“Dwarves are not… known for being the friendliest bunch when it comes down to meeting people of other races.”

“O-oh…!” I felt my heart drop a bit.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have been mad at all if dwarves turned out to be actually conveniently kind and friendly. IN FACT! I would have welcomed the overly comfortable parallel world archetype more than gladly!! Why was my world of reincarnation full of hate and violence?! I lost my arm!! I was hungry and miserable! We just survived a damn dungeon full of nothing but death! AND WHAT IS OUR REWARD!? A CITY FULL OF RACIST DWARVES!! GREAT!!!

… Luckily, my inner thoughts didn’t quite spill over. I really didn’t feel like explaining what the hell a parallel world is to Amelia…

“We’ll worry about it later. Currently, we need…” The paladin interrupted my inner spite.

“Food.” I finished her sentence.

We shared a knowing glance. I really needed something to get my mind off of this miserable chain of pain.

The option of stealing food from the dwarven kingdom built under the giant stalagmite was obviously out of the question. If the dwarves were even remotely as hateful as Amelia made them out to be, surely it was like walking straight into a hornet nest… and we had had our fair share of that already.

We began wandering down the grassy plains, heading towards a nearby forest.

“Do you really think there will be edible things in there? We’re underground, you know.” My pessimism was leaking out, most likely due to the chain reaction of events.

“I’m confident there is.” Amelia’s answer was strong enough to get me curious. I jogged to catch up with her a bit.

“What makes you so sure?” I panted a bit. Amelia’s walking pace was rather brisk. She seemed to notice my exhaustion and slowed down slightly.

“Judging by how massive the dwarven kingdom is, there has to be an internal source of food here. Importing everything from outside would be much too expensive even for dwarves.” She spoke as she grabbed my remaining arm and helped me walk a bit better.

I was a bit slower to keep up with her to begin with because running around while missing an arm was hard. Something about the weight distribution in your body being off makes it easy to stumble and fall.

Amelia was her usual overly gentlewomanly self and helped me stagger along patiently. At the moment, I remember wishing I could one day get princess-carried by her.

As we finally made our way to the forest, I got caught off-guard by how incredibly vast it was. Looking at it from the distance away made it seem rather tiny, but it was a proper forest. There was a thin layer of mist all over the plains and the woods, which might have concealed a part of it to make it seem smaller than it was, to be fair.

There were ruins of some kind overtaken by nature all around. The entire forest floor was covered in a thick and soft layer of vividly green moss. The moss overgrowth reached all the way to the bases of the trees, giving the surroundings a somehow ancient feel, as if we had entered a sanctuary mankind hadn’t taken foot in for eons.

“A-are you sure it’s okay for us to be here? I feel like we might get cursed for desecrating the sanctity of this place…?” I frowned a bit as I looked around carefully.

“I’m sure we’ll be fine for as long as we only take what we need and nothing more.” Amelia reassured… but I still felt a bit nervous about even sitting down on the moss.

“Um… I can’t say I’m really good at hunting or stuff… But I could go foraging for dry twigs and maybe things I can find on the ground, if that would help.” I offered while looking around.

The tranquility of the forest filled me with a quiet sense of peace. For a moment, I almost forgot, that we were in the middle of extremely hostile territory.

“Sounds good. I think I shall go try my luck with hunting. It’s been a while, so I might be a bit out of practice, but I’ll try my best.” With that, Amelia was off, leaving me by my lonesome.

My butt was wet from sitting on the moss. It was a bit gross, so I decided to get up and begin wandering around.

The forest felt very alive in comparison with the dead silence of the dungeon cave. Here and there were little animals making noise. Birds, lizards, mushrooms…

… Mushrooms?

There were bizarre, noisy mushrooms all over the roots of some nearby trees. They were quite thick and bulbous with vividly purple caps. A notable hissing emanated from the colony of mushrooms every time I went close to it.

“F-fine! Fine! I’ll go away!” I muttered and sighed. Honestly, I really didn’t feel like eating hissing mushrooms anyway.

Wandering around, I was able to pick up a few twigs. There was a nice dry clearing a few hundred meters away from the spot where Amelia and I went our separate ways. I figured it’d probably work as a camp.

To my surprise, there was even a little river crossing through the forest. On the plains, I was able to spot a bigger river traveling across the outer perimeter of the cave. This might have been an offshoot of it, or maybe there was a spring somewhere within the forest.

Either way, we had a source of water. Somehow, I felt a bit afraid of drinking from the little stream, despite how clear the water was.

We had just escaped a cave full of horrible tiny insects, so I was a bit paranoid about microscopic evil lurking everywhere at this point.

Sitting by the crystal-clear water left my mind wandering. I wondered if I actually even needed to eat and drink in the first place? Witches are monsters. Do they eat normally? I wondered if my hunger was simply due to remembering how to be hungry in my past life…

My stomach hadn’t growled at all since I arrived in this world. In fact, no matter how I listened, I couldn’t really hear anything from inside myself. I could tell I was hungry… Or at least I thought so. I remembered being pretty hungry when I made my way to the hut Amelia was in originally… Or… did I just imagine it all? You know, like a placebo effect of some kind?

