Several days later, Sahara was still in her hiding spot. Actually, Sahara quite liked it there…Yeah, I know, she’s weird. All alone and nobody even knows, but she was a bit of a hermit or loner, or both, in her previous life.

The place was warm, and the garbage wasn’t too bad, probably because it was constantly emptied. Sahara was eating more now, well more than she was before! It comes as no surprise though if you really think about it, as she does currently live in a kitchen…

What was different though, was that she was now onto solids, where she hadn’t had solids yet in this life. It was a bonus though, because just after two meals, she felt great, well better than she had in ages!

Sadly, she had to extend quite an amount of effort to get food, and the other downside was…She was pretty filthy. Sahara knew that if she stayed much longer, she would be found out or she’d get sick. She seemed to also have a strange problem of accepting herself as dirty, since she was in the kitchen. In her previous life she knew about bacteria and washing hands all the time when it came to food. For a baby, and doing everything herself, she wasn’t too bad but still, for a baby living in a kitchen, she was probably going to be a ‘health issue’ for the ‘health department’.

‘I’m sorry, I’m going to have to close you down, the dirty toddler is a health hazard!’

Her wounds hadn’t completely healed, and she was really worried about one of them, as it looked like it was starting to fester. It had been a small area on the heel of her foot, and she knew that if she let it go, without medical attention, it would only get worse. The only thing she could think of to do, was to attempt to burn the fester off of her foot.

It wasn’t like she had a surgical doctor, or even a normal doctor, close by. It wasn’t like she could just look up what she could do either…It would have been nice but…She just had nothing!

She had tried putting in some green muck on it, because well, isn’t that alright? It could have made it worse though, actually…But yeah, maybe she used the wrong herb, or it did absolutely nothing, what she knows is that she has tried some ideas, with limited knowledge and utensils, and burning herself was just the next idea…I mean, isn’t that what they did in movies?

Sahara might have watched too many movies, but I really don’t suggest that people try this at home!

Sahara looked around but couldn’t find anything to help her with this ‘next plan of action’, so the next option was to look into the garbage container. She didn’t particularly know what she had found, but it seemed like it was small enough and could reach to a hot temperature. To the best of her ability, she cleaned the small area and then waited for the fire to heat up the end of what she had found. It wasn’t like a poker, yet it wasn’t just a stick either…It did give her enough curiosity to ponder over it while waiting…

This is ganna hurt…This is…Ganna hurt so bad! Maybe I should find another way. What if this is wrong?

Sahara had the second thoughts but knew that she was only stopping herself so that she wouldn’t feel the pain. If she didn’t do this, then what else would she do? What could she do? She’d already been pondering over this for a while but had thought of nothing else yet!

Maybe I should go out there when the bin gets removed and wait for someone to find me, then they could fix this problem!

…Yet, she found problems with that ‘solution’. What if who finds her wants nothing to do with her, or actually does do something with her but it isn’t anything helpful?

I have no choice!

Giving herself no more time to ponder, Sahara just did it…

Having burned the skin off, that had festered, with trembling hands and cloth to bite on in her mouth, she had looked at her poor, little foot in dismay. It had really hurt!

For a whole minute, Sahara could not do anything as she tried to quietly deal with the lingering pain…

Finally, after that, she checked it every day and kept it as clean as she could…She really didn’t want to do that again! For future reference, if this doesn’t come up, yes there is a scar that is left behind…

Funnily enough, the kitchen people were quite chatty, which helped Sahara overcome the lingering pain over burning her foot and taking it easy for a while. Sahara was able to learn a few more things that helped entertain her days. Even though she heard about her own disappearance, she still believed it to be entertainment. They had spent little time to search for her and no one was investigated to get any answers. Even the nanny and maid servants from her ‘house’ weren’t punished for not watching her. It truly came across as though they had a legitimate reason to be rid of Sahara completely and even didn’t want to put in the effort to close the case. It did annoy her though that it seemed that it was a ‘hushed’ subject. It wasn’t ‘hushed’ in the household, but ‘hushed’ for outside of the residence…It seemed that Sahara had become a skeleton inside of a closet…Almost like a ghost.

Hell, they didn’t even tell the authorities of my missing body…Wouldn’t it be funny if I pretended to haunt the estate!? That…That sounds like fun…Since this place doesn’t seem to have movies…Or a TV. I can become my own director and the new stage can be this place!

Sahara was pretty certain that she had at least more knowledge of scary someone more than anyone else here, simply because she had seen movies before!

To any of this, Sahara didn’t take much offense. She did worry a tiny bit, but that was only because her body was so young and pitiful. She honestly wanted to get rid of them as her family as well, just as they are getting rid of her.

Since she found that she was being ignored and neglected, she knew that she would have to leave one day, just, Sahara had thought that she had a bit more time on her hands…You know…So that she could grow up a bit…

Another thing that the kitchen staff chatted about, that helped Sahara understand more of…Was how they counted their days here. It wasn’t like Earth, where we were BC then AD.

The days were slightly smaller here, whether it was because the planet was small or that it was going faster than Earth, Sahara couldn’t tell but it meant that the days went quicker.

