Chapter 17: Working Together
The first thing Nick took out was a foldable plastic table from the storage closet on the second floor. It was a little clunky and unwieldy, but it was the perfect workbench for turning a wild animal into sausage. Hopefully.
After bringing that out, he had to stop Kai and clarify that they needed dry kindling, not just small branches and twigs. Kai looked a little down after being informed of his mistake, but Nick didn't fall for it. No consolation sausages for him.
Then, he brought out a bunch of knives, a couple of cutting boards, bowls, saucepans, and spices.
When he had everything he thought they might need, he was about to help Kai gather kindling, but the tentacle stopped him before he could walk further than it could reach. He remembered the lurking dangers of the forest.
It was a good idea to stay close to the forest. So, instead of gathering kindling and firewood, he started working on actually lighting the fire by rummaging through his house for a lighter. He knew he had one somewhere since he had a pile of candles, but it took a while to find it.
By the time he did, a lot of time had passed already.
Nick wondered how long it usually took for Lora and Kavam to hunt since he couldn't even begin to estimate, what with it being a fantasy world and the two being impressive specimens. But it should take a while. Hunting wasn't easy or something that could be done just because they wanted to.
Still, they would need smoldering coals to cook on, not a raging fire, so he couldn't light the fire too early.
He made sure the fireplace was secure with the stones Kai had gathered so that the fire didn't spread and burn down the forest. Then, he sacrificed a few pages of an old newspaper to kickstart the kindling and get a gentle flame going. He carefully added slightly bigger twigs and branches, steadily building a fire.