Singles and Pairs (4) [discontinued]

Jeremy

It was a testament to my sister’s trust, that she believed my story without question.

“A gem-hound? Wow!” Belle's large green eyes buzzed with excitement as she vaulted from one end of our treehome to the other. She did this in a single bound—which spoke of our boxy living quarters as much as her enthusiasm—and wrapped her thin arms around me. Her chin dug into my torso as she stared up, enormous grin revealing every one of her teeth, bushy tail swaying to the beat of her unending avidity. There was no question that we were related. Not only did she also inherit the ears and tail from our distant feline ancestors, they were the same shade of wet mud, somewhere midway between brown and orange. 

“Tell me about him, Jer! Was he cute? Was he fluffy? Oh, please tell me!”

Her smile infectiously spread to my own face. “Well, 'he' came at twilight. Right up to my rig, actually.”

“You didn’t try to kill him, did you?” she asked, withdrawing from the tight embrace and seating herself at a rickety old table. This was always a difficult topic of conversation; I shared her love of animals, but I also loved to eat, and, you know, live. The difference with Belle is that she’d eat every leaf in Marokaw Jungle before letting a creature come to harm by her own hand.

“I didn’t kill him,” I said, answering a slightly different question to the one she asked. Thankfully she didn’t press the matter.

“Twilight,” she repeated, eyes alive with wonder. “That means the legends are true!”

“That legend is true, maybe,” I said, also taking a seat. A tantalising, sugary smell reached my nose, beckoning. My stomach had lost the will to growl, but I certainly felt it stir. My keen sense of smell guided my eyes to the source; a battered pot overboiling on our makeshift stove, spattering a yellowish substance over the rim.

“Wake up, Belle,” I said, nodding to the growing mess.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. She bounced towards the stove, floor planks creaking beneath her, and pulled the pot away from the heat.

I sniffed the air again, unable to differentiate the aromas. There was the sweet, thick fragrance of colos syrup, and something else. The something else was what worried me. Her cooking was always, let’s say, experimental. Marokaw Jungle offered a wide range of ingredients but not many were fit for consumption; Belle had given me enough experience to attest to that. My mind flashed back to the broth she promised would “pick me right up” but instead put me into a coma for three days.

“What are you making?” I asked tentatively.

“Well, I’m not quite sure what to call it yet,” she said, stirring it slowly with a stripped colos branch. I briefly wondered what she had done with the bark. “Could really do with some zazz. Hey! Did you bring anything back from the forage?”

I shuddered, a wave of guilt wrapping around my stomach like a golex vine. She must have sensed my change of mood, because she immediately set the pot on the table with a clunk and started rubbing my back.

“Don’t look like that, Jer,” she said, voice soft.

“Like what?”

“Like that.” She lifted my head with a finger hooked under my chin.

“I can’t help it. It’s getting harder out there.” I let out a slow, defeated exhale. “We have nothing, Belle.”

“Don’t say that,” she whimpered, tears welling in her eyes. “That’s what father would say to mother when he returned from a forage, and she hated it, hated seeing the guilty look on his face—”

“Well, I know how father must have felt, coming back to his family with less food than he left with.”

“Yeah, well I know how mother felt,” she shot back at me. “She never cared if he came back without food, Jer. She just cared he came back.”

It was my turn to pull her into a tight embrace. We must have stayed like that for a while, because by the time she pulled away and served dinner, it was cool enough to slurp in one giant gulp. 

She called it her ‘secret soup’. It tasted sweet going in, but had an earthy aftertaste that reminded me how our treehome smelled when it rained.

It didn’t put me into a coma. Though, it didn’t quite satisfy my hunger, either.