Nature's Silhouette

2. 'Breeze' Wave

“I was hungry”

It’s the sentence that came out of my mouth to reasoning why I woke up at 4 AM in the morning to the black wolf.

The black wolf didn’t react anything. But I can feel the deadpan look to me. Don’t look at me with that face. I didn’t do anything wrong. It let out a small noise and goes to the backyard. There he goes again, huh?

Back to the reason why I did this, I take a look at what my fridge contains. And still like yesterday. I only have bacon for the meal. Wait, I didn’t notice I have a lot of vegetables that I can turn to spices. Why didn’t I come with this earlier? I mean, the one who’s gonna eat it will have to be me. I don’t know if wolves can eat spicy food. But yeah, let’s just make this spice. It’s called Sambal Bawang.

It’s an Indonesian spice recipe taught by my mother when she isn’t around. She notices that I liked spicy food so she taught me this. My mom always cooks this recipe in the traditional way. Using a mortar and pestle. It requires a lot of energy to use that, but you’ll get the feeling of using that.

The ingredients are not too much that it won’t be a problem. Approximately 10 chili peppers, a garlic clove, and some salt if needed. Let’s just got into it. The making of this is not too hard I’d say. Put the peppers and the garlic clove in the pestle. Don’t forget to remove the garlic skin first. Next, just grind it with the mortar. Slowly, but surely. Just keep grinding it until its roughly smooth, once its smooth, apply some heated olive oil. Since I will eat it with bacon, so I thought I just cook it at the same time. Once it applied, smoother it more, to make the ingredients absorb the oil. A few minutes have passed. Don’t forget to taste it first. If you feel the texture is smooth enough for your taste, then it’s done. If you feel it’s not salty enough, then add some few salt. I take the spices a bit with a finger. The spiciness is great, it’s at my taste. The texture is at the point where I wanted to be, and the saltiness is right. Yep, I’m done here.

Normally, my mom used to move the spices into a saucer for easier for me to pick it up. But you know what? I’ll just leave it at the pestle. I don’t want to add some things to wash later. I kinda wondering what the black one doing right now. I take a look at my backdoor that I’ve opened for it. Just looking at the moon, huh? I’ll just accompany him instead. Grabbing the bacon plate that I cooked before, and with the pestle, I head to the backdoor.

I look into the wolf. It just sat at the terrace of the backyard, looking a the moon. Somehow, I feel relaxed by just looking at it.

“Yo, Still gazing at the moon, I see.” I approached the wolf and sat beside it.

The wolf responds to my presence, turning its head to me and looked at me. Only a few moments, it turned back to the moon.

“Still, I can’t believe I woke up ‘cause hungry when I could just continue sleeping.” I sighed at my past actions.
“But hey, it wouldn’t be hurt, right?” I joked a little bit, then turned up to the moon.

“Maybe, Moongazing is my thing right now.”

This is the feeling that I want to describe, but I can’t. The feeling of the cold breeze that comes out of nowhere, and the warm heat that comes out from my heater, comes contact on me. The bright light that the moon emits, shines in the dark of this clear night. It’s a peculiar feeling. I eat the bacon with the spices that I make on it. The warm sensation of the spiciness of the food with the cold breeze coalesces into one. But, I have a feeling there’s something less. What is it?

I noticed that the wolf is looking at the pestle all of the time. Is it interested?

“Hey, wondering what is this?” I showed the pestle to the wolf.

“It's a spice that I made earlier, its add some spiciness to food.” I take another slice of bacon and scoop the spices with it.

“In kinda way, this is how you eat it. Scoop the spices with the food.” I showed the bacon covered spices to the wolf. The wolf approached the food in my hand and began to sniff it.

“Also, I don’t actually know that is your kind can eat spicy fo--” in out of nowhere, the wolf takes the whole bite of it.

“Ah-” It actually ate the whole bacon with the spices.

The wolf ate it like its nothing. No drawback of the cause of the spiciness.

“Well…, That answers my question.” But suddenly, the wolf twitched, widening its yellow eyes. Then it jumped from the terrace and walked to the tree. I think it got a stomach problem because of eating that. The wolf sniffed to the ground and then taking a stance that like dogs do when it letting out its bladder.

