Chương 22: Don't play outside in the snow, please! part 1

As soon as I opened my eyes I realized that Anne was already awake. We lie very close next to each other, my head resting on her collarbone as she slides her hand over my head, slowly caressing me.

My head goes up and down at the mercy of her breathing, I'm comfortable and it's quite a nice situation. Especially knowing that she's not going to yell at me or anything, after all, the fact that she's caressing me indicates that she's happy too, I guess...

"Good morning Anne"

"good morning Ryu, how did you sleep?"

She whispers with a smile. She looks really beautiful, her fair skin almost seems to glow in the morning light. This whole situation seems almost like a dream, but I know this isn't a dream, I couldn't picture something like this, not even in my wildest fantasies.

"Well, yes… and how are you?"

"Not bad, actually, I think it was the best night's sleep I've had since I got here, hehe"

If someone saw this from afar, they would think this is just a normal couple, heck, I haven't even seen Hiraku do something like this. Our faces are so close together that we could even kiss if we wanted to. Does she want me to? my heart skipped a beat at this thought.

I quickly get up, pick up the jackal skin thatwe slept on and re-tie the rope to turn it back into the sack I brought. I put inside all the objects that I took out the night before so that I can use the skin. Now I just need to get some fire going.

"What are you doing? we should go out right away"

"That would be a bad idea, I know you're anxious to hunt something and come back, but it snowed a lot yesterday and it must be very cold outside. If we are not careful we could suffer from hypothermia."

"I see, since you take a long time to light a fire, if we have an emergency it would be faster to return to the cave than to start a fire from scratch in another place"

"That's correct, but why do you make it sound like it's my fault that setting the fire takes time? I'm not like Anne who can just reach out and…"

As I say that I jokingly hold out my hand in front of the wood left over from the day before, but to our amazement a small trickle of smoke followed by a healthy flame began to appear on the dry wood.

Fire attribute 1%

mana 0/1

"Are you a mage!?"

"What!? NO! I don't know! How am I supposed to know if I have no memory!?"

We are both extremely shocked and unintendly started to yell at each other

"Ah! I always forget, I'm sorry"

"I don't know what happened, I don't know how it happened, but this is a good thing! though I only have one mana point maximum… According to Ayumi she consumes 10 mana points with just a slight modification on a rock, so I'm not sure how useful can this be"

"That's unfortunate, but it's still amazing! now you can light a fire without a flint!"

Now that Anne looks at me smiling sincerely with her eyes, it really feels different. I feel more comfortable with her. Maybe it was a good idea to travel together. But if this is what it takes to get along better with luke, I'll make a note to never travel alone with him.

The soft crackling of the fire accompanies our breakfast, Mochi stretches its front legs leaning as it yawns lazily. It's a quiet morning and this cave is quite comfortable, I wouldn't mind staying here for a while, but everyone's waiting for us back at the settlement.

"Would you like to go out now? if you want we can wait here a little longer"

Anne says sheepishly. What's with that new attitude? she's being too nice, before starting the trip I wouldn't have imagined it possible. In any case, I prefer not to get my hopes up, I'm sure that as soon as we return she will return to her usual self.

I guess I should take advantage of this while it lasts.

"there's not a good reason for staying, but it's early in the morning and my guess is that its really cold outside... why don't we stay a bit longer?"

"Ok, If you insist"

Judging by the way she sounded, she's excited I decided to stay.

"you said you brought some plants and herbs that you haven't seen before, maybe if I take a look I can see if they're useful"

Anne gets up and starts looking for everything she gathered the day before, she passes them to my hands directly, accidentally touching my hand. Now she's blushing just like Helena usually does. Whatever happened to Anne, I'm starting to grow fond of her.

I start inspecting the plants, seeds and herbs she gave me and my findings are nothing out of the ordinary.

"I guess some of these are edible, though their flavour is too strong. Perhaps they can be useful for cooking, sadly we only have one big cooking pot and it's mostly used for water"

"I see, so there's nothing useful"

Anne lets out a long sigh, looking somewhat depressed.

"Whats the matter Anne? You know you can tell meif you need help"

"No Ryu! I dont need any more help! its the other way around, I'm worthless... Everyone has been useful in their own way... even Luke! When we just got here I was the one in charge of exploring, gathering and caring for the traps we set up. I was needed! but now, Helena who always sleeps late has been weaving fiber everyday. Even Ayumi who's scared of everything and so clumsy she can't even take a walk without hurting herself, now has a job she can perform well, not only that, it turned out to be the most important out of everyone's"

"Anne, you don't need to beat yourself like that. You're our hunter now!"

