After coming to this world for so many days, Song Xu had also tried to make fire before, such as the most widely known method of drilling wood to make fire, but theory and practice were completely different. She had tried several times, all ending in failure. Perhaps it was because the forest was too damp, and because she did not have enough skill.
She had almost given up, yet the surprise came so abruptly.
The thing appeared in Snake Snake’s stone cave. It should be something he had from before, only he did not know for what reason had left it unused, tossed to the side as trash… His temper was so good that even when she used him as a quilt in the middle of the night, he did not bite her to death. Picking up some trash to use, he probably would not be angry either?
Song Xu boldly threw the cave owner’s wishes to the back of her mind. The stone cave was the most suitable place to make a fire—well ventilated, and it would not suddenly rain in the middle of the night and soak the fire pile.
Song Xu excitedly scraped back a bit of dry moss, and together with wood shavings used flint to start a fire. The flint had a pungent smell; when rubbed, it would scatter sparks. Bringing it close to the dry moss and wood shavings, it quickly ignited the flammable tinder.
Carefully tending the small smoking fire pile, Song Xu slowly placed thin branches on top. Only after the flames stabilized did she sit down beside it.
Feeling the long-lost warmth of firelight, a sense of security rose naturally in her heart, as if even the darkness outside was not so frightening anymore.
Night had already fallen. Wumu returned to the cave and saw the flickering firelight at the entrance. Those flames gradually became, in his eyes, the jumping silhouettes of people.
He remembered a segment of childhood memories.
When he was young, he lived in a tribe. At night, the tribe’s beastmen would light bonfires to celebrate hunting a “primitive beast.” Every beastman excitedly jumped around the fire, howling.
At that time, he was still very small. His tail was not long, a little chubby, clumsily weaving beneath the feet of the strong adult beastmen.
His mother, sitting by the fire, waved to him. He passed through those mountain-like beastmen and came to his equally strong and tall mother’s side. Beside his mother’s hand lay fragrant primitive beast meat. He tried to bite it, but was gently pushed away by his mother.
Time turned. The adult beastmen who once looked like small mountains in his eyes had all become existences he could look down upon, and the gazes they directed at him gradually turned fearful.
“Heisen hasn’t come back for a long time, probably won’t be coming back.” The beastmen in the tribe discussed his mother Heisen behind her back. “Back then, Heisen became pregnant outside. Wumu’s father might be a primitive beast, not a beastman. That’s why Wumu is a half-beastman who cannot completely change form, and also possesses such terrifying power.”
His mother left the tribe before he reached adulthood, saying she was going to look for something that could allow him to fully beast-transform. She never came back.
“Wumu, if you still can’t completely beast-transform when you come of age, you must be expelled from the tribe. That’s the rule. We have no choice.”
The clansmen said this, and so after he came of age, he also left the tribe.
The quiet forest, long solitary living, the increasingly deep influence of beastification affected part of his perception, making him become dull.
Within the flames, someone was singing. The singing was not the bold, sonorous voice of beastmen in his memories, but carried a gentle, sweet melody. He had never heard it before, and unconsciously extended his tongue, as if wanting to capture the sound in the air.
It was that weak squirrel beastman. She sat behind the fire, happily swaying her head.
Song Xu saw that the homeowner had returned. He held his body upright, expressionless, standing at the entrance of the stone cave, staring at the fire in a daze.
The firelight shone on him. It was the first time Song Xu had so clearly seen his abdomen—also bearing transitional scales and black patterns, distributed around his waist and chest, like beautiful tattoos, carrying a kind of wicked, eerie beauty.
Song Xu felt a little guilty. Just a little bit.
She smiled and waved to Wumu: “Come warm yourself by the fire! Don’t be shy, come sit, come sit.”
The big snake slithered into the cave. He circled the fire once, his tail coiling the fire and Song Xu beside it into a ring—three full circles. In the end, he could even sit diagonally on his own tail. Like an innocent, naive youth sitting by the water picking flowers from it, he leaned forward and raised his hand to touch the flames.
Song Xu reacted quickly and grabbed his hand: “Don’t play with fire, play with fire and you’ll wet the bed!”
Wumu tilted his head to look at her. His hair slipped down from his shoulder and almost got singed by the flames. Song Xu hurriedly scooped up his hair and pulled it back.
Surrounded inside the snake-tail fortress, Song Xu boldly treated Wumu’s snake tail as a stool and sat on it, then stuffed a long wooden stick into his hand: “Here, if you want to play with fire, just use a stick to play.”
Wumu held the stick, and rarely took the initiative to speak, spitting out a single word: “Fire.”
Hearing him willing to speak, Song Xu immediately got excited: “Yes yes yes, that’s right, fire. It’s fire made with flint I found in your cave. You don’t mind me making a fire in your cave, right? At night it’s pitch-black, don’t you think having a fire pile is more convenient and more comfortable?”
“A fire pile can remove dampness, can warm the body, and can also boil hot water and do barbecue. Half-beastmen also eat roasted meat, right?”
“I thought you didn’t like fire, but now looking at you, you don’t seem to dislike it. Then why didn’t you make a fire before when you were alone? Too lazy to make fire? Don’t want to gather firewood?”
Wumu said one word, and Song Xu rattled off a whole bunch. Wumu simply couldn’t keep up with her rhythm, so he turned his head and continued to look at the fire pile.
Song Xu: “Why did you turn your head? Don’t you want to chat anymore? Don’t do that, why are you so introverted? I haven’t talked to anyone for a long time. Chat with me a bit more! Let’s talk about something simple.”
