Chapter 34: Sojourner, Pt 12
You're stunned speechless the moment Noir tells you that it's your turn to go on a hunt. There's no way that you're remotely close to ready. After all, you've seen her do it once ever, and haven't had any time to think about any of it or process her techniques.
How does that make for any kind of lesson?
What?! you protest. I thought you said I didn't have to worry about hunting this time around. You know I'm not ready.
I said you didn't have to worry about killing, Noir retorts. Didn't say anything about you not needing to hunt.
I'm definitely going to mess this up - I've never done this before, ever!
It's alright to mess up. That's all a part of learning. And besides, you've still got some food, yeah? If you screw up, you've got that. So however many you have left, it's best to think of them as how many chances you've got to get it right.
You grimace in protest, but wipe it away shortly after. Noir is right that you have to put yourself out there and make any kind of attempt, even if it's going to fail. You could spend a month watching her hunt and kill over and over, but that won't really teach you much.
To truly figure out how to do it right, you've got to do it yourself. Learn from your mistakes, and all that happy horseshit people have been telling you all your life.
You then lift yourself up back into a crouching, stealthy position and take a few steps forward. But Noir interrupts you before you can get too far.
Did you do a wind check? she asks.
Yeah, when you went to go hunt that mouse, you reply.
That's old air. You want new air.
You crinkle your brow curiously, then as instructed, you lick a finger and raise it in the air to check for the wind again. It's a bit lighter than before, but you can still tell that it's coming from a different direction altogether. It seems it has shifted in the meantime.
Now it makes more sense that she told you to do a wind check - obviously it's constantly shifting, and you have to pay attention to see if you're still downwind of your target.
After making a quick adjustment to your heading, you perform a conical Scan in the new area in front of you. Out there, about a dozen or so critters are scattered about. Most of them seem as though they're foraging, and have similar mindsets as the mouse that Noir had killed.
You try to locate a larger critter, certainly something larger than a mouse - that tiny thing doesn't quite have enough meat to satisfy you, that's for sure. Although you ultimately find one relatively larger critter, one that seems it's about rat-sized, you note that there are a number of smaller critters in between you and it.
A part of you wants to simply move right past the smaller ones, but the wiser part of you advises not to do that, and to sneak around them instead. Simply, you don't want them running into your prey and scaring it off prematurely.
You turn around slightly to look at Noir, to ask her for advice, but find that she isn't back where you started. Instead, she's right next to you, most likely because she's observing your actions more closely.
You're trying for that opossum, huh? she says. Not a bad pick. They're a bit skittish, a bit stinky. But really tasty too.
Should I go around everything to get to it? you ask. Not trying to make anything run away accidentally.
Good question. But it's a slightly wrong mindset. You wanna be invisible. You don't want anything to know that you're here at all. So yeah, move around it, not because you don't want to startle anything, but because you don't want them to know you exist.
Isn't that the same thing?
No.
You turn back towards your prey with Noir's advice at the tip of your mind. Then, you draw yourself inward as much as you can, physically and mentally. Almost as though you want to be as small as a cat yourself. Then, you move towards your prey. Slowly and carefully and quietly, of course.
It seems to take you ages - dozens of minutes seem to fly by as you practically crawl your way towards your target. And as advised, you wisely steer clear of any critters in between you and the opossum and give them a wide berth. Perhaps more than necessary, but hey - you're still learning.
And thanks to how heavy you are and how large your feet are, you go extra slow in order to truly keep yourself silent. That certainly adds to how much time it takes you.
As you go, you find that you have to constantly adjust your approach. Not only are you having to go around random other critters, but the opossum itself keeps moving around. Which certainly makes sense - it's going around foraging for food as well.
But this means that you find yourself constantly stopping, checking the wind, adjusting your approach, advancing slowly, over and over again. If Noir did this during her hunt, you didn't even notice. Your hunt seems to take you so much longer than hers, and every minute that passes seems like hours.
You suppose that's the difference between an experienced hunter and a newbie like you.
