Day: 23

Days Left: 5457

Lives Saved: 0

Corinna looked around, trying to find the origin of the voice until she gazed upwards at the red moon and froze. There was a black horizontal line cutting across it, and then it opened up. 

And it blinked.

Dominating above them was a scarlet eye, bloodshot and twitching. Its pupil fell onto Corinna, staring directly at her.

Her knees buckling, Corinna collapsed onto the grass and clutched at Harmony's leg for support. No matter how much she resisted, she could not look away from the eye.

That moon, it was that thing all this time...

"It's alright, Corinna." Harmony helped the young woman stand back up.

Still clinging onto the chimaera's arm, Corinna calmed herself down, donning a mask of indifference and focusing on the centre of the circle instead of the eye looming above.

The eye blinked and gazed at all of the individual prisoners, then the voice spoke again. "The food drop-off will begin in...

Five...

Four...

Three...

Two...

One..."

The sky opened up, and a cascade of silver packets plummeted down into the large circle of stones, some bouncing and flinging across near the edge. Once all of them had fallen down, the sky closed again. After giving everyone one last stare, the eye also closed shut and faded back into the red moon, then turned to its original milky white.

Corinna gripped tightly to her spear, ready to enter the circle but stopped as she saw that Harmony had not moved yet.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"There's a lot more food than usual," answered Harmony, staring at the large pile of silver packets. "A lot more donations." She glanced at the young woman. "You said you had a big family? It might have them."

"You mean, they sent all this food?" Corinna lowered her head, biting down on her lip to stop herself from crying. 

They hadn't forgotten me. 

"Could we take more food then?"

Harmony winced, surveying the other prisoners. "The others might not allow us. Best to stick with the number we agreed on, maybe one or two packets more. Let's go." Harmony stepped over the stones and headed towards the pile of food in the centre, followed closely by Corinna.

Reaching the packets, Harmony crouched down and began stuffing them into her satchel, all the while her eyes fixated on the man with the goblin and occasionally at the other prisoners in caution.

Corinna unzipped her rucksack and rummaged around, surprised to find that there wasn't just special stew. That was all they had been eating for almost a month, just special stew, yet she was surrounded by packets of curry, pasta, chilli, soup, sandwiches, bread rolls, fruit, pudding, and more. There were also numerous bottles of water, however, as they had a tap and running water back at the house, they did not need to pick any up.

Counting as she went, Corinna packed an assortment of food packets into her rucksack, making sure that it would calculate to a balanced and healthy diet. Already in her head, she planned what meals to have and on what day, eager to return back to the house and jot it down in her notebook.

Once both Harmony and Corinna had collected enough packets, they left the pile of food and headed back, stepping over the stones and out of the circle. The young woman glanced back and saw the demon command three of its caped companions to retrieve food.

"Good job," said Harmony as they began walking back to the house. She patted Corinna's helmet, which caused the young woman to scowl and playfully returned the gesture by jumping up high on her tiptoes.

"Can I take this off now?" Corinna asked, lifting up the visor.

"If you want. We should be safe now."

Sighing in relief, Corinna was about to take the helmet off when there was shriek coming from behind them. She glanced back.

It was then followed by several howls, screams, and clashes of metal.

"That would be the 'free for all'," said Harmony with a slight skip to her steps as she thought about the food they had collected, looking forward to another night of special stew.

Corinna held her spear close, attempting to drown out the screeches and yells. If she hadn't been with Harmony, then she would have had to fight for her food too. Corinna wasn't ready to survive alone. She had been so confident after defeating the clay golem, but Corinna had now realised how lucky she was to have met Harmony, that she let her in.

The rest of the journey consisted of Harmony making teasing comments about how short Corinna was, resulting in a race back to the house as a way of Corinna proving that she could keep up just as well.

They collapsed onto the wooden floor inside, out of breath and laughing, though Corinna knew that Harmony was going easy on her. After a drink of water, they both unpacked their bags and scattered the food packets on the floor.

Glaring, Corinna saw that the chimaera had only collected packets of special stew. Harmony returned the stare, or rather a confusing glance at the variety of food the young woman had picked. Why would she eat anything else after experiencing the superior flavour of special stew?

Corinna sighed. "I think I already know the answer, but..." She looked up and locked eyes with the chimaera. "Why did you only get special stew?"

"Because it's my favourite." Harmony shrugged.

"Why?"

"Because it has all sorts of meat and... it's the best?"

"You know you can eat things other than just that?"

"But why would you-"

"Eat something that isn't your favourite, yes..." Corinna predicted what Harmony was about to say. Slapping her knees, she bounced up and retrieved her notebook. "From now on..." She drew a grid on a page and then showed Harmony. "We will not always be eating special stew-"

Harmony pouted.

"No-no. No pouting!" Corinna waggled her finger. "We are going to be eating a healthy and balanced diet with all the food groups-"

Harmony pouted even further and flopped onto the floor.

"Just because we can't die, doesn't mean we can't be unhealthy, okay?" Corinna crouched down, head tilted and smiling at the chimaera who gave an affirmatory grumble.