Chapter 975 - A Night in the Wild (2/2)
“I didn’t steal them!” Maggie retorted. “I just picked them up from the ground.”
“You picked them up?” Spear asked doubtfully.
“They leaked from the buckets in the kitchen. I just collected them,” said Lightning.
“And I didn’t take them without paying,” Lightning added. “In the Fjords, any explorer can earn lots of money by drawing maps, and I’ve drawn many maps for His Majesty.”
“Well, His Majesty would never blame you even if you ransacked the kitchen.” Sylvie interrupted in a weak voice. “Collecting some spices from the kitchen is nothing. I’ve seen Nightingale sneak into the kitchen six times a week to take all the dried fish. She has even broken into His Majesty’s study to steal… ”
Everybody looked grave now.
“To steal what?”
Sylvie realized that she had spilled the beans. “Ah, no, nothing… I’m just starving. Let’s get ready to cook!”
After that, Andrea said something to quickly dispelled everybody’s curiosity.
“By the way… Do you really want to pry into Nightingale’s private life?”
All the witches immediately gave up the thought and began to find something to occupy themselves.
Sharon went to make a fire with her electric sparks. Amy swiftly chopped mushrooms. Phyllis and Ashes caught a boar for dinner. Spear Passi remained as she still felt sick… After a while, the tantalizing smell of food spread throughout the cave.
Unlike a banquet in the castle, there were not many dishes in this dinner, but their food tonight was delicious enough for a meal in the wilderness. Most of the time, when in the wild, they could only eat pancakes and jerky.
Ashes fried the boar’s belly and sprinkled the grease from the pork onto the frizzled mushroom and meat. Seeing that, everyone’s mouth kept watering.
In the end, they ate up the whole boar.
After their stomachs were full, the withes quickly fell asleep, except for the Extraordinary and the God’s Punishment Witch. They were more energetic than the others and would keep watch during the night.
“I’ll be on watch for the first half of the night,” said Ashes as she added some wood to the fire. “Her Highness Tilly told me that you are more vulnerable to the effects of lack of sleep, although your sleep time is shorter than ours.”
“That’s true. Sleep deprivation will make it hard for us to control our bodies,” Phyllis admitted. “But it’s still early, I’ll go to sleep later.”
Ashes nodded and stopped talking. She was not talkative. Even in front of Tilly, she was mostly just a good listener.
Now, all was quiet except for the sputtering fire and the breathing noises of the witches.
“They’re so close,” whispered Phyllis whilst looking at the sleeping girls beside her. “I’ve never seen such a tight-knit team like them, even in the Taquila age.”
Ashes looked to the side and saw Lightning lay sprawling on an animal skin and Maggie lay huddled up on her belly. The little girl’s white hair tumbled down and covered both of them like a quilt which looked very warm.
She could not help but smile. “She wasn’t like that in the beginning. Before we took her in, she had lived alone as a pigeon for several years. Back then, she almost lost the ability to speak, not to mention being close to someone. At that time, she would be alarmed by even the littlest rattling.”
“Just, I don’t know how long such intimacy between them will last…” Phyllis dropped her eyelids. “I hope this time the Battle of Divine Will will be different.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Ashes with her eyebrows raised. She did not want to make this conversation sound like an interrogation, but she just could not suppress the question. “Faced with a common enemy, we’ll all stick together, won’t we?”
“Yes, we will,” said Phyllis with a sigh. “But the war is also going to change the witches. Haven’t you noticed that magic power affects more than just our ability?”