Solo Hunting Delirium

[Azira]

2nd Winter 513AV

It was a nightmare, well and truly. The huntress couldn’t handle having an apprentice but yet she now had two! If she didn’t bring them back then she’d never be able to live with the guilt. It wasn’t as if she was particularly attached to them or anything, she hardly knew them, yet she couldn’t stand having their deaths on her hands. She had to live through this winter as well though so if it came down to it, who would she save? It didn’t bear thinking about.

The Avora couldn’t say that she was happy with her choice of apprentices but then she hadn’t really had a lot of choice in the matter. No after the announcement that all hunters take on two apprentices there had been a rush to recruit desirable Yasi. More senior hunters who hadn’t been bothered before decided that their experience meant that they got first pick and so younger hunters like Azira had been left to choose from the undesirables. She’d ended up with a quiet girl of 11, Aleisa who didn’t like the idea of killing things and a surly teenage boy of 14, Wilem whose attitude had made every right-minded Avora keep well away from him.

Aleisa was beginning to frustrate her a bit because she wouldn’t kill anything but the huntress had put her to good use setting traps for small game. Wind Reach would take any meat it could get now after all and the girl could definitely catch rabbits and squirrels with her simple traps. Wilem on the other hand... she was sorely tempted to throw the youth off the mountain. Not only was he uncooperative but he also seemed far too interested in his mentor. He’d become very curious about her age and had even told her his exact age as if he was pointing out the relatively small difference between them. She was beginning to think that he thought he stood a chance with her. She didn’t like it at all. Maybe throwing him off the mountain would be doing the city a favour.

The girl had spent a number of bells out already, hoping to catch something (a slim chance) but mainly teaching her apprentices to navigate the terrain. She’d had to go much slower than her ordinary pace and yet the pair were still hopeless at mountaineering. It made her want to scream. Gazing around her, Azira found no signs of any animals. No prints, no stripped vegetation, no scat, nothing. She sighed and kept moving, a shriek and the sound of skittering stone sounding behind her. She turned her eyes skyward but didn’t look around. It was Aleisa slipping. Again. Wilem made some nasty remark about it which set the pair arguing. Again. The pair hated each other and Azira hated them, well Wilem at least.

”Will you two shut up!” she snapped, turning on the pair of them. They stared dumbly at her, Aleisa on the verge of tears. Shaking her head in disgust, the Avora turned her attention back to the path ahead. Wilem started grumbling behind her but she tried to ignore the words. It wasn’t worth listening to and would only piss her off which was what the boy was trying to do. She hadn’t even spent a full day with them yet and she was already being driven to distraction and at least one of her apprentices hated her. Truly the beginning of a beautiful working relationship. She wasn’t even sure how she was supposed to order them around. She could order around Dek and Chiet but her apprentices were now Avora, very nearly at her level so she couldn’t treat them the same way.

”You two are doing as I asked, yes? You’re looking for any signs of animal activity, right? the huntress called back to them, scanning the ground herself as she spoke. She hadn’t found any hopeful signs yet. She was met with silence and so she paused to look behind her. Aleisa was more focused on where she was walking and Wilem was giving her the filthiest look imaginable. She didn’t know what to make of that but she didn’t have to wait long to find out.

“How are we supposed to look for signs when we’re too busy trying not to trip over our own feet?” he sneered, his expression unchanging. Azira frowned back at him, her brow creasing in though. ”O-Okay. You have a point. No need to talk to me like that though. Or glare at me like that either. Why don’t we slow down and look around then?” the huntress replied, raising her voice so that Aleisa could hear.

[Azira]

What she saw as a kind offer didn't receive a very nice response. The dramatic sigh and the eye roll were so typical of an angsty teenager that the huntress wondered why she'd chosen him. Not all teenagers were like that, she certainly wasn't and she hadn't been that way a few years ago either. What was the boy's problem? She'd been good enough to take him on as an apprentice, a position that had entered him into the Avora caste. He would probably have ended up as a Dek without her. She was almost certain that he had mental problems of some sort so he wouldn't have ended up a Chiet. Yet such an ungrateful attitude towards her really pissed her off.

