Made Out of Meat
The flame licked over her first two fingers. The pain was sharp and sudden. She was so startled it took her a few seconds to move her hand. Seconds in which she recognized the allure of fire.
Tall and yellow with the center gas-lit blue, the flames danced — mesmerizing — across her skin. It didn’t even really hurt. Until it did.
She jerked her hand away and hurried to find water. She’d been taught basic medicine. She knew that burns were bad.
She fell to her knees next to the stream and plunged her hand into the cold water. It came straight out of the mountains and was quick to make her flesh go numb.
She kept her two fingers in the water but lifted the rest of her hand out. She submerged them until the cold was beginning to hurt and she could feel the mud seeping through the knees of her pants. Then she pulled her hand away from the water and leaned back from the stream.
She examined her fingers. The skin was reddened but unbroken. She couldn’t tell if the red was from burns already forming or from the cold.
The memory of a cooking lesson went through her mind. — “Once you remove it from the heat, cover the meat and leave it to sit for at least ten minutes. As it cools, the meat will continue to cook. Plus you don’t want to cut it too soon and let all the juices out. There is a reason why patience is considered a virtue.” — She’d learned how to perfectly roast meat, though it had taken a while for her to even approach the skill of her teacher. In the same lesson she’d made cheesy roasted brussels sprouts, which had involved boiling the whole heads before plunging them into an ice bath to stop the cooking process.
She sat with a THUMP. Her mind was putting the idea together with chilling detail. Boiling sprouts, roasting meat, ice water.
I’M made out of meat, she thought.
