Peroxyde and Coal

[Melusine]

((Paloma continued here.)

The bar and the candy that had been leftover from the fight wasn't sustaining her.

But it worked in quieting the tiny voice inside of her that screamed to eat and to feast. It didn't make her feel full or complete but it made her feel something in her stomach. Paloma chewed slowly, very slowly. It had turned into mush then into sludge then into something entirely different than food.

And then and only then, she swallowed.

---

Paloma didn't have a watch.

It's not that she needed one to know it was deep in the night.

The moon was smiling back at her and the monkeys were lollygagging around as if nobody had been murdered here.

The fire was also burning. It wasn't anything too big or too scary. She had managed to find a lighter in a first-aid kit left over. She was wondering why did the terrorist gave them a lighter while telling them not to set things on fire.

It didn't really make any sense inside of Paloma's head. But nothing really made sense anymore, people were just talking and words weren't reaching her. The announcement didn't make a whole lot of sense either. There was the buzzing and the voice and the breathing but Paloma didn't quite understand anything.

She was too focused on the tiny fire and the tiny dead monkey she had caught.

Paloma, like most people, had never cooked a monkey. She honestly had expected the other monkeys of its tribe to attack her, but they didn't. They just watched from a distance. Cooking was however something she had confidence in.

She managed to enjoy the making of elaborate plates with different colors, flavors and extract without quite mastering the whole dance required to make them. If she had more time outside of this bubble, Paloma would have probably managed to become an even better cook.

Instead, she was forced to cook a very tiny monkey arm on a very tiny fire that probably didn't even go through the flesh of the creature. It was a balancing act. Her abductors had made it clear that she would die if she lit a building on fire, but she didn't believe they only had meant that. Probably anything that would be seen as a threat would make her blow up so she did everything to avoid it.

And it worked. The little monkey had been cooked. It wasn't thorough and it wasn't clean. She wouldn't get FDA approved. However, in the end, it worked. She had food inside of her.

Proteins.

It felt fucking good.

---

Her thirst was a new problem.

Someone had lost a water bottle in what appeared to be a scuffle. It was half-drank.

The rest of the water was lukewarm. It tasted more like sweat than water but Paloma drank it all in one-shot.

Paloma still didn't feel better. She didn't expect any of it to be a miracle fix to her immediate problems. However, she had expected for them to help her a bit. Even if just a tiny bit of her thirst would have been quenced, it would have made everything worth it. Instead, she just simply felt like shit.

Paloma wasn't crying. She didn't cry. She refused to cry. It's not like any of them would come falling anyways, but she was still close. She didn't want to admit it. Showing weakness here could kill her, and she wouldn't do it.

She was glad that nobody had came to the commissionary since it was now lithered in corpses of monkeys and humans. She actually managed to forage and scavenge some things. A shard of metal, a piece of harden bread, another water bottle and a new duffle bag were all found around the building.

---

There were treasures to be found everywhere. She just wished she didn't need to actually search everywhere. It was downright insulting, but she had managed to make it work.

Or a semblance of making it work.

((Paloma continued somewhere else.))