Chapter 97: Speed Run, Reverse Boss Order
Kir crunched through the bones of a... well, he just had to think of it as a chicken.
In truth he’d thought at first that it was a rabbit, but when Cheshire brought it back to share, it had become very clear that whatever it was covered in had more in common with feathers than fur.
He’d named Cheshire such because her feathers followed a two-toned pattern of light and dark, iridescent rainbow feathers, and because Stella refused to let him call her "Spot". The raptor had shouted that word for a whole day upon learning it, and Stella didn’t want to be reminded of the times she didn’t "spot" mistakes in her math, especially now that Kir was starting to integrate physics.
"Fix that spot." "Look at this spot." "Did you spot why..." were common phrases that came up a lot in their lessons, and Cheshire had latched onto the word as one of her favorites. Her other favorite words seemed to be every swear word equally.
Also, Cheshire felt like a good name, considering the rabbit hole of an adventure they were on and the fact she acted like a cat sometimes, albeing one determined to nest in Kir’s hair while he slept.
The little raptor snapped greedily into the entrails and bonier half of the creature, which Kir had cooked slowly over a fire, with a pinch of crushed pink mana stone from a leech-like monster that had latched onto him in the last biome; a freshwater bog.
It wasn’t very flavorful, but it was better than nothing. Mostly it was the bits of fat and char from cooking it that made the stringy meat edible.
Stella, to his surprise, had asked to try some, so he’d given her one of its six legs, which she was still turning over in her hand trying to figure out where to bite.
Kir swallowed. "Stars, I feel human again," he smiled, looking up into the treeline of the forest they were in.
"Human? Really?" Stella said, looking at him weirdly.
Kir realized the phrase had just slipped out, but this was the sort of thing he was used to backpedaling with Rain and Kordia. "I was raised by a human, remember? It’s just a figure of speech."