Food

Pov Gally:

"Ok enough chatting, we have a problem!"

Everyone hushed when Albe raised his voice, and we all paid attention.

"Food has been going missing, ever since we started keeping track of the food we have noticed that some of the food disappears, only at night though. Does anyone know about this?"

Silence… Nobody had anything to say about the food going missing.

"Nobody? Well someone is stealing food, it has to be one of you."

Nobody spoke up.

"This is going nowhere, I propose that we set a bodyguard for the food."

The squeaky voice of Gregory pierced the silence.

"And who's going to do that, as far as we know the person that we assign as the bodyguard might be the person stealing the food."

"We could just assign someone trustworthy"

"Then who would we pick?"

"How about Gregory."

"No, I refuse to take the job, I have to go into the maze every day."

"That's true, then what about… ah I know, the greenhorn! He's only been in here for a day and he couldn't be responsible for stealing the food."

They all seemed to like that idea, on the second day I'm already forced into getting a job, how unfortunate.

"That's a good idea, the greenhorn will guard the stockpile of food at night, but we need one more person to switch out with him, or he might pass out."

"I have a better idea, how about we rotate the job, every night 2 different people will guard the stockpile if we discover that any of the food is gone then it would have to be one of the two people guarding."

That was indeed a better idea, it's better than putting all of your eggs in one basket, the basket being me.

"Hmm, that's a really good idea, we shall proceed with that. Now let's make a schedule for who should guard on each night."

Albe continued to lead the discussion, and we all eventually came to an agenda for who is to guard the food.

Pov Alex:

I was surprised to hear of someone stealing food, I've known all of these people and I don't think anyone would steal any food, at least how I know of them.

During the meeting, we decided to start with the greenhorn, he would take the first shift, and I would take the second. I would count the food after the Greenhorns shift to make sure none of the food was gone, and someone would do the same for me after I took my shift.

It was currently midnight, I was sleeping next to the good pile while Greenhorn guarded. He is supposed to wake me up when his shift is over and go to bed, then I wake up and count the food before guarding myself.

"Alex! It's your turn to guard!"

"Alright, I'm up. Let's check if you stole anything, I don't think so."

I started counting the quantity of food we had. It took a little bit but everything was still there.

"You can go to sleep, I will take over from here."

The Greenhorn nodded before getting comfortable and falling asleep, I had to stay up for another 6 hours or so to make sure nobody stole anything. The food storage is inside the same building that we had the meeting in, the only way of getting through is through the door that I am guarding. There is also a window, but it's closed shut.

—4 hours later—

This was incredibly boring, it was around 4 in the morning yet it was still pitch black, nothing had happened, I was starting to get tired, I don't know how I'm going to last the rest of the day with only a couple of hours of sleep.

The sound of rummaging woke me right up, the sound was coming from behind me outside of the room. It was dark so I couldn't see what was happening. Curious, I went to look through the window, only to see the pitch black night. 

Wanting to know what was happening I made my way outside and to the window, when I got there I discovered nothing out of the ordinary. Thinking that it was just one of the possums that escaped.

One month we got a female and a male possum, they escaped one day and are now the only animals in the gorge that isn't behind a fence.

Although I thought it was weird that there was a noise I didn't think much of it and went back to guarding.

—2 hours later—

*Yawn* "Finally done, I'm not looking forward to doing that again."

It was early morning and people were waking up. I see Albe walking over to me right now, he must be here to check if any of the food is gone, I didn't steal anything so everything should be fine.

"Good morning Albe."

"Good Morning, how was your first night?"

"It was ok, nothing happened except one of the runaway possums showed up."

"Cool, let me just check if any food is missing."

Albe walked into the food storage and started counting. The Greenhorn wasn't here as he went to sleep in a nice and comfy bed after his shift.

"Everything seems to be in order, you can go now."

I nodded at that before leaving to get myself active, I had to stay up for the rest of the day to not ruin my sleeping schedule.

Pov Albe:

"Everything seems to be in order, you can go now."

'Everything was not in order, we are missing a couple of rations. From Alex's reaction, it wasn't him, he didn't even flinch when I said everything was in order. Or maybe he's just good at acting?'

'Regardless unless someone was able to sneak past the Greenhorn or Alex, it should be one of them. But this all begs the question, why would someone steal food, they are all getting fed enough.'

'There could also be more than one person stealing and they're conspiring to steal food, but that's absurd. It might just be the possums that escaped, but how can two possums eat as much as a human could? Maybe Greg knows something about this.'

After I finished my thought process I went to find Gregory, he's quite reliable. Speaking of Gregory he has improved in a lot of aspects since I knew him. His spear work is quite a lot better than when I first saw him practice.

He has also gone into the maze more and more often as more people arrive, everyone was a little weirded out when they figured out that an 11-year-old was the only person going into the maze. But after I told them about the story of him saving me from myself by remembering the exact path that I took they usually grew less paranoid.

Even if they're still suspicious they quickly accept it when they see Greg come back every time without a scratch on him. Some people tried to go with him but fastly figured out that they couldn't keep up with him and eventually gave up. If Greg doesn't come back, then almost all of our knowledge of the maze would be gone, we need to spread out our eggs and not put them into one basket.

I arrived at Greg's bedroom, it was a bland bedroom, just like all the others. The location of his bedroom was with all of the others in the quite big building we have built. Pretty much everyone lives in this building. I noticed that Gregory wasn't in his bedroom so I asked around for his whereabouts.

"He already left to go into the maze"

Jose was very helpful.

'I guess I'll just talk to him later when he gets back, I should start investigating all the bedrooms to see if there was any food in them.'

Everyone was already up and about, so started rummaging through people's bedrooms. I didn't expect to find anything, but it didn't hurt to try. I started going through Greg's room, I was just doing it for fun, I trusted him too much for him to do something like stealing food.

To my disappointment, I found nothing embarrassing, I quickly went to the next room, scouring every corner but didn't find anything. When I arrived at Alex's and the Greenhorn's room I made extra careful to comb over absolutely everything. And to my surprise tied to the underside of Alex's bed was a bag!

Confused, I grabbed the bag and opened it, and was shocked to see the missing rations from this morning!

(Uh oh, minor conflict coming! If you like minor conflicts then leave some power stones. And if you really like minor conflicts then leave a review.)