All Tabitha could do was wait. Wait to see if the bear was going to eat her fish or not. Wait to see if the bear was going to turn to her and try to eat her. Wait to see if she was about to die.

And wait to see if she was going to need to turn the bear into a rug someday.

The bear’s nostrils were large enough that every single sniff it made sounded like obnoxious snorting, and the bear continued sniffing all over out of her sight until she felt its fat, wet nose brush against her leg. That sent shivers up her spine as it meant the bear was investigating her now rather than the fish.

Then she felt the bear nudge her. It pressed its snout up against her legs to push her a little as if testing to see if she was really dead or not.

Don’t ya have anythin’ better to do?! Go away! Go eat some fish or somethin’! Leave me alone! And when I say to go eat some fish, I mean your own fish! Don’t touch mine! I put hard work into catchin’ that!

Then she felt the bear place one of its paws against her calves, rolling her over onto her back. She made sure to close her eyes before it could see that they were open.

So help me if I die by pretending to act dead for a bear…

The bear continued investigating her until she could hear its sniffing snorts right by her face.

I’m gonna die. I never should have trust all that advice about grizzly bears! They always said to stand your ground to black bears, play dead for brown, and to regret ever bein’ born for white! I’m hauntin’ whoever made that popular!

Tabitha waited, ready to fight back as hard as she could the moment she felt fangs against her. Sure, that would probably be too late, but she was going to at least try to take out an eye or two before it could kill her if that was its plan!

Only, nothing happened.

She waited more.

And yet, nothing happened.

It was only when she heard the sound of something wading through water that she opened her eyes and saw that the bear left her alone, instead moving into the river and stopping in its center. She watched as the bear lowered itself with a wide-open mouth into the water, dipping its snout below the surface leaving only its nose above it. Tabitha could also see that the water flowing into the bear’s mouth was leaving through its gills as it sat there keeping its mouth open.

She wanted nothing more than to make the loudest, most relieved sigh that she’d ever made in her entire life, but she didn’t want to grab the bear’s attention with sudden noise. Instead, she looked over at her fish and saw… that it was still there. A piece of it was covered in drool on the ground next to the main fish, but that was it.

Guess it only likes ‘em raw, Tabitha thought to herself before looking back at the bear just in time to see a fish brush against its submerged whiskers.

The instant a fish touched the bear’s whiskers, it snapped its jaws shut around the fish and captured it whole. The bear then lifted its head out of the water, shook it around a little to get all of the excess water out through its gills, and swallowed the fish whole.

Huh… that’s interestin’. Sure wish it woulda just went straight for the water instead of droppin’ by me first.

The bear turned to look at Tabitha, stared at her for a couple of seconds, and then lowered its head back into the water with an open mouth.

At that point, Tabitha let out a quiet sigh that was nothing compared to the sigh she really wanted to let out. The bear clearly wasn’t interested in her anymore, though, so she figured that a soft sigh was allowed.

She also figured that she could finish eating her fish.

There she was. Tabitha, somebody who was just working at a fast-food job in the city, was now sitting next to a river with a fire, eating a fish she caught with a spear in the middle of nowhere, while watching a bear with gills hunt for fish in the river in front of her.

“Yeah. I’ve gone insane,” Tabitha said. “But at least my mind comes up with some pretty fun stuff if this is what bein' insane is like.”

The bear didn’t take much longer to finish its hunt in the river. Tabitha watched it catch six fish before it stood up straight, stretched its neck, and came back in her direction. She wasn’t worried, though, due to it already lacking interest in her and the fact that it just finished filling up on fish. She knew that a bear with a full stomach was going to be a docile bear so long as she didn’t make eye contact with it or spook it. And surely enough, she was right. The bear stopped when it was near her to give her another look over, but then went on its way without a care for her.

Now Tabitha could let out that big sigh she’d been meaning to. “Alright, I won’t turn ya into a rug this time. But sneak up on me like that again and I will.” With her fish gone and the fire starting to die out, it was time to leave. “Reckon it’s time to get a move on now. Shame I don’t got a cup or anythin’ to scoop some water with. Would like to boil it over the fire just to be safe. Gonna have to hope nothin’ died upstream and is rottin’ in there.”

She knew that it was probably safe to drink the water, but just probably wasn’t all that reassuring when she was on her own in a strange place.

“Actually… ya know, I’m pretty sure that’s some clay I see across the river. If there’s a good patch of it over there, I reckon I’ll be able to find some on this side. Wouldn’t be too much trouble to make a clay cup or bowl to drink outta. But before that, there’s somethin’ I’m curious about.”

Tabitha walked back into the water with a small handful of slime to dip into it. She had her money on it getting diluted by the water and washing away.

And surely enough, she was right. The slime became diluted to the point where it was basically just water and was washed away downstream.

“Figured as much. Good thing I didn’t try fishin’ with my good spear,” she said, right before an extra loud crack from her fire pit grabbed her attention. “I wonder…”

If the slime became diluted in water, what would happen to it in fire?

Because she really wasn’t expecting much, she only pinched a small amount of slime to take out of her pocket and drop into the weakening fire.

She definitely wasn’t expecting what she saw next.

The slime hardened. It lost some of its purple color but turned into a solid, translucent chunk.