Although there was only one person beside her, Song Xu spoke very lively. Wumu felt that this kind of lively feeling was very familiar. Looking at the jumping firelight on the stone cave walls, he slowly said one word: “Dance.”
In his memories, the liveliest times always had people dancing.
Song Xu heard this: “Dance? You want to watch dancing, or are you saying you want to dance?”
Wumu had no other meaning. After he finished speaking, he moved his body, wanting to return to his familiar corner. Seeing him about to leave, Song Xu hurriedly grabbed him, repeatedly saying: “Don’t go, don’t go, isn’t it just dancing? I’ll dance, I’ll dance!”
Song Xu instantly turned into her beast form, a squirrel. The fluffy squirrel with reddish fur placed one hand on her waist, one hand on her ear, the fluffy tail behind her swishing back and forth.
She stood on the snake-tail stage and twisted her waist, completely releasing her nature. The more she twisted, the more into it she got, deliberately striking a funny coquettish pose: “Little mouse me, is best at dancing!”
As she spoke, she even started walking cross-steps on the snake tail: “How about it, isn’t it making your beast nature burst out……”
Wumu indeed had his beast nature burst out—
Snakes have absolutely no resistance to food constantly swaying in front of their eyes. He opened his mouth and bit Song Xu straight into it.
His movement was too fast. Song Xu only saw him suddenly open his mouth and bite toward her. That beautiful face became distorted because of the wide-open bloody maw. When she came back to her senses, she was already bitten inside the dangerous snake mouth.
Song Xu flailed her limbs: “Help, I’ll never be cheeky again, ahhhhhh!”
Wumu bit the person into his mouth and then remembered this was a beastman of the same kind, not edible, so he opened his mouth again and spat the squirrel out.
Song Xu howled, holding her waist as she sat up, discovering that she had no injuries and didn’t hurt, just covered all over with saliva.
“I’m covered in your saliva……” Song Xu wiped the saliva off her fur. “I don’t want this kind of saliva-coating method.”
“In short, little mouse me never wants to dance again.”
The culprit who had almost sent her off with that one bite suddenly spoke again at this moment: “Dance.”
Song Xu raised her head, about to get angry, and saw a smile appear on Wumu’s expressionless face. He smiled.
And it was kind of good-looking.
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Because there was a fire burning in the stone cave, and water was still pooled in the tree hollow she had dug earlier, Song Xu did not go back to her own tree hollow to sleep. She still slept in the stone cave, lying right beside the fire pile. As for Wumu, he still returned to his own corner, soundless and silent.
The wood dragged back today was hardwood, very fire-resistant. When Song Xu woke up in the morning, there was still fire in the fire pile. She buried and preserved the fire, then started today’s work.
A common problem of young people is doing things without any planning, scattered and messy—doing this today, doing that tomorrow; when interested, wanting to finish everything in one go; when not interested, throwing it aside and not wanting to touch it again. Song Xu was no exception to this bad habit.
She had aired out her nest for two days, and decided to go see whether the water in the nest had dried.
Who knew, the water in the nest had dried, but her nest had also been occupied.
The one occupying her nest seemed to be an owl, with big round eyes and two ear tufts on its head, looking quite cute.
Song Xu reasoned with it: “This is my nest. Smell it—doesn’t it have my scent inside? Occupying someone else’s nest is immoral, you know?”
At this point, Song Xu thought of her own behavior of running into the big snake’s stone cave and openly sleeping and making fire, and felt that she seemed to have no qualification to say such words.
Song Xu: “…Alright, fine. For the sake of you being cute, I won’t argue with you. You can live here.”
Anyway, this tree hollow wasn’t done well. She was going to make another one that could keep out the rain, a tree hollow that wouldn’t accumulate water on rainy days. This time she had to remember to make a door—lock the door when going out, so she wouldn’t come back to find her nest gone.
She had already thought it through. This time, when digging out the tree hollow, she would dig the inside upward toward the side, so that rainwater couldn’t splash into the interior, and it would also block wind. This was a big project that couldn’t be finished in a day or two. During this period, of course she would still live in the stone cave. You could make a fire at night in the stone cave.
Being occupied by a cute little animal, the big snake would surely be as generous as she was and not mind!
Aside from digging the tree hollow, Song Xu spent the rest of her time developing recipes and searching for edible food. She tried roasting all kinds of things over the fire before eating them.
Low-key-looking mushrooms, small fish caught in marshy areas, and some kind of forest rat she had struggled to catch. Because she really wanted to eat meat, she physically sent that not-very-cute forest rat off, made a barbecue meal out of it. Although it only had a salty taste, Song Xu, who hadn’t eaten roasted meat in a long time, still cried tears of happiness.
Speaking of salty taste, it came from a large white crystal chunk that she had also found in the animal-skin bag. At first she thought it was a stone. Out of curiosity she licked it and discovered it was salty, then realized it might be something like “salt,” so she scraped off powder with a beast-tooth small knife to use as seasoning.
After making a big leap forward in food, Song Xu ate and drank her fill, and during the leisurely nighttime hours tried to communicate with her cohabiting roommate.
Unfortunately, the big snake really was a cold, aloof beauty, not easy to flirt with. Song Xu reused her old trick, luring him to the fire pile and turning into squirrel beast form to jump around.
As expected, she was once again picked up into the big snake’s mouth.
Incorrigible Song Xu howled inside the snake mouth: “Second time blooming again!”