But you ultimately end up as close as you can get to your target - a somewhat fat opossum. You creep up as far as you dare, roughly a meter from it. You're almost certain that if you get any closer, it's going to hear you and bolt. Regardless, you make it to your goal, and a sense of elation sweeps through you.
You're definitely close enough to see and hear it - the thing seems to be scrambling around the dirt, digging up things just under the surface. It makes soft crunching sounds as it bites into whatever it is, and chews on it.
A part of you doesn't really want to know what it's eating - probably an insect - but your stomach grumbles loud enough to shut that part of you up.
You notice that the woods around you have gotten significantly lighter since you started your hunt, and when you turn to look eastward, find that the sun's light is peeking up from the horizon. It won't be long until it's dawn, so you need to be quick.
But when you turn back to the opossum, you realize that you don't have anything to kill it with. You draw your survival knife instinctually, but you know there's no way you're going to get close enough to use it.
Now what? you ask Noir.
I'll take care of it, she replies.
She then pads up silently ahead of you and rears back. At the same time, you sense her psionic energies pool up inside her, swelling just as it did earlier. And just like before, it erupts suddenly and darts forward at the opossum itself.
Though this time she doesn't use the energies of Temperance - this time she uses Telekinesis.
Noir's Telekinetic claws shoot forward with incredible speed and smash into the opossum ferociously. But instead of pinning it down like with the mouse, one of them instead cuts right through its neck, decapitating it with ease.
The opossum's head flies off and lands in the bushes nearby as its body falls over with a soft THUMP, dead. Any other critters near you flee at the sound.
You whistle psionically, wholly impressed with how lethal Noir can be. Of course, she preens as a result.
Both of you then sneak over to the corpse, which is now bleeding profusely from its neck. Its blood leaks out into a small pool, but is absorbed hungrily by the soil around it.
Then you grimace when you realize that you've got to skin this thing, which you have absolutely no idea how to do. You want to ask Noir, but she's never done any such thing in her life either, and wouldn't be of any use in that regard.
You figure that you need it to be as drained of blood as much as possible, if only to make your job easier. So you tip it up tail-first for a few minutes. It's enough for even more blood to flow out of its neck wound and into the ground.
It doesn't quite stop bleeding even after a few minutes, so you eventually set it back down on its side on top of a flat rock. Then you take your survival knife and attempt to cut its hide. You make the first incision down its chest and belly, from the open wound all the way down to the base of its tail.
It's tough at first since you have no idea how to do it, but it becomes easier to actually slice open the further you go. Organs come spilling out of the cut, along with even more blood. And also a kind of stink that really puts you off the whole thing. But you've gotten this far, may as well see it through.
Food is food in the end, whether it stinks or not. All you can hope is that it isn't diseased or something.
You attempt to skin its furry hide off, starting from your initial cut, but you're bad at it. So very bad. You practically mangle its skin and fur, even though this critter is fatty enough that it should be easy to separate from the muscle. The best you can manage is to take off strips of its skin, rather than as one or two large pieces. And this gets your hands monumentally bloody as a result.
But after working at it for several minutes, you eventually end up with a somewhat bloody and skinless corpse. You then work at slicing the muscle off the bone, as though you're deboning a chicken. You're terrible at this as well, having never done anything like this in your life.
Instead of cutting off the meat cleanly and uniformly, you end up with a number of small chunks of fatty meat. It's unsightly and disorganized, but at least you've got more than enough to feed you and Noir for a day.
Not knowing where to put them, you wrap them up in a couple of large leaves, which you carry in your still-bloody hands. You sigh at the sight - it's so messy. Plus there's that lingering metallic smell, which causes your stomach to turn ever so slightly. You realize that it's a smell you're going to have to get used to from now on. If you want to eat, that is.
You do attempt to wipe your hands off on various leaves and on tree bark and clumps of moss, but without water you're never going to get them spotless.
A part of you hopes that the blood won't stain your skin permanently.
You then glance back at the dead opossum, or rather the mess of skin and fur and bones and organs and blood, and wonder if you should do something about it. It seems a bit weird to you to simply leave it out there like this.
