That night I rested in a large pile of pine straw. The smell of pine was clean; it smelt like freedom. With it being warm outside, I didn't bother covering myself. We didn't expect rain for at least another two weeks, so I bundled the straw under my head and struggled to slip into as deep of a sleep as possible.
That night I dreamed that I heard something breathing in my ear. Maybe it was the wind or possibly mere exhaustion taking its tole on my subconscious; either way, I stayed as still as I possibly could. It was almost like I wasn't sleeping at all, just hiding --or playing dead.
The next mourning I awoke to a doe chewing on an infant tree next to my left shoulder. She hadn't noticed that I was there since I rolled myself into the straw in my sleep. Between the bare dying tree towering above us and the doe, I slowed my breaths to shallow whispers; it was time for breakfast.
I held my breath as my hand crept towards the skinning knife I kept in the inner sleeve of my leather shirt. With a quick lunge I grappled the doe with my left arm as my right hand ran the blade through the her pulsating jugular; it cut through her flesh like a hand fitting into a glove. With a twist of both the blade and her neck with my arm, she fell to the earth, soaking me and the ground in her warm blood.
I never really liked hunting. It was just a necessity. "Better them than me," I would say to myself to stroke my conscious. I had to eat after all.
I unsheathed the now stained blade from the doe's limp neck and wiped it off on my shirt. As I picked up the hind legs of the young animal, I noticed something odd on the ground. There were animal tracks all the way from where I came and they circled around where I slept. Then I saw a pile of fur near the edge of the drop off. There three dead dogs laid sliced open and left. Then I saw the impression of boots leaving the soft soil where the dead dog's laid.
I assumed they had been tracking me. When the dogs didn't find me, they just cut their necks and left them. I noticed that one had started to eat on the other before its own neck was cut. The bastards must have been starving them.
I knew I couldn't stay there much longer, but I couldn't leave the meat and fur behind, so I used a broad fallen branch to set the animals on and pull them away from the direction of the boot tracks; the branch covered my tracks as I walked.
I walked until the sun set directly over me. I began to feel like I was liquid slushing around in a haphazard limp jar. I had to get out from the heat. I then noticed a small cave near the edge of the trail where I was walking. I cautiously moved towards it. A cool breeze blew from inside it. This is where I was going to set up camp.
I opened the dear and dogs and removed their insides. I took the organs away from the camp and set them down in a nearby stream then rinsed my hands. Is this the rest of my life? I questioned the choices I had made while the red to now pink liquid wisped down the current and caressed the rocks standing in the stream.
When I got back to where I had set the animals, I started a fire and skinned them. I knew all about making leather and jerky. It was what I did for a living back home. Home. It was starting to become an odd connotation that I couldn't make out.
I didn't have any of my equipment, but I hadn't pissed that mourning either. I knew I could make fur pelts and rope with that. I stretched skin out on weed tied branches and set them to firm up in the direct heat of the blaring sun.
The meat was propped by shafts of wood and cooked slowly over a low heat. When it became tough and dry, I cut the strips of it to be set in the hot sun on top of the leather while the breeze from the cave and mountain ran over over it. I could have really used some salt right then. Looking around me, I was lucky to find sprouts of wild onion. This must be my lucky day. I laughed at myself, and then shook my head at the sick humor I was beginning to develop as I went to the stream nearby and rinsed the dirt from the bulb. When I came back the meat I had left for eating was gone.
DAMNIT. I squeezed the moist wild onions in my hands until I noticed the bulbs burst between my fingers. DAMNIT! I forced the squashed bulbs in my mouth and some of the dried meat left in the sun and chewed a long unpleasant grind with all of my teeth at once; the taste was earthy and strong, but I knew it could be the only meal I get for a while. I backed into the cave where the shadows masked me in a cloak of cool darkness; there, I waited and wondered if the thief would strike again. If it was a man, I could could mug him back. If it was an animal, I could feast until my heart's content.
When the sun began to set, light shined into the cave. Through the purple-gold light, I could see that the cave went on for only around seven more meters and sloped down to a hole at the end. Curiously I turned around, crawled forward and dropped a nearby rock down the shaft and waited for a hit. One, two, three, four, and CRACK! I scooted back from the edge of the hole, and stood up. As I did this, I heard a shuffle below.
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