The feast

Sabina was stunned by his way of answering her. No one ever spoke like that to her. For a moment she didn’t know at all how to respond. When she finally opened her mouth to speak she could only manage the words “You’re right… I’m sorry…”.

After having been given that lecture about moral she just quickly went to by that cow Ceriden had used as an example. Now that there were no other options she just wanted to get this done as quickly as possible. She didn’t talk at all as she began leading the cow out of the city, Gareth was following behind and, so she hoped Ceriden would as well.

When they reached the city limit she continued towards a forest some hundred meters away. Once inside the forest and out of view from the residents of the city, she tied the cow to a tree. She tried to avoid looking too much at the poor cow before turning towards Gareth, saying “Just try to make it quick, allright?”. Then she started walking away, not wanting to risk seeing or hearing anything of what was about to happen.

Gareth didn’t hesitate at all as he was given the go-ahead by Sabina. He rushed toward the cow and buried his teeth into its neck. It wasn’t easy to bite through the thick skin or to hold on to the cow that now desperately tried to get away. If the cow hadn’t been tied up, Gareth probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. He also had to bit more than once to make the blood flow faster even though that also meant that some of it would be wasted.

By each gulp of blood, he could feel how his strength was returning. That, combined with the warmth of the blood that started to spread through his body was absolutely wonderful. Distracted by this he didn’t even notice when the cow gradually started to get weaker and weaker until it could no longer keep standing. What he did notice was when the flow of blood slowly began to fade out. At this point he was already quite full, but with so much meat in front of him he couldn’t just let it all go to waste. The blood had only been the started and now it was time to the main course. He let go of the cow’s neck to get into a better position to try and get a hold of some of the good parts. And since this wasn’t his first time he knew just what he wanted. While on his knees he was able to force his hand through the skin of the cow’s abdomen, underneath the ribcage and all the way in until he found what he wanted. Quickly he grabbed hold of the heart, pulled it out and swallowed it down in big chunks. After having wolfed down the last mouthful he once more reached inside the cow grab another of his favourite pieces; the liver. This time, even though he really tried, he wasn’t able to eat it all. When trying to force down just one more bite he was close to losing his entire meal since his stomach wouldn’t agree to any more of this madness.

He got up, but only to walk over to a tree where he could sit down and rest. If it hadn’t been because of the terrible stomach-ache, this would actually have been a perfect opportunity for him to run away, but he had no idea of where to go to. The only thing he really could do was to wait until he was feeling better, though despite the stomach-ache he was feeling so much better than he had the last couple of weeks, and while doing so he licked some of the blood of his fingers in a futile attempt to look a little less messy.