Timestamp: 65th of Winter, AV 510 It wasn't often that people visited Behn. No, actually that was quite incorrect. It wasn't often that somebody stumbled upon Behn's existence. Living out in the Wildlands by his own choice, far from roads or commonly traveled paths, Behn picked a life of solitude. Silence from the human world, despite having civilizations within a few days' walk of wherever he was. There wasn't much Behn missed when he was out in the wild. Occasionally he missed his family, his wife left him though, taking their two sons with her. Occasionally he missed human contact, just the simple conversations that people could hold, keeping you preoccupied and helping you forget how alone you really were. Most of all, he often missed the cooking. Professionals that truly understood how to not only cook a meal, but make it taste wonderful. Behnn was a survivor by nature, by tenacity, but a cook by no means. Even now the man sat outside, cross-legged, and watched with rock-solid patience as his pot of water was heating up over a small wood fire. Inside the pot was a mixture of meat, not a lot of it, but enough for a meal. There was a little rabbit, a lot of some fish he managed to gather up after spending far too much time chasing them down in a pond, and a tiny bit of salt snagged from his preservation kit. Not suggested perhaps, but he'd never miss it. Behn looked into the pot with his cold brown-eyes gaze. Just waiting for the water to boil, waiting for the crudely diced meat and poorly cut fish to cook until it was safe to ingest. It would have been faster to burn the meat over open fire, but a stew sounded better than the trouble sounded bad. Behn couldn't claim that his little experiment smelled much better than he assumed it tasted, but he learned long ago that taste only went so far. The food itself, the nutrients, that was all there, that's what was needed. Behn would have done quite a bit for some onions, some carrots and tomatoes, and spices of some kind. But wishful thinking was dangerous. You could want certain things, that was allowed. But by Behn's rules, you couldn't obsess over them, that's when you stopped obsessing over what was important, really surviving. Behn took his knife, the one used for eating and, in this case, carving up the critters (he needed a real hunting knife sorely), and stirred the pot slowly. The water began to show signs of small bubbles. Behn sighed with relief, knowing that boiling water wasn't too much longer. If his mother were here, she'd scold him to watching the pot. Something about some myth that if you watched for it to boil, it never would. Chuckling lightly, he had to shake his head at dear ol' mum's lingering voice. Apparently she had been wrong. It was already getting there. |