What about the corpse? you ask Noir. Feels kind of a waste to leave it here like this, just out in the open. Should we bury it, like the Chimera?
Nah. Consider it an offering for everything else that's out here, Noir answers. They gotta eat, too. So don't worry - it's not gonna go to waste.
And what about that mouse you killed earlier? Are you gonna eat it? Do we go back to pick it up?
No need. That was just for fun.
You shrug your shoulders, then look around the forest. You try to spot where the rest stop is, but can't really make it out of the trees. You do know that it's vaguely uphill from you, but not exactly in which direction.
Also, um, I've no idea where home base is, you tell Noir. Kinda sorta lost right now… Could you maybe lead the way back?
You sense Noir laugh psionically before she pads off ahead of you. Presumably towards the rest stop.
Sure, follow me, she tells you. But you'd better learn to figure out how to navigate in the future. That's all part of the hunt.
How do I do that?
Best way is to follow your own scent back.
And if I can't do that?
Dunno what to tell ya in that case.
Not knowing what else to do, you hike back up the hill right behind Noir, towards your temporary home base. As you go, your stomach grumbles lightly, clearly anxious to try whatever meat you're about to feed it.
Visions of delectable cuts of roasted meat dance in your head - a luxury you haven't been able to enjoy in literally years. The only thing you've truly subsisted on since the end of the world has been packaged or canned food. And that definitely gets tiring after a while.
You work your appetite into a near-frenzy at the very thought of actual fresh meat. Your steps become lighter and you work your way up the hill faster at the very thought.
And then, you realize you don't have a way to make the fire to cook it.
Chapter 35: Sojourner, Pt 13
Dawn has fully broken by the time you find your way back to the rest stop, or more specifically at the picnic area right next to the rest stop itself. You come up to what you first assumed was a grill, and are glad to find that your first guess was more or less correct.
Like the rest of this whole area the grill has hardly been used. You can see the remnants of perhaps one or two fires on the inside - a little bit of soot, but not much else. The grill itself is relatively spotless and clean, with only a few rust spots near the edges and corners.
Otherwise, it looks like any other park grill you've ever seen - a stainless steel box that's open on top and on one side. It's propped up by a single stainless steel pole, which certainly seems sturdy enough. And there's a stainless steel grill in the cooking box itself, though you can't adjust it as it's affixed firmly.
You stuff a bunch of sticks and leaves into the lower half, which you gathered on the way back here, then place your leaf-wrapped meat chunks on top of the grill itself.
As you think of ways to light the fire, you do your best to dust off whatever blood has dried up on your hands. Although you get most of it off, some still remains under your nails and in the creases of your hands. The smell is also still there, but much fainter now.
At the same time, you do your best to think back to all those times you've gone camping, or all those videos you've watched about people camping, or all those games you've played about surviving in a zombie-infested apocalypse. Through them, you recall bits and pieces of wisdom about how to light campfires.
For the most part, you remember people stuffing newspaper under hastily stacked logs and setting them alight with things like disposable lighters or matches. You also recall a few times when people around you used flammable liquids such as naphtha to help light those fires.
There was also one time when you saw someone light a fire using a flint and a c-shaped thing made of steel. You recall them striking the flint with the steel, making sparks large enough to catch fire to some grass or paper or something. You don't exactly remember the details.
Not that it matters, of course. You don't have any of those luxuries at your disposal, so those techniques hardly matter to you.
What you do have on hand is a whole lot of wood. And from what you recall from one of your survival games, as well as a few bushwhacking videos, is that you can start a fire by rubbing two pieces of dry wood together, somehow. You don't exactly remember the mechanics behind it.
You also don't recall most of the details, but what you do remember is that you have to spin a thin wooden rod down into a flat board. Doing that makes a fire, somehow.
So you go over to the trees at the edge of the picnic area and try to find the right pieces of wood. You snap off a few sticks - ones that are as straight as you can see. Once you have a handful, you also snap off one of the few dried, leafless branches around you.
You then break the branch down until it's about the length of your forearm, then carry it and your sticks back to the grill.
