Flashback Stalking the deer.

[Manx]

Summer 33rd 513 AV 10 Bells After Mid-Day Manx was walking through delicate knots of woodland around him with a focused mind and eye. The green trees reaching high into the air around him passed by his notice as if individual snow-flakes in blizzard. The dying sun cast it's last breath upon the waxy leaves that grew underfoot, next to and above him: reverberating once more from their cuticles. There was soft grass underfoot, with only the occasional outcropping of dirt or rock: this was quite a lush area of the forest. Manx came across a much more downtrodden area of the grass and peered down to notice deep, sharp stabs in the ground and guessed that it was some sort of deer-like creature. After staring at the hoof-prints for a few more moments, realizing with a frown that he had absolutely no-clue how to even begin tracking these sources of prey, he noticed a string of footprints leading in two directions, one upwards and to the left and the other downwards and to the right. 'That leaves a lot of room for error then', he thought aloud with a tone that made one think of a red hot fire screaming from beneath heavy coals. When Manx closed his eyes, one would guess that he was very cleverly calculating the way in which he would go: he was thinking of the route towards water or some other place that deer would love to venture to in search of food or water. The truth was in-fact this short rhyme as he swiveled an imaginary finger back and forth between the two roots: 'Mountain's tip and mountain's edge, claws bounce off as eagles pledge, to sink their talons into flesh, to keep hearts beating and lungs drawing breath.' With a smirk that truly betrayed the lack of intelligence his decision took, Manx decided that he would go back down the hill: the path that was down and right in the circle of hoof-prints. Setting off down the hill from which he had just climbed, Manx tried desperately to follow the stabbings of hooves in the ground, though with his lack of training and the lush grass - he quickly lost them and began wandering in the direction he felt was the right way. At one point, he simply began following the hill downwards with the reasoning: 'Deer tire too, so they must prefer going down-hill as opposed to up'. The sky darkened further as Manx followed this trail that he was practically making up as he went along and he was beginning to tire. He took down his bow from his back, having decided that if he stumbled upon the deer - it was best to be ready for it and then pulled an arrow from his quiver. Resting the arrow against the frame of the bow and his index finger, which curled over it loosely, he carried on at a slower pace. Manx was, quite honestly, becoming bored of this wild-deer chase and had not decided to give up, but just to rest for a while. He sat down at the trunk of a tree - his bow by his side on the floor - and closed his eyes for just a moment.

[Manx]

Awaking a good hour after his momentary slip of focus, Manx opened his eyes as quickly as time would let him and scanned the area quickly, clenching his hand around the bow and game arrow at his side. Lifting the bow slowly: the game-arrow parallel to the frame of the bow, Manx drew an ordinary arrow from his quiver, it's silver head triangular and sharp looking next to the dullen game arrow. It glinted as he slid it into the groove on his short-bow. Pushing his feet under him with no sort of grace, he rose to his feet and pinched the back of the arrow to the string, drawing it back slightly and pointing the bow downwards at about forty-five degrees. Hearing a crunching noise to one side, Manx turned around and rose his bow to the noise at the same time that the deer rose it's head to investigate the noise of Manx's turn. For a split second, both hunter and prey regarded each other with a mix of fear and surprise. PANG sung the bowstring as Manx released the arrow, but it was all too late and the arrow went soaring past the creature's neck, into the supple bark of the tree behind it. As the creature had turned and sprang away, Manx too had began to run in the same direction, though with no hope of catching the creature. Shifting the arrow curled within his index finger, he messily grabbed it and pulled it to the string. He stopped for a moment and pulled the string back just as the deer sprang out of sight behind a tree. A pang of disappointment ruptured Manx's chest, but only for a moment as his eyes lit up with an idea. Swinging his bow left, he fired at the space at the other side of the tree and could barely see the results of his actions as a concussive noise rang from his bow and a stream of golden brown swam through the small gap he had shot for. All went silent and Manx stood there, not too sure of what had happened. After a moment filled with his body recovering from the fading sleep paralysis he'd tossed aside earlier and the suddenness at which he was demanded to take in his surroundings and fire upon an incredibly fast target. Manx strolled leadenly over to where he believed he had shot the target. Stood there in the space where his prey had once been, it looked quiet in the darkness surrounding him and he could not make out any sort of tracks on the floor, but he also could not make-out the corpse of his prey - this was a disappointment. He backtracked his actions for the past few minutes and found the tree with the arrow embedded quite thoroughly into it's bark. Furling one finger after the other around the shaft of the arrow, he placed his thumb and index finger against the bark around the sunken tip of the arrow and counted to three. Upon the third count, he coiled his muscles in opposite directions in hope of wrenching free his failed first shot, though the arrow felt to be loosened under his grip, it did not rip free of the bark and Manx relaxed again. Sea-sawing the arrow away from and towards his body began to coax the arrowhead to begin it's ascend out of the hole it was in, the triangular shape of the arrowhead made space for itself inside the wood of the trunk and was finely eased free by this continuous effort. Sliding the arrow in his hand back into the quiver behind him, Manx then slung his bow over his shoulder and head so that it's frame sat loosely on his back. Manx stooped down where he was stood and picked up a couple of pieces of broken sticks and a chunk of wood from some log long since rotten away, throwing the bits he found into a pile behind him. He walked away from his tiny pile of tinder then and over to a tree. Reaching the tree, Manx reached back and gripped a hold of his hatchet, pulling it upwards, free from the harness and then down in-front of him. Swinging the hatchet in a wide sweeping motion downwards, he hacked through a somewhat thick branch in a few swings. Picking up the detached limb, he brought it over to the already made pile and began to swing down onto it, chopping it into smaller pieces. Swinging the hatchet into the trunk of a nearby tree, he left it standing horizontally upon it's own head and began to pile the branch pieces into a messy shape for a fire. Taking the smaller pieces he'd found, he fed them into the inside of the fire and kept a piece on the edge of the small fire he'd made. Unbuttoning a belt pouch, he produced a stick of flint and a sharp-ish bit of steel, he struck the steel against the flint away from him, aiming the sparks produced at the little handful of kindling he'd left out of the fire. As the sparks gathered into ember and then finally produced a small flame, Manx prodded the ball of kindling gently into the fire through an opening and then pushing the branches together to fill the gap. The kindling on the inside of the fire caught relatively quickly and the fire began to lick against the harder to burn bits of branch that made up the outer bits of the fire. After a while, Manx wondered if it was going to catch or if all of the kindling had burnt away but finally a red glow came from one of the branch pieces and the fire had been lit.