Yep, got a stomach problem.

After a few minutes, the wolf covered its “leavings” and came back to the terrace and sat like nothing happens.

“That’s escalated quickly. Is your stomach good?” The wolf just nodded to my question. “you don’t need anything to neutralize the spices, like milk?” the wolf shook its head in “defiance”. I guess it’s a no.

*RING*

Hmm? My phone’s ringing. Who calls at this hour? Well, except for that guy who always calls me at any hour.

I got up from the terrace “Be back in a few minutes.” I said to the wolf. The wolf didn’t respond to anything.
I grab my phone and look at the caller.

“Joel”

I knew it. This guy again.

I sighed as I picked up the call. “Yo, Joel.”

“Ayy, my boy Hiko.” He responds.

Joel, some guy that I befriended on the internet. He’s supposedly a called streamer on some stream web. Well, I knew him from a discussion forum about a game called RimWorld. Since I knew a lot about that game, I just telling what to do in that game and some strategies. Eventually, we become good friends.

“What is it?”

“Just a friendly reminder, You gonna play RimWorld this noon with my rules and stuff.”

“Yeah yeah, I will tell you how I am gonna do about it later.”

“Well, I got to ask first, is your PC capable of streaming?”

“Hmm.., I think my PC is capable of doing anything decently…, so yeah it is.”

“Great!, You’re gonna playing the game while streaming,” He said.

“Wait, why? Why stream if anyone doesn’t watch it you know?”

“Don’t worry about that, I got it covered.”

“Well, if you say so, sure.”

“Nice, just follow these instructions when you want to start.” He then tells me about how to stream stuff, about the software to use, and etc.

“Okay, is there any more that I need to know?”

“For now, that’s all you need to know, Just prepare before I send the viewers to you. Well, gotta end it here. Got to do something.”

“Yeah, Thanks tho,”

“No prob.” And then he hangs up.

To put it short, I’m going to stream RimWorld on the site that Joel usually does. And then, Joel sends me his viewers from his stream to my stream. He told me to prepare this at noon, so I still got some time.

I look at my side, the skies are brighter now, sunrise huh? It ain’t a problem watching one. As I walk back to the backyard, I look a mini speaker beside me, And it got me an idea.


“Hey, I’m back,” I told the wolf. The wolf turned its head to me, then it tilts its head like it questioning me.

“My friend called me about stuff that I’m going to do this noon. Anyway, you leaving soon, right?” The wolf nodded.

“Then, let’s enjoy this moment, for both of us.” I placed a mini speaker beside me. The forgotten thing that I would actually do. Playing Resonance by Home at a moment like this...

Imagine the feeling of calmly gazing the full moon on the verge of sun rising. Accompanied by the color of the skies that gradually brighter from its dark. Closing your eyes to feel the cold breeze and to the beat that will ask you the thing that you’ve already done, but you can’t remember what it is.

Yeah, this nostalgia feeling. The nostalgia of the ‘future’.

“Hey, I don’t know if you can understand this but just hear me out.” The wolf caught on my words.

“Have you ever had a feeling that you’ve done something before but can’t remember it? If you ever did, What is that feeling? Like, I know it’s called nostalgia but, what exactly are you feeling at that time? Is it your past? Or is it your future? Heck, I don’t even know if that possible. But you know, with this song sometimes I pondered; Will I do something in the future that made me nostalgic like this? I have many questions like that in my head. In the end, those questions stayed unanswered.” I take a breath for a moment. Looking up to the skies. “You know, I surprised that you’re still here, hearing all of my talks.” I looked straight to the wolf. “So I’m guessing… you really understand me talking huh? Well, that’s not gonna be any problem. In fact, I’m grateful so…”

“Thank you for accompanying me.”

I said that to the wolf as the music let out its final beat.


A/N: Gonna end it here. I wanted to make the story to a kinda slice of life story, so I put some cooking scene. The next chapter will be using the RimWorld game for the plot. Peace out!

(1704 words)