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.