recalled for a moment.
Song Xu was still holding his head and asked, “How is it, tasty, right? I just tried one too, and there are several more. Let’s split them half and half.”
Wumu suddenly said, “Wild… yam.”
“Wild yam?” Song Xu repeated, suddenly understanding. “You mean this is called wild yam? You’ve eaten it before, right!”
This was the first time Song Xu had learned new knowledge from Snake Snake. About this wild yam, the original body had never eaten it either, so there was no such information in her knowledge base.
Song Xu thought that since Snake Snake knew about it, that meant plenty of this wild yam must grow around here, so she could look carefully next time.
The food she usually ate didn’t store well, and having no stock at home always made people feel uneasy… The fingers holding Wumu’s head were suddenly sucked by something slippery, and Song Xu drew her fingers back slightly.
Wumu licked off the wild yam crumbs stuck to her hand, pulled her hand away, and lay back down.
Song Xu: “……” She looked at her fingers, then at Snake Snake’s calm expression.
In the middle of the night, Song Xu ate until she was stuffed but couldn’t fall asleep. She picked up a fire-scorched branch and drew snakes on the stone wall. Crooked tails, disproportioned upper bodies, faces smeared into a mess.
After finishing the first one, Song Xu even held her bulging stomach and sighed, saying this was the precious artwork left behind by ancient ancestors, simple, rough, and natural.
When she had filled an entire stone wall with snakes, she suddenly realized this seemed a bit terrifying. Especially since her grass nest was right beneath the stone wall—lifting her head to see countless twisted black strips jumping under the firelight, she… she silently climbed up and squeezed herself into Wumu’s grass mat, then pulled his snake tail over and draped it across her stomach.
She had stayed up late the previous day, so the next day Song Xu couldn’t get out of bed. Usually, she was full of energy, stubbornly dragging the big snake out to forage and play. Today, she was stubbornly sprawled on the grass mat and refused to get up, while the big snake had already gotten up—he was going out.
In her haze, Song Xu felt herself being shaken by a hand, then shaken again. She drowsily opened a thin slit of her eyes and saw Wumu’s face enlarged in front of her. He opened his mouth, seeming to say two words.
Song Xu perfunctorily responded, “Mm-hmm, mm.” The next second, she lost consciousness again and fell asleep.
In her dream, she was sitting in a bumpy vehicle. After great difficulty, the vehicle finally stopped, but the sunlight became intense, stabbing even through her eyelids. Small insects kept buzzing around her cheeks, and frogs kept croaking by her ears.
Song Xu scratched her face and suddenly sat up from the grass, discovering that she had already been transferred from the stone cave to a patch of wild grassland. There was no river nearby, but there were many small ditches filled with wild grass.
She stood up and looked around in confusion.
Where is this? How did I get here? Where’s Snake Snake?
She took a few steps and stepped on the tip of a tail. Only then did she notice that Snake Snake, with a distended belly, was lying not far from her, just hidden by the luxuriant wild grass.
Seeing the big snake’s bulging belly, Song Xu understood that he had just eaten not long ago. He had really improved. In the past, he never called her when he went out to feed, but now he even knew to bring her along. Even when she was asleep, he still carried her over together.
Song Xu stretched, looked around at this new place she had never been to before, and began her exploration.
She walked to the edge of a puddle and drank water. The small puddle had thick wild grass growing in it, filtering the water until it was clear. She drank, washed her face, and skillfully plucked a handful of serrated leaves by the water and stuffed them into her mouth to chew.
These leaves grew almost everywhere by the water. Chewing them released a faint, fresh lemony scent, and she often used them to clean her teeth and mouth.
The wild ground by the puddle had been trampled by large wild beasts, with grass pressed down into the mud. As Song Xu passed by, she suddenly saw a familiar-looking tuber in the turned-up soil.
Looking closely, the chaotic footprints in the mud seemed to have been left by wild boars. Song Xu grabbed the beast-tooth knife at her waist and went over to dig. A moment later, only her delighted shout could be heard: “Ah! There’s more! So many!”
Carrying two huge tubers, one in each hand, Song Xu ran to Wumu’s side, tossed down the tubers, and lifted his snake head. “You suddenly brought me here today, was it to bring me to dig wild yams?”
Wumu had followed the wild boar’s tracks to get here. Wild yams were the wild boars’ favorite food, and usually, following them meant being able to find a lot.
Wumu opened his big mouth, about to hiss and explain, but the excited Song Xu had already leaned over and planted a heavy kiss on the top of his head, praising him: “You’re amazing!”
In beastman society and culture, all intimate behavior exists for reproduction. Kissing is not considered an intimate act; they do not even have a definition for kissing, and kisses between beastmen are very rare.
Being suddenly kissed, Wumu froze for a moment, then, a beat slow, flicked out his tongue and lifted his head, watching as Song Xu happily ran back toward the muddy patch where the wild yams were growing.
Song Xu had a huge harvest today. No matter when, gathering and harvesting could always bring the simplest, purest happiness. Even if she had been busy all day, with an aching waist and back and drenched in sweat, as long as she saw the pile of wild yams placed in the stone cave, she felt happy from the bottom of her heart and unconsciously hummed a tune.
Only before going to sleep did her excitement subside a little, and she realized she was covered in stinky sweat.
“Let’s go soak in the river?”
The surface of the river was probably the brightest place at night, with moonlight shimmering across it.
Song Xu went into the water. The cool river wrapped around her, dissolving the stinging pain from the daytime sun and the sweltering heat of sweat, making her sigh comfortably.
All kinds of animals often came to drink at the riverbank, stirring it up so the water was somewhat murky. Song Xu wanted to swim toward the center of the river, but she was also a little afraid of what might be in the river at night.
“Wumu, come down and swim.” She turned back to call the big snake, only to see that there was no trace of him on the grassy bank behind her.
Suddenly, there was a splash. She felt something in the water wrap around her ankle. Wumu emerged from the water, having quietly entered at some unknown time.
Song Xu lifted her foot and traced upward along that snake tail, clinging onto Wumu’s back, one hand resting on his shoulder. “Wumu, take me swimming. I want to go to the center of the river.”
The wet Wumu sank into the water.
His long tail swayed gracefully beneath the surface, like a mermaid… just with a longer tail. The flowing current washed over her body. Afraid of being swept away, Song Xu hugged his neck tightly and wrapped her legs around the thick snake tail.