[Manx]

Slumping down onto the floor next to the heat of the fire, Manx dealt with his sleep trodden mind that was filled with the loss of his prey and his arrow. He sat on the ground next to the warmth of the fire and frustration seized his heart - he had been lazy and let something that would have surely been useful to his survival slip away, he would have never done this sort of this back at his home in Wind Reach, though it hurt him to admit it. Deciding he would work off his frustration, Manx stood up with a burst of energy and, whilst walking over to a nearby, thick-looking tree trunk, took his gauntlets from his belt and fit them onto his right and then left hand in turn, tightening the leather straps that ran along the wrist and very end part of his forearm. The last few straps were done more loosely, as his vambraces and gauntlets over-lapped just a little. Clenching his hands that were now clad in Iron, Manx felt the cold against his hot blood and he looked up at the tree-trunk in-front of him, lifting his hands to about chest high. With a sharp exhale of breath, he plunged his hand outwards at the bark - clenching his hand just before the moment of impact as to trick his nerves into realizing less of the impact. He swung again with his left hand, feeling the punch hit bark and splinter it away. It sounded like his breath was the true factor for the bark flying from the tree - hot air escaped his lips with the moisture from his mouth caught up in the high-powered jets. His torso warmed to the effort of twisting from side to side, side to side as Manx punched at the trunk again and again, cracking and splintering the wood and bark where his punches of anger fell. Then stopping for a moment, Manx felt his entire world tip as he heaved his burden and his weight upon his left calf and quadricep muscles; his right leg extended suddenly, his foot pointed outwards as to tense his shin and ankle for the impact against the bark. a sound like a giant rattle-snake falling from above befell the area around Manx and he stamped his foot back down to where it had been before - evening his weight between both legs and breathing heavily. Face red from the effort of having hit the tree so quickly and with such lumps of cold iron attached to his hands, Manx fell down onto his knees and felt his chest rise and fall without his consent in great gasps of air. Manx fiddled with the leather strap about his fore-arm until they came free and the lumps of iron hit the ground with a thump. Everything around went silent as Manx's ears adjusted to the constant puffing of his breath. Manx sat back onto his ankles and looked upwards at the sky, it was quite warm - especially for night time and Manx had truly spent himself for a bell or two. Not worried too much abot the weather, he shifted himself over on his knees and feel upon his solidly packed rucksack for support, sprawling his arms underneath his head to become comfortable. Sleep came easy to the exhausted Inarta and so did his dreams, though he wished they didn't - his mind was filled with the deer he failed to hunt down as he had decided to and so that was what he dreamt of. In his dreams the deer eluded him constantly; leaping over him whenever he tried to grab a hold of it and no matter how many arrows he filled it with, it continued to run: leaving nothing but a trail of brilliant blood that gleamed on the dark floor of his dream-world. Manx felt quite terrible when he awoke, his hands were sore from the impacts they had taken the night before and he was still filled with the re-occuring disappointment that his dreams of losing the deer had brought. His eyes lit up brighter than the fire beside him when Manx realized that the deer he had shot must also have left a trail of blood, just as the one in his dreams had and he quickly shot to his feet, intent on gathering his things and following the blood to find his prey, if it had not been enough to kill it then he hoped to god it would slow it down enough for him to catch up with it. 'Deer sleep too, don't they?' he pondered with a smile as he walked off to the scene of yesterday.