A Lonely Eden 3 (Original) (Patreon)

She/Him/They laughed as the toy they’d dropped onto that world She’d/He’d/They’d forgotten about ages ago cut the throat of the original one dropped there. She/He/They had dropped him on an Earth where humans never evolved as part of Her/His/Their early training in moving things from one reality to another. The human had then been used as a teaching aid in granting mortals abilities, and She/He/They had moved on for other lessons in other stretches of Creation.

In a pique of nostalgia, She/He/They had decided to visit the worlds they’d played in when in training, and to Her/His/Their surprise, the human was still around. Five zeptoseconds after seeing the eternally pubescent human, She/He/They had a delightful idea. Clearly the agelessness and resurrective immortality was stronger than She/He/They had anticipated, if it was still ongoing. Why not “reward” the human with some companionship? A minor adjustment to the human would take care of any potential problems, after all it wouldn’t do for the toy to die because he got carried away, or for his offspring to be more retarded than a Targaryan.

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Evelyn “Eve” Parker stared, with wide eyes, shaking hands, and rattling breath, at the body of the man who’d… who’d raped her. Her eyes wandered down to the bloody knife in her hands, moments before it slipped between limp fingers to land on the ground with a clanking sound. She swallowed, trying to keep what little food (and other stuff) from coming up, as her gaze turned back to the bloody mess of his neck. She’d done that. She’d taken his new-penny colored knife from his belt and…

Eve turned her head, leaning over the edge of the bed, and threw up. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten before… this, and most of what she threw up was the same color as the stuff he’d put in her kitty and bottom. That just made her throw up more, until there wasn’t anything left to come up. The room stank, of her throw up, of his blood, of the things they’d been doing. She had to get out…

Gingerly, Eve got off the bed and tried to walk out of the room. Her bottom hurt, and it felt weird to walk, but she managed to hobble to the doorway and use it to support her weight. Looking back and forth, she couldn’t tell which way was out. Picking a direction, even with her bottom hurting (in a way that also felt good somehow), she made her way along the weird hallway. After a few minutes, she came upon a room completely filled with short wood logs.

Mommy’s lessons about logging companies came to mind, and Eve frowned. The man was even worse than she’d thought. A twinge in her bottom reminded her of her goal, and she left the room alone to look for the way out. There had to be a phone somewhere, since hers wasn’t in her clothes. The Naziman had to have taken it, and if she could find it she could call Mommy. Not the police, Mommy had warned her not to trust the police because they were all racists. She wasn’t really sure what that word meant, but she knew it was bad.

Just past the room with the logs, Eve came to a round room with a big pit in the center and multiple smaller pits around the edges. There was a funny white and gray powder and black lumps in the pits, and along the ceiling was a line carved into it leading down a wide passage. Following it, Eve smiled upon seeing light around a corner that wasn’t coming from lamps and candles.

Coming to the end of the passage, Eve closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She hadn’t noticed it in the rooms, but the air here smelled… good, but not because of a particular smell. If she had to describe it, she’d say it was lacking a smell she hadn’t noticed because until now it had just always been there. Opening her eyes, Eve’s smile fell. The sun was going down, it’d be dark soon. She didn’t want to go back into the Naziman’s place, but the gangs would come out in big groups, and she didn’t want to know what they’d do to her if they caught her.

With little choice, Eve turned around and reentered the Naziman’s home. The chill that ran down her spine wasn’t entirely due to the cold wind that blew against her as she did.

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That night was terrible. She couldn’t find a bed that was soft, instead having to make do with dragging all of the a-a-animal furs into a pile and bundling herself up in them. She tossed and turned forever, and when it looked like the sun was starting to come up, she’d barely gotten any sleep. Looking around the other rooms, Eve had smiled upon finding potatoes and what looked like tomato jerky. But the potatoes were hard and tasted bad, and the tomato jerky was wrong too, it tasted like the pits in the other room smelled. Didn’t the Naziman have any granola?

Looking around some more, she managed to find jugs that had water in them, though why they were next to the ones containing stinky fish she didn’t know. The water was better than the bottled water she’d had at home, she’d have to see if Mommy could find out where the Naziman got it once she figured out where her phone was.

After she’d drunk her fill of water, Eve looked around some more. She’d heard in school that the Nazis were from a really long time ago, but she thought they had guns, planes, and tanks, so why did Naziman only have stuff made of wood, rocks, clay, and a-a-animal furs? The only metal anything she’d seen had been the knife from last night, and the color of the metal was like a new penny, not like the knives in the kitchen she wasn’t allowed to touch.

Finally, after looking through every nook and cranny she could find, outside of the room with the Naziman in it, with no sign of her phone, Eve concluded that he must have thrown her phone away before taking her to his place. It was weird that she hadn’t found his phone, but maybe he was one of those Redneck people? The ones who lived out in the country because they were too poor to live in the city? Eve didn’t know if someone could be both a Nazi and a Redneck, but she couldn’t think of any other reason he wouldn’t have something as basic as electric lights.

