The rest of the day passed in much the same manner. Still determined to become friends, I chattered nonstop. Myth continued to ignore me. Her only departures from walking steadily onwards occurred when we came across wild asparagus or berries. When that happened, she would pause long enough to cut the asparagus shoots or pluck the berries. I asked her once why she was doing this. Unsurprisingly, she ignored me.
We camped that night alongside a small river. Myth promptly set up her camp. She made it look so easy to build a shelter for the night; her lean-to looked quite cozy. Mine looked like a pile of junk someone had thrown upon the ground.
Okay. I admit that I was not a competent outdoorswoman. Setting up a camp, building a fire, digging a hole to serve as a latrine—I was useless at doing all those things. You’re laughing about the latrine bit, are you not? You’re thinking, “Izzy, how could you possibly be bad at digging a hole?” Well. It’s all a matter of location. Digging a hole where an ant colony lives is a bad idea. You will end up getting ants in your undergarments. Trust me, I know. I usually stayed at taverns when I travelled. I camped only when there were no villages or cities nearby.
As I struggled to set up my sleeping accommodations, Myth went fishing in the river. Before long, she caught a large trout. I did not need to fish for my dinner, fortunately. I would have been at it all night and probably still would not have caught a fish. And if I had caught a fish, I would not have known what to do with it—besides screaming my little head off as the poor thing flopped about. When it came to food, I had a firm policy about not eating any animal I had seen when it had been alive. I know. I know. All the animals I ate had been alive at some point. But to see an animal breathing and moving and then to eat it always turned my tummy.
Luckily, Auntie Julie had given me a lot of coins for my trip. I had supplies aplenty in my knapsack for when I had to camp. I would have shared my supplies with Myth, but she was doing fine on her own. Her dinner of trout with wild asparagus and berries looked absolutely mouthwatering. My own dinner, on the other hand—I cannot remember what it had been originally. But after I had cooked it—well, add cooking to the list of things I was useless at doing. My dinner was mushy. And it was burned. How in Nisse Cul Tairna I managed to make a meal that was both mushy and burned is beyond my understanding.
I tried to choke down my burned mush. It tasted like... like… Hmm… Take a rotten egg and crack it into a glass of curdled milk, then add a cup of horseradish and stir. I bet that would taste better than my dinner did. I had watched other people cook. They had made it look so easy. And none of the food they had prepared had tasted that bad. Accomplishing that took real talent. Yes. I was a talented chef, in a special and potentially life-threatening way.
Despite its taste, despite its texture, despite its odor—I continued to shovel burned mush into my mouth. Myth watched me gag my way through dinner. I must have looked rather pathetic because after five minutes of this, she could not take it any longer. Shaking her head, she heaped some of her trout with asparagus and berries onto a spare plate. Then she handed it to me.
I beamed at her as I took the plate. “Oh! How sweet of you. Thank you so much, Myth.”
Myth ignored me.
That was okay. Little by little, I was winning her over.