How do witches’ bodies work? It’d be really convenient to find some books on the subject, and maybe the subject of magic alongside it.

Could be the dwarven kingdom had a library?

            “Yverna…? Are you alright?” Amelia’s voice broke me out of my daze.

“Oh! Amelia!” I wobbled a bit as I shakily got up. The knight was carrying a few creatures of some kind she had hunted. They looked a bit like rabbits, but they were a tad flatter in profile. “Sorry! I got a bit carried away thinking about stuff…!”

“It’s okay. I’m glad you’re not feeling sick or anything. Have you found anything edible?” She asked, peeking into the stream. “Oh! Fresh water?!” And with that, she sunk her face in the stream to drink.

She ended up squealing with a brain freeze on the mossy ground due to the water temperature. I consoled her while chuckling a bit as she slowly managed to gather her wits.

“Phuaaaa…! Refreshing…!” She sighed. Clearly, there was no worry over parasites or the formerly mentioned microscopic evil in her mind.

“There was a clearing a way back that way.” I pointed toward the grassy area I saw a moment ago. “In terms of food… I really just found the stream and mushrooms that kept hissing at me.”

“Mushrooms? Where?” Amelia was unnecessarily okay with the fact, that the mushrooms were making noise. Was this supposedly normal in this world?!

After guiding the gallant adventurer to the hissing mushroom colony, she began mercilessly plucking the mushrooms. The squealing the miserable fungi made was horrid.

I never wanted to hear it again.

Amelia sat us down by the clearing I found. She had found a helmet somewhere as she was wandering around. It hadn’t rusted… so it must have been quite fresh. It was made of metal and had a nice round shape to it.

The piece of headgear was granted the honor of being our cooking pot. Amelia began to pour water into it, then gutting and preparing the animals for stew.

Surprisingly enough, I didn’t find the process particularly disgusting or unpleasant to look at. Somehow, the sight of blood and guts wasn’t making me uncomfortable. This made me remember my previous musings.

“Amelia. Do you happen to know… anything outside of rumors and stories about witches?” I pried awkwardly.

“I thought I did… But a certain someone has proven my beliefs to be nothing but bedtime stories.” She chuckled as she began making a fire under the helmet. I helped her with magic.

“I see… I’ve just been wondering… I don’t seem to understand what it really means to be a witch… I guess.”

“Is that a problem?” Amelia smiled as she began adding mushrooms to the water as it started boiling. The mushrooms were screaming, and it was all around awful.

“Well! Isn’t it a bit weird for a witch to not know how to be a witch?!” I lamented in place a bit.

“I think I like you this way better… than as whatever you think a witch should be.” Amelia commented, without breaking her focus away from stirring the pot.

“But…”

“It’s not like humans try to think about how to be humans, either.” She commented. “I think instead of being a witch, you should just be yourself.”

“I… I see your point.” I mumbled. “I’ve just… been feeling a bit out of place. I don’t know how to explain it, but I guess a simple way to put it, is that I don’t feel like… this body is mine.” I stammered.

“Hmmm…” Amelia mused to herself.

 She kept stirring the pot in silence. She made a makeshift ladle out of wood with a sharp looking piece of rock she picked up near the little river. While it was crude and making the cooking utensil seemed to be a lot of work, it got the work done.

“Well. In my opinion… You might be worrying too much about stuff like that.” She spoke as she taste-tested the soup. “I don’t really know your background… and from how it seems, you don’t either.” She continued. “All I can genuinely comment on is the YOU, who I’ve spent the most recent moments of my life with.”

“Mmm…”

“I don’t know what you feel like ‘your place’ is, but I find you a reliable companion, even if you’re a bit odd and frail.” She offered me a taste of the stew.

Hunger is truly a wondrous spice. Not to downplay Amelia’s cooking, but that stew tasted like what biting into angels must taste like. I felt almost sad when I swallowed it down because I didn’t want the taste to go away.

“Whatever my perception of a witch is, it is something I hope you’ll never turn into, so, if possible, I’d love it if you’d just stay the way you are.”

While I think witches can’t cry, they sure as hell can blush. I could feel the heat all the way up to my ears. Amelia was such a villainess. Even without a heart, I could still feel my heart skipping a beat because this paladin was such a ladykiller.

            “… I’m… Um…” I began mumbling, ears red.

“Yes?” The knight seemed to find some mean amusement in my embarrassment.

“I… I hate to break the sweet moment, but I meant more in terms of like… how my body works and stuff… I do appreciate the fact, that you think so highly of me, though…”

Now Amelia got red too! She deserved some sweet revenge. She thought I was having issues of self-worth, even though I was mostly just wondering whether I have a stomach or not! Hah! Take that!

… I’m honestly happy she misunderstood, though…