They didn’t have weeks, they just had a letter of the alphabet and numbers, like N:35. Sahara thought it was quite strange and it really did take a while for her to understand this new world’s way of keeping track of how old you really were!

It seemed that the years that go by went about 100 days earlier then usual and that cultivation somehow made people grow up slightly quicker, but people also were an adult longer than the average human on Earth.

What confused the hell out of Sahara is that there were two timelines. One was to state since the last Golden Emperor had come to power, which isn’t widely known here in Green Haven. No, Green Haven went by their own timeline, which is by what a prior Green Haven Emperor had wanted quite some time ago. They were both an alphabet and numbers, but they were both very different!

N:35 was the timeline that Sahara didn’t understand yet, because she hadn’t been told anything about the Golden Emperor, but the timeline that was used most was, C:12. The planet had already gone around the sun, so a whole year had passed yet…C:12 had not changed…Which meant that the timeline was not done by how many times the planet evolved around the sun…No, it was something else…

Considering that the timelines confused the hell out of Sahara, there isn’t many of those in this book, as she keeps to Earth time, simply because…It’s easier…

I wish I could state that she keeps to Earth time for the readers but no, it’s not that at all. We can’t keep stating that ‘this’ happened in C:12 and ‘this’ happened in C:12, you might just get confused!

So…Even though Sahara starts late, she starts counting and keeping an eye of the days and all, and she finds a way to have her ‘own timeline’…

So…What you just read…Forget it…

Haha, I’m getting good at wasting other people’s time! Hang on, that’s mean…Have I become…A bully?

Forgive me…

…Hang on, why should I ask for forgiveness!? It’s not like I force people to read this, you know, by grabbing their head and telling them to look at a screen!

*The author has once again muted the narrator*

Then…There was finally news that helped Sahara out tremendously!

There was something inside of the kitchen that could also help keep her cleaner!

How awesome! Now I can make the kitchen my permanent residence…At least for now.

***

Just like this, an entire year went by, making Sahara closer to about two years old. Of course, in Earth years, she would be a little less, but for this planet, she was now ‘two’.

She ate leftovers, sometimes stealing real meals. Sahara didn’t steal full meals often though, because she didn’t want to be found out. The strange thing about the kitchen, it did get cleaned, but they only cleaned where she was hiding once every month. During that time, they would take the garbage out and Sahara would leave, so they can clean it for her. It was almost like she had a hotel room. When she returned from her ‘outing’ her ‘room’ was nice and clean!

Then, she would have to get back in there before they replaced the cleaned and now empty garbage container. Sahara had nearly gotten caught once, but she got a quick understanding of their routines and made sure to stay aware.

An advantage that Sahara did receive, was that of getting to know about olden day cooking. Since she hadn’t much to do, she listened and smelled the food cooking and seemed to learn a few things about cooking and ingredients…Some ingredients seemed to have different names to that on Earth, but Sahara just tried to blank out what she already knew, or put it to the side, just so that she could receive this information whole heartedly. You never know, cooking a meal, and using the information she obtained here, might save her life! Actually, she was never good at cooking in her previous life…Perhaps having a new life with new hands might change that!

Even if I look towards the future, no, I don’t think cooking saves her life and she continues to not be very good at it…But if Sahara is just trying to be positive, I’m not ganna be the one to burst her bubble!

Sahara would also constantly use the method a kitchen maid had ‘said’, to clean herself. Actually, that was one of the easiest things that she had to do! A certain steam would come off one of the items that they would cook, and all she had to do was remove her clothes and sweat a bit. It wasn’t like a sauna, it was like…The other one…

Sahara couldn’t seem to remember the name of the steam room…

Being able to leave once in a while, Sahara had a few spares of clean clothes that she would use to dry herself with afterwards. They weren’t clothes specifically made for her, nor where they that of a child who was born of the man of the house, like she was…No, they were servants’ clothes. She wasn’t the only one having troubles in this estate it seems and she had been able to take these clothes from someone who had died.

It was gruesome and something that a little kid shouldn’t have to do but Sahara had to survive and taking the clothes was helping her do that…Perhaps for someone who had never seen a died body before may have never even thought of taking the clothes but…It wasn’t Sahara’s first time of seeing someone dead…And yes, you’ll find out later upon a past that Sahara is trying not to think about!

When it came to her ‘deeds’, Sahara struggled, but most of it went into the fire or garbage. It was quite tragic how she had to deal with something that happened so often, but she wasn’t ready yet to show herself or go elsewhere. What helped her, was that on the rare occasion, she would exert extra effort in placing some of her ‘deeds’ into the food that would be cooking close by her, in a small type of revenge. She had to be very careful and could only do it when there was no lid on the cook pot!

By this time, Sahara could walk, and easily could take things out of the garbage container, because she had grown…And when the garbage container is taken away, she takes that chance to wander around and stretch her legs…It became a routine, and she continues to endure…She had become, the real Matilda, where she was so young yet doing everything herself! Well, that’s what Sahara thought but…She is closer to the real Matilda then she even thinks!

***