“Ya don’t say,” Tabitha said, using a couple of sticks to pick the item out from the fire.

Nothing popped up when she examined it, which she assumed was because she only used a tiny amount of the “item” it belonged to, but that didn’t stop her from making the most obvious comparison that she could think of.

“It… looks and feels like plastic.”

And as it cooled from the absence of fire, it became even harder to the point where it was no longer malleable at all.

“What happens if I put it in the water now?”

Crouching in the water again, she dipped the small piece of “plastic” into the water and watched as it kept its shape and consistency.

“Well, I’ll be. If that’s how it works…”

It was time for more crafting. Her idea was simple, but she was confident in it. First, she dug out a small hole in the ground in the shape of a bowl. She then scooped out the rest of the slime in her pocket to fill the hole up. Once it was full, she took a few sticks, layered them over the hole full of slime, and then took one of the still-burning sticks from the fire pit to light the new pile of sticks on fire.

And then she waited.

She wanted to give the slime a chance to heat all the way through, so she gave it a couple of minutes that felt like hours to her before kicking the burning sticks away from her now-solidified slime.

Then she realized a problem.

That slime was going to be extremely hot—too hot to hold with her bare hands, and she had no gloves.

But she did have a shirt.

Tabitha pulled her work shirt off over her head, leaving her with a tank top and half torn jeans, and wrapped it around her fist to press it down into the center of the solidifying slime. She needed to hollow out the center if she wanted to use it as an actual bowl. Once she did that, she freed the bowl from the hole, wrapped it in her shirt, and took it over to the water to cool it down.

The whole time it was cooling, she did her best to shape the slime through the shirt to make it as bowl-like as possible. Considering that she felt her hands almost moving on their own again, she figured she was doing something right.

She was almost afraid of unwrapping her shirt from it by the time it got too solid to further manipulate.

Tabitha took a deep breath, unwrapped the bowl from her shirt, and… smiled from ear to ear as she held a beautiful, purple bowl in her hand. It felt like plastic but, once fully hardened, had an appearance similar to glass.

Item Information

Name

Hardslime Bowl

A bowl made of Hardslime.

Rarity

D

Quality

26

Element

Water

“It worked!” Tabitha shouted. “Hah! Take that, clay! I bet ya thought I’d have to work my way up with clay working as the next step! I’m skippin’ straight to plastic!”

Tabitha scooped some water into the bowl, brought it up to her mouth, and… paused.

“Wait. Don’t be stupid. The whole point of makin’ a bowl was so that I can boil the water first.”

She shook her head from the mistake she was about to make and took the water over to the fire pit instead, setting the bowl on top to give the last of the flames a chance to boil it and kill any bad bacteria that might be in it. Once she was confident in the water being safe to drink, she got her fill of warm water, which really wasn’t all that great, but she’d rather have safe, warm water than potentially contaminated, cool water.

And since her shirt was already off, she wrung out the excess water soaked into it before wrapping the sleeves around the top of it and tying them together so that she would have something to use as a bag.

“That’ll do it!” Tabitha said, having placed her bowl in her new “bag.”

With a bag slung over her shoulder, a new bowl and knowledge regarding how she can use slime, and her jelly horn spear, it was time to get back on the move. She still wasn’t sure if heading toward the mountains was the best choice that she could make, but—

“He-hello?” a feminine voice asked from behind.

Tabitha spun around with her spear ready, causing the other girl to jump and drop the basket of mushrooms she had collected. Aside from the mushrooms, what Tabitha saw was a girl slightly taller than her who looked about the same in age and dressed like she was attending a renaissance faire as a modest barmaid with shoulder-length, brown hair… but none of that was what really caught Tabitha’s attention.

What caught Tabitha’s attention were the floppy, dog-like ears atop her head and the fluffy tail tucked between her legs out of fear.

Considering that the other girl was clearly a different species… the first thing that Tabitha thought of was whether or not her hair would count as a different item when it came to materials. Then she looked down at the mushrooms and thought about all the different cooking and alchemy uses they might have.

It was only after her mind jumped to crafting that she realized seeing a girl looking like a normal townsperson probably meant that civilization was close by.

“Oi, do ya know if there are dwarves up in those mountains?” Tabitha asked, forgetting to lower her spear which was still pointed at the cowering girl.

The other girl shook her head and said, “I—I have no idea what those are.”

“Wait, don’t tell me you’ve never heard of a dwarf! Come on! Short and wide folk who all love rock and stone, both the men and women have beards, and they’re the best smiths in every fantasy setting!”

The girl clearly looked confused as if she had no idea what Tabitha was talking about.

“Come on, don’t do this to me. Don’t tell me that my brain has finally broken and sent me into a fantasy world that don’t even got dwarves!”

“I’m sorry, I have no idea what—what you’re talking about…”

Tabitha sighed and slumped her shoulders, finally lowering her spear.

Just like that, her dream of ever becoming best friends with a bunch of bearded dwarves who treated her just like one of their own was crushed.

“Can ya at least tell me—” Tabitha lifted her head and stopped when she noticed the girl was gone, as was her basket and most of the mushrooms. She then looked into the forest just in time to see the girl’s tail disappear around a bush. “Oi! Get back here! I ain’t done askin’ ya questions!”

Tabitha had no idea just how much terror she was inflicting on the poor girl.