"Would you prefer not to be a hunter, is that it? If you want to hunt then you need to actually be able to find and catch animals. They aren't going to come to you so that you can shoot them. You want to be a hunter then open your petching eyes!" she hissed, moving past him to reach the girl. "Come on, Aleisa, we'll see what you can find around here, see if you can see anything that I haven't". Aleisa would be easier to deal with, more obedient, more willing to learn. At least she hoped so. She began to list off some possible signs to the girl, ones that she herself had only picked up the previous day in the Enclave.

"Footprints are obviously the ones you'd expect but more often than not, you haven't got those to work from. No, instead you're looking for other signs that an animal has passed through. Snapped or bent branches, flattened grass, worn down paths, scat, things like that. I've been going on and off different trails all morning but I haven't been able to find many signs of activity. See if you can find us a new trail." Her task received, Aleisa began to head off to the left, leaving the current trail that they were on. She moved slowly and shakily, the young woman noted but it was to be expected. The Avora just had to be patient as hard as that was for her to do.

It was necessary to follow the girl, Azira slowing her steps so as not to outpace her. Loose stones skittered out from under the youth's feet but the noise from behind the two girls was worse. Wilem was heavier than Aleisa but also a little uncoordinated from a recent growth spurt. He sounded more like he was marching along rather than walking and Azira doubted that any animal within range would stay around long with that racket. She was going to tell both of the apprentices how to be quieter, even though Wilem was likely to bite her head off and become louder out of spite but a voice surprised her.

"I know how to pick up a new trail," a quiet voice volunteered. The two girls stopped, the huntress turning agape to gaze at him. Wilem looked back at her, unperturbed by their amazed expressions. "You want to do something useful now, do you?" Azira asked coolly. A shrug was the only response. They stared each other down for a chime before the huntress gestured for him to take the lead. As he stamped by her, the teen decided to point out his noise problem. "Oh and if you want to keep some animals in the vicinity you could try walking a little more quietly. Putting your feet down heel to toe would help," she suggested softly. A mumbled response and then the boy had taken the lead, his steps becoming much slower and quieter as he set off in the same direction Aleisa had been leading them in.

Hopefully the boy does some good and I actually get to shoot something.

[Azira]

Finding a new trail took about half a bell as Wilem moved the group further down the mountain. The boy seemed to have some idea of what he was doing so maybe he'd listened to her when she'd talked about tracking at the very beginning of the hunt. He was making some attempt to read the landscape, avoiding areas that were very densely packed with trees but overall it was probably mostly luck. It was normally luck for Azira when she was after new trails. Winter was certainly turning into a game of luck seeing as animals hadn't been travelling their usual routes for some time and so she was at a los. The trail her apprentice found, however, had been used recently. There was scat on it.

"I don't have to feel it or something weird like that, do I?" the boy asked anxiously, looking down at the scat with barely concealed disgust. The huntress laughed, shaking her head. "No, you don't have to do that. I don't think that that will get you. Besides you can see that it's fairly fresh; it still looks moist," the huntress explained, crouching down beside it to get a better look. "It's kind of tear drop shaped, I think that that means that it's... a deer? Yeah, I think that's right. I've heard that somewhere before." The huntress straightened, looking up and down the trail trying to work out which way a deer would have gone. She couldn't be sure but her instincts were telling her that it would have gone further down the mountain. Most creatures seemed to be avoiding the higher up places so it seemed logical but Azira wasn't sure.