"Yeah, I'm a hunter but what have I hunted? I'm an archer and I dont even have a bow!"

"Then why didn't you ask me, I don't really know how to craft a bow, but I would have tried"

"But I'm so ashamed... I was mean to you when we first met and we've depended so much on you... I'm too embarrassed to ask you for anything, but the fact is, we all keep depending on you even though we are so much stronger than you"

"Then compensate me"

"W-what d-do you mean compensate you?"

"Weren't you the one who suggested we traded instead of shared our gatherings?"

"Yes, but now that you're our leader we've been sharing everything"

"I know, but you're still embarrassed to ask me for a bow... I'm not even certain I can make something remotely useful, but you should have brought the issue to me instead of feeling like that all the time"

"It's not just about the bow, its everything you've done for us... every time you guide us, you make our lives easier or even when you discover new things for us I feel bad. Can you even imagine how I felt when you played bait for us? I was a coward who left a hurt friend behind all by herself, and you just risked your life for everyone's. I know it's because you like Helena but..."

I don't know how to talk to people, let alone women. I intended to make her feel better, but now she's flushed red and teary.

"Anne, when I met you I thought you were so beautiful I couldn't even believe it... I still kinda do And i really hoped we could become friends. But then your personality drove me away pretty fast, I didn't know what did I do for you to be so cold to me and that confused me a lot. What you're saying now makes sense and now that I know you better I'm starting to believe that we can get along... let's make a deal, we'll forget about past issues and start over, what do you say"

"But I've been so mean to you even though you've been nice all the time"

"well then, you got a lot to compensate me for"

"Yes! I promise you I'll never treat you like that again"

Her smile really is something, I don't know if I'm being manipulated here but in all honesty I couldn't care less about it"

"Ok, let's go before we start wasting daytime. Mochi lead us to some prey, okay?"

Mochi replies with a meow, there's no way she understood, is there?

Anyway, I have faith that it'll find something to eat, after all, I haven't fed him today and I'm sure he's hungry. It may seem cruel, but last time it ate something was last night. I find it hard to believe that a wild cat can afford to eat three meals every day.

Since it skipped breakfast, Its quite motivated to look for prey. As soon as we leave the cave it shoots out, sniffing the air. We can follow him without much trouble since its little legs cannot compete against ours.

The cave is in what looks like a big rock, or maybe it's a hill. I can't be sure. We follow the cat that makes a detour through the hill, walks up the river skirting the rock wall that we have on our left.

We can see that a little higher up the big rock, terrain is leveled there. Everything is covered in snow, but its not deep at all., more than the soft creak that's heard when stepping, it doesn't affect our speed at all.

Mochi, who's going in front of Anne suddenly makes a chirping sound, there's something nearby. Just like we agreed previously, if we found prey we would communicate with signals.

Anne gestures to me to indicate that its probably a rabbit, and although both she and Mochi look ahead following small footprints that could well be made by a rabbit, I look the other side beyond the river, next to us there's a huge animal with horns branching upwards.

I try to get Anne's attention but it's impossible, we shouldn't speak or the creature could be scared. I've no choice but to gently tap her hand to get her attention, she quickly turns and I indicate the direction in which the creature is.

Its barely thirty meters away drinking water from the river bank. It's vulnerable and should be easy to hunt. I use my consider ability on the creature

Snow deer 103/150

Anne tells me that she's about to attack it and readies her spear for the task, I do the same in case the creature attacks back.

With just a couple steps she builds up some momentum. Anne throws her spear with amazing precision hitting the creature's neck squarely, without hesitation I give her another spear and she repeats the process. Now she's running at full speed after the fleeing snow deer with two spears stuck in its body, while taking one of the spears from her back and ending the life of the creature. Her movements were so elegant and agile, I'm not even sure if it has something to do with her being a hero at all.

My heart feels heavy for a moment. It was a beautiful innocent creature that now lost its life so that we can live. There's no point in shedding tears, but neither can we allow its life to be in vain.

Although she achieved her goal, Anne doesn't celebrate either. we slowly approach the carcass of the deer.

"It's huge, it must weigh about 200 kg"

Anne says trying to hide a bitter expression on her face.

"That's good, it'll get us through the winter"

For a moment I feel the need to comfort her, but I stop my urge. We don't have that kind of relationship, or so I think.

"What I meant is… how do we get him back?"

"I hadn't thought about that. It's quite a difficult problem to solve with what we have at hand, I really thought we'd get some rabbits or a wild boar. we'll have to skin it"

Anne hesitantly takes the imperial stone knife in her hand, but instead of the usual firm grip, her delicate hand trembles slightly as she takes jerky steps closer to the deer.

