Primitive Once Again

The moment he got out of the water, Black shook his body.
The water droplets on his body froze into beads of ice the moment they contacted the cold air, and fell onto the icy surface.
Without even making a sound, they melded into the ice.

His luck wasn’t bad.
Although he did not manage to gather anything for the past few days, during the last time he went into the water, he managed to catch a school of fish that were swimming down the river.
He used a piece of animal hide to gather the prey together, ready to rush home.

His companions who also came out of the water had similar thoughts.
Everyone in the group spread their wings and headed in the same direction-

Large sheets of ice covered densely packed temporary shelters made of branches and stones.
Every shelter had someone in it.
From a long distance, Black managed to make out his own home.
He spread his wings and continued gliding, before dexterously landing near his home.
At the same time, he passed the bag of fish to his partner.

“Eat!”

He was not one who talked much, but fortunately his partner had great understanding of him.

After 5 days without food, his partner, White, should’ve been starving, yet White did not touch the food he brought.

“Black…”  Although White had a weak-sounding voice, to his loved ones like Black, he sounded excited and triumphant.

Sure enough, the next moment, White’s trembling claw stretched out from underneath the animal skin blanket, and within the five fingers was a firmly grasped, round…

Egg?!

“… Did you steal it?” Black’s expression tensed as he cautiously lowered his body, using his wings to conceal his nest more tightly.

“I did not–” Listening to Black’s question, White’s expression got prouder.
He stuffed the large white egg back beneath his butt as he replied excitedly, “I laid it!”

Boom– Black seemed to have heard the sound of a string known as rationality snapping in his head.

He finally knew what was more infuriating than a husband leaving home for half a year only to come back with a wife three months pregnant.
Which was–

A wife leaving home for a few days to find out that his husband had laid an egg!

Could there possibly be anything more tragic than this?

Meng Jiuzhao wanted to open his eyes in a daze.

His eyelids felt heavy and his body felt like it did not belong to him.
It was as if he was in an extremely cold place for a long time, and his entire body was cold, until a few days ago when he suddenly felt warmer.
It was precisely this feeling of warmth that awoke him from a long dream.

His eyelids refused to open, but he could sense faint rays of light shining through his thin eyelids.

How rare… Strange, why did he feel that this was rare? In fact, Meng Jiuzhao was currently in a strange state.
He did not know who he was, yet he did not have memory loss.
It was simply that he hadn’t used his brain in a long time, hence the difficulty recalling.

A little more warmth would be fine, just a little more and his frozen stiff brain could possibly thaw and work once more.

God seemed to have heard his prayer, and slowly, Meng Jiuzhao felt like he was getting warmer.
He could almost hear the sound of his own blood flowing once more.

How warm… It has been a long time since I felt this warmth… 

But strange… Why does it feel that a long time has passed?

His memory was unravelling exceedingly slowly.
At this moment, whatever was pressing on him and providing him warmth was moved away, and the light got stronger.
As the temperature plummeted and Meng Jiuzhao was worrying that he would be frozen once more, the source of heat pressed on him again and he felt his body warming up.

Meng Jiuzhao heard muffled voices, one low and deep, the other mellow and gentle.
The two voices seemed to be carrying out a conversation, but Meng Jiuzhao couldn’t understand.

Additionally, he felt too tired, and the warmth surrounding him was too comfortable, hence Meng Jiuzhao closed his eyes and fell back asleep.

Time passed slowly in this manner, and the warmth protecting Meng Jiuzhao was always there, only occasionally moving away to switch… Switch to a different blanket? The duration for which Meng Jiuzhao was awake increased, and so did his curiosity towards the foreign words which travelled to his ears.
He could barely manage to distinguish two syllables now, which were probably the names of the two speakers, and the other words he still could not understand. 

He could start opening his eyes, although it was for naught.
He seemed to be in a tightly enclosed space and his surroundings were extremely dark, with only a weak beam of light shining through the walls.

Meng Jiuzhao slowly started remembering his name, was well as the happenings before he fell “asleep”.

Translator has something to say: This story is the prequel to There is no afterlife and is set in the same universe.
If you have read TINA before this, you may find many correlations between the two stories~

myu

I’m just a beginner translator who reads more than translates ( ＾ω＾ )