Without anything else to do, Eve went outside, to the air that almost smelled sweet. The sun was high in the sky, and the difference in lighting made Eve pause. There was a dirt path leading from where she was standing, winding down a steep slope, surrounded by tall trees, and what looked like a river in the distance. With the dark light last night, it hadn’t really hit her: she wasn’t in the city anymore.

A jolt of fear shot through Eve, she’d never been out of the city before. The closest she’d come to this was the park, and there she could still see the streets on all 4 sides! She’d never seen a river outside of pictures or videos. How was she supposed to find her way home! Maybe if she spelled out something so a plane flying overhead could see it?

Her stomach rumbling put a pause in that plan, she’d take another look through the Naziman’s pantry, he had to have something she could eat, if his potatoes were all wrong. Turning around, Eve made her way back inside.

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I sat up with a groan, my hand rubbing at my neck. Fuck, it had been ages since I’d had that weird sensation. The last time my neck hurt this bad was after my failed attempt at doing with some big ass cattle what the indians used to do with buffalo and cliffs. Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, the sound of metal makes me pause. Carefully, I lift my feet up and look down. How’d my copper knife get down there?

It took me over a year from start to finish to make it, setting aside days where I did nothing but add charcoal to a fire, blow through a clay pipe, and drink water to rehydrate maybe three times the entire day. No eating, no food gathering, no collecting anything else, no repairing and/or making clothes, nothing but sitting in front of a blazing hot fire trying to get it hot enough for the little beads of copper (that had taken days of dedication just to reach that point) to reach a liquid form that I could pour into a sand mold I’d made around an obsidian knife.

Picking it up, I winced, seeing the dried blood on it. I could have sworn that I’d cleaned it after I’d last used it. Sighing, I tucked it into my belt and stood up. My joints popped and cracked loudly, my neck alone having what felt like a dozen cracks, as I stretched. I paused, sniffing. The room smelled funny, a coppery scent that was both thick and faint, if that made any sense.

“I’ll figure that out later,” I muttered, walking out of the room to my “living” room. The fire pits were all empty, except for a comically bad bundle of wood in the center one. I blinked, staring at it. Did The Girl try to get a fire started? If so, there was absolutely zero chance of that ever catching light. Turning, I made my way to my wood closet (fully stocked for the winter, without considering the caches I had a short ways away) and got a small collection of twigs, bark fibers and my fire bow.

Getting the fibers nice and ready, I set up the fire bow on a flat piece of wood that had half a dozen holes already started on it. Looping the bow’s string around the stick I’d been using, I started moving the bow back and forth, the string causing the stick to spin and the friction against the piece of wood caused it to heat up. It was the same principle as rubbing a stick between your hands, but this way I didn’t have to pause when my hands inevitably got too low.

After a few minutes, I had some tiny embers in the new hole formed on the wood plank that was gingerly transferred to the bark fibers. It started smoldering, and with a few carefully controlled blows of air the fibers caught fire. Moving the bundle to the center of the fire pit, I carefully arranged the twigs against it so that they’d both catch easily and wouldn’t produce a lot of smoke.

The twigs had caught and I’d just placed some starter chunks of wood onto the fire when a scream caught my attention. Turning to face the hallway leading to the bedrooms, I saw The Girl, but…

“You look like shit,” I told the girl, who had a look of utter shock and horror on her face to go with the hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in days. “Are you going to actually eat this morning?”

“Y-y-you… how?!” she finally shrieked out, making me wince and dig a finger into my ear.

“It’s called sleep, you ever hear of it?” I drawled. Mentally noting that even a day’s interaction had caused my sarcasm to come back.

“I cut your neck open! How are you moving?!”

That made me pause, and suddenly it clicked, my eyes widening in shock. The countless times I’d thought I’d nearly died, especially early on… just this morning, with my neck hurting like hell… just how I’d managed to survive long enough to learn how to survive…

“How long?” I asked as I stood up and approached her. “How long ago was that?”

“Th-three days…” she said, her eyes racing back and forth from me to the rest of the room.

Three days… when I died I’d get back up in three days. If I was a hispanic guy named Jesus, I’d say someone had a sick sense of humor. As it was, The Girl had had three days to try to survive on her own, without any assistance, while being even less prepared for it than I had been.

“What’s your name?” I asked, mentally preparing the upcoming speech.

“E-Evelyn. Everyone calls me Eve,” she answered, making me blink before my hand all but flew to meet my face.

“Right, someone has a sick sense of humor,” I said deadpan as I pulled my hand down my face. “I’m Adam, so we’re Adam and Eve.”

“I don’t get it,” Eve said with a puzzled tilt of her head.

“Not important,” I muttered, waving it off, before turning to face the now lit fire. “Come over here.”

Once she was standing next to me, I started explaining how each aspect of making a fire went into it, pointing out the tools I used, and telling her the basics of how I’d made them. I’d go into detail at a later point, but for now, the basics were sufficient. Once that was done, I took her to the kitchen to show her how to prepare the potatoes. Only to immediately learn that she hadn’t known that potatoes started out raw. The only times she’d seen potatoes had been after they’d already been cooked.

There was also the issue of needing to throw out the lutefisk I’d been preparing, but at least I now had another helper who was actually willing to listen and help.