You lay them out on the ground next to it, then begin whittling away at the thin sticks with your survival knife. It takes you a while to strip the bark off them, and even longer to scrape the wood down until they're more or less straight. Then you carve a relatively dull point at one end before taking a good look at your handiwork.
Of the few that you've gathered up, one looks decidedly superior to the others. It isn't the best by any stretch of the imagination. It's less of a dowel rod, and more of just a stripped stick. It's slightly bowed in the middle, and is relatively uneven in width. You didn't exactly do a great job at smoothing it out either, so there are clear knife cuts all over it.
Not that you need it to be pretty - it just needs to work.
One or two of the sticks seems good enough, so you set them aside then pick up the branch.
You treat the branch a little bit differently. Instead of whittling away all of its bark, you instead concentrate on shaving a portion of it, right in the middle. First you scrape off a square of bark, then shave the wood underneath until it's more or less flat. Once that's done, you carve a small bowl right in the center of the flat area.
On inspection, this one isn't as great a job, either. It's not very flat, and the bowl is a bit too "pointy". When you fit the rounded end of your stick into the bowl, you find that although the sides touch, the tip doesn't.
You figure that's good enough though, so you set the branch down on the ground in between your two knees. You give it a good squeeze, locking it in place. You then put your rounded stick back over the bowl, then spin it between your palms.
When you check, the wood has smoothed out in the bowl and on the tip, but not much else has happened. Makes sense - you just started after all. You get back to it and spin it a few more times, enough for you to realize that you need to add more downward pressure.
So you push downward as much as you can, even as you spin the stick as fast as you can.
You do this over and over and over, until your arms begin to burn from exertion. You yourself pant slightly from the effort - this is hard! Way harder than it looks. Of course, you also don't know if you're doing anything correctly in the first place, so…
After a couple of minutes spinning, you take a break to catch your breath and rest your arms a bit. At the same time, you check on the wood itself. You note that both the rounded point and bowl are dark brown, almost blackened. And they're quite warm to the touch. So you seem to be doing things right.
Mostly right, anyway.
All you've gotta do is keep going if you want any kind of result. So you take in another deep breath, then spin that stick as furiously as you can. You put everything you've got into spinning it fast, more than enough to make you sweat.
Your arms burn again, especially around your deltoids. They sting further the longer you go, to the point where it becomes unbearable to keep going.
You force yourself to stop a few minutes later, and take another gasping breath in relief.
Leaning back on your haunches, you check the bowl and find it blackened. There's a tiny glow right at the bottom, which comes with a small wisp of smoke. But both vanish seconds after you spot them. You lament at how much effort it took just to get that tiny ember, and your shoulders slump in near defeat.
Instead of letting it get to you, you instead roll your neck and loosen your muscles. It occurs to you that you're probably being too tense and vigorous and forceful.
Just relax, you tell yourself. Spin it evenly - you'll get there no matter what.
You shake out both your arms, then place the stick's rounded point back into the bowl. While trying your best to keep your shoulders relaxed, you spin the stick between your palms again. Though you're fast and though you're pressing downward, you're nowhere near as vehement as you were before.
And this does wonders for how your muscles feel. Sure, you can feel them strain as the moments pass by, but the pain is much easier to deal with now.
While you spin the stick over and over, you breathe in and out evenly, which certainly helps your muscles feel even less fatigue. This allows you to go much longer, while keeping nearly the same intensity as before.
Your nose gets a whiff of burning wood, which causes you to stop spinning and look down at the branch. There in the bowl is a blackened ember made of shaved wood. It takes you a second to realize that what you've done is shredded the wood using friction, and compacted it down into a tiny coal ember.
You quickly hop up with the branch, then carefully tip the small ember into the pile of sticks and leaves inside the grill. You're careful to place it on top of the leaves themselves, then blow on it gently to catch them alight.
It takes a few breaths before the heat spreads and begins to consume the dried leaves around it. It takes another few for small flames to leap up out of them. You attempt to move more kindling closer to the flame, to urge it to spread faster, then surround it with dried sticks. A few more long breaths encourages the small flame to widen and catch the rest of the kindling on fire. Even more long breaths after that causes the dry sticks to catch aflame, to your relief.