"You don't need to do it if you don't want to"

"You're wrong Ryu, after all I killed it. besides, you don't know how to skin such a large animal and we have to take advantage of both its meat and skin, although I don't have much practice I've already done it before. What kind of a hunter would I be if i couldn't skin what I hunt?"

As if she had regained some of her confidence, she begins to skin the deer, due to its size I'd say it's a much more difficult task than skinning rabbits.

"It's a pity we don't have a rope, we could have hung it from a tree to make it easier"

She says that, but it seems quite difficult to hang a creature that size from a tree, why would we? is that a hunter's thing?

Working together, the process speeds up a lot, Mochi gets excited by the smell and approaches again and again trying to get a portion of the prey.

"Wait your turn Mochi! don't be so impatient"

Talking to it seems like a natural thing to me, even if it doesn't understand me I feel that talking to it strengthens our bond. Of course the most important thing is that I have to keep it fed, that's why I don't allow it to eat on its own.

Shortly before noon the prey was skinned and the meat laid out on the snow turning red what should naturally be white.

"Now we just need to wash the skin"

"Yes, thanks for your help Ryu. Now it will weigh much less"

Despite the snowstorm the day before, today the sun shines brightly on us, melting the snow slowly but surely. Mochi that feasted on the parts we won't be taking with us almost looks like a ball sitting on the shore. Distracted looking at the cat licking its whiskers over and over again, I realize something that powerfully draws my attention.

Upstream the road is quite high, so we cannot see what lies beyond, however a large amount of smoke betrays what could possibly be a settlement.

"Anne! there seems to be a city!"

"A city? how do you know? where!?"

"I don't really know if it's a city, but look over there, there's too much smoke for it to be just a campfire"

"stay here Ryu, I'll go take a look, no, better go back to the cave it's too dangerous to stay here... no, no... better let's go back together to the cave, let's take everything there trying to cover our tracks and then we'll go together"

"ok, but make up your mind…"

"I don't know, what do you think is better?"

"Let's go with the latest, I'm not excited to stay alone in the cave all day waiting for you to arrive, and if something happens to you I wouldn't know. This way I can at least lend you support"

We hurried back to the cave carrying the newly collected meat and skin on our backs. Now that Mochi is satisfied we can leave it to take care of the meat while we explore for a while without fear of it eating it behind our backs.

"Mochi, stay here and take care of the cave"

*yawn*

Mochi yawns as it circles around and curls up into a ball.

Leaving the cave we followed the same path that led us to the snow deer, when we arrived at the place we found the trail of blood still fresh. To avoid being discovered we covered the signs as best we could with some snow. It'll eventually wash away once the snow melts, but we can't be careless.

This reminds me a lot when I first saw Anne. Even though I was looking for people, I still didn't talk to her right away because I didn't know what kind of person she was or if she was alone. This got me thinking on why is she being so cautious, I mean, its the right approach but I thought everyone in this group was the kind to act first and think later.

We climb up the hill until the big rock is level with the plain. A great valley appears in front of our eyes and, thanks to the light of the wonderful sunny day, we can see the landscape in its entirety.

The river comes from a big mountain that stands right in front of us, it must be the one Hiraku mentioned earlier. Even though it's so huge, back in the forest it was impossible to see, trees over there are so tall they prevented us from seeing anything at all.

Taking advantage of the height at which we are, I follow the flow of the river downstream with my eyes and I see it descend between rocks with a wide bank that seems to open a path in the forest downstream. The trees in the forest are so tall that they make it impossible to see the lake from here. It probably can only be seen from the mountain. This reassures me a bit since this mean it'll probably be difficult for anyone to notice our presence from this height, and even if someone was on the mountain they probably wouldn't notice just a couple fireplaces going.

Near the river, upstream on the plain just before the land descends into the valley, there's a town. from a distance it looks very small, although we really shouldn't underestimate it. As we still don't know if they are friends or enemies, it would be best to prevent them from finding us.

"What do you say? do we get a little closer?"

"I'm not sure Anne, it's too risky if it's just us. Maybe if Bob had joined us we could at least try"

"But with Bob we'd be discovered right away, although he doesn't talk much, he's the loudest"

"Mmm, you're right about that... well, let's get as close as we can from the forest. we will climb a tree and watch as long as we can. Fortunately it's still far away from the forest so even if we're seen we could try to escape"

"What should we do if we encounter someone?"

"Nothing, unless they see us first. But if that's the case I think the only thing we could do is run"

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