The fire spreads slowly but surely.
Once it appears healthy enough, you stuff the dry branch and thin stick into the growing fire, happy with your result. You allow the fire to grow large enough that it consumes all of the kindling, then add the rest of your thin sticks to the pile. You figure that what wood you have in there is more than enough to cook your meat.
At which point you unwrap the leaves and dump the chunks down onto the hot grill. They sizzle nicely on contact, and the scent of cooked meat begins to fill the air. You then toss the leaves into the fire, because why not? They might add a little more flavor to it, after all.
You smile proudly at what you've been able to accomplish thus far. You've hunted for food, and you've made fire - two things you've never done before in your life, ever. That sense of accomplishment hardly wanes as you watch the meat cook, as the fat drips down into the fire below.
Despite being somewhat entranced by the licking flames, you realize that you need to flip over the chunks to make sure that they cook evenly. Of course, you don't have any tools, and you tossed all of your straight sticks into the fire.
But you're not exactly worried - it's not like you need them for this.
Instead, you use your budding Telekinesis and flip over each of the chunks. You're a bit awkward and clumsy with the first few pieces, but by the last one you feel relatively comfortable moving them around with your mind.
In fact, you flip them over a few more times just to practice, despite not needing to actually flip them over.
Once you're satisfied with how they look, you move the pieces over to the side of the grill, just so they're not over the flame itself. Then you pick out one of the larger, juicier pieces and pull it towards you. It's brownish, and with a few grill marks all over it. It seems to be loaded with juices, which makes your stomach rumble loudly at the sight.
But you're not sure if it's done or not, and you're not sure if it's a good idea to eat something that isn't quite cooked.
"Hey, can you cut this open for me?" you ask Noir.
You crouch down and present the meat chunk to her. Her eyes are aglow at the sight, and she's practically drooling. She seems to snap out of her reverie, then focuses her Telekinesis sharply. With a flash of thought, her TK claw slices clean through the chunk, cutting it in half.
Gimme, gimme, she says.
Considering she's the one who actually killed the thing, she absolutely deserves the first bite. You blow on one half to cool it off, then put it on the ground in front of her. She immediately goes to town on it, munching and biting happily.
As she does so, you take a closer look at your half, noting that it's still quite red on the inside. You squeeze it with your fingers, which causes blood to leak out.
"Okay, still not done," you say as you put your meat chunks back into the fire.
It's fine, Noir retorts. Perfect, actually.
"Sure, you'd say that. You're used to raw meat."
You give the opossum meat a few more minutes on the grill, during which time the outside browns considerably more. When you have Noir cut open another chunk, you see that it's pink inside, but still relatively juicy.
This seems to be good enough, so you move all the pieces aside yet again so they can stop cooking.
After cooling one of the chunks down by blowing on it, you take a bite, then chew. And it's good - almost reminds you of pork, but a little chewier and softer. Also a bit richer in taste.
It's certainly quite bland, considering you don't have any salt or pepper or garlic to season the meat with. Still, it's the most satisfying thing you've eaten in years.
You grab another few pieces for Noir and set them down in front of her, even as you pick up a few more pieces for yourself.
The both of you chow down on the rich meat all morning, as the dark orange sun climbs higher into the red sky. You're completely enamored with what you've done today - this meat is the best reward for the hardest work you've done.
You two engorge yourselves on the food until it's all gone, quite happily so. For the first time in a long time, both your bellies are warm and happy and full. You lean back to slowly digest your food and watch as the sun rises up higher and higher in the sky.
This whole experience has been another luxury that has been missing from your life for quite some time. You're certainly glad that you've done this today, and are kind of looking forward to the next time.
"Let's stick around here for a few days," you say after a while. "I wanna practice hunting and cooking more. And honestly, this is place is absolutely perfect for that."
Oh, I'm down, Noir replies. As if you'd have to convince me otherwise…
~~~
Hope you're enjoying the story! Please check out my other work - linktr.ee/ceritusorbis
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