"Okay let's check up and down the trail, see if we can see any signs that show what way that deer headed. Just be careful where you step, just to be sure that you don't destroy anything important," the young woman advised. The trio split up, Azira heading back up the way they'd come, scanning the ground and the vegetation surrounding the trail. She was looking for anything that might indicate direction, a snapped branch, a print. The only problem was that they might have already destroyed the indicators when they came down the trail. The huntress hoped that some mark would still be intact. She had to crouch down and examine the ground more closely every couple of feet. Their feet had caused a number of depressions on the ground and so there was a chance that they'd destroyed any prints. An examination of some of the trees nearest to the trail showed that something had rubbed against the bark. What had done it, she couldn't tell and so it was somewhat of a dead end.

After half a bell, a shout came from further down the trail. The Avora picked her way down, moving to where Wilem stood, just off to the side of the track. As Azira came to stand beside him, she scanned the vegetation that he indicated, noting the way the bough seemed to have bent. It hadn't broken. The girl touched it lightly, bending it away from her to get a better look and found the wood within to be green. Something seemed to have pushed through recently. She smiled and clapped him on the back. "Well done. We might actually catch something today. I'll lead then."

[Azira]

The teen was excited at the possibility of shooting something. She’d been sure that the winter would be very poor for hunting, especially considering the abysmal haul the hunters had brought in during the Fall but things were looking up. It was good that things were already starting to improve. The huntress was hopeful that they’d take down a deer today and was fantasising about just how much meat it would provide to end famine conditions. It was a bit premature of her really to predict the end of the famine when she hadn’t even managed to catch the thing that she thought might be a deer but she felt so sure.

Following the slightly beaten track, Azira had to move slowly to try to make as little noise as possible. The path was newly created, probably an escape route made by the deer. It was a narrow track though, a path that branches were encroaching upon. Some of them had snapped but others had just bent, which meant that she had to push her way through, so being quiet was difficult. Every sound she made seemed loud in the dead silence of the trees, every noise in danger of scaring their prey away if it was near. After travelling along the route for a few chimes, it opened up onto a wider more travelled space and she could hear the sound of rushing water, a stream perhaps. She followed the sound, the youths behind her following her closely and making an obvious effort to be quiet. They crept along until they came close to the water’s edge, the trio scanning its banks for any immediate sign of the deer they were searching for but it wasn’t there.

”I don’t know if it’s around here but let’s check for footprints along the bank. It needs to drink and the water might be clean. If it is, we should fill up,” she whispered, moving to get a good look at the bank, searching for footprints. The bank was mostly stony with very little clay but thanks to Lavira, she knew to look for disturbed stones in tracking. If there were obvious signs that the water had been used by animals then there was a chance that the water was uncontaminated. There were still cases all the time of citizens drinking contaminated water and while in most cases people weren’t getting sick anymore, severe hallucinations were an unfortunate symptom. She’d heard of a Dek who had thought he was a Wind Eagle and had jumped flapping from the Aeries. Bringing clean water back would benefit her as well as others but she certainly considered herself a higher priority. She didn’t want to start having weird hallucinations.

A careful examination showed that a stone or two had been overturned, the damp surfaces giving away signs of passage. She moved to the water’s edge and crossed the shallow water to find wet prints on the other side. A hand gesture indicated that the other two should follow her as the Avora followed the trail to the point where the deer’s feet had dried out. The three toed prints seemed to confirm her suspicions that they were pursuing a deer though she supposed it could just as easily have been a moose. They were similar creatures after all but she thought that moose prints might be wider. They’d find out soon enough though as their prey was near, the still damp prints seemed to suggest as much. They could come back and investigate the water later but for now, Azira was more interested in catching the game. Now they were getting somewhere.

[Azira]

The teen followed the tracks until the wet trail came to an end. It didn't take long, only bringing her a few yards out from the stream, before she had to search for other signs, using the direction of the previous prints to help her. There were some depressions, slight and irregular as the stones gave way to moist earth and then harder, more compact ground that brought them back into the tree line. She turned to explain to her apprentices the importance of being quiet as they grew nearer to there quarry only to find that Wilem had gone missing. The boy had been bringing up the rear and so it seemed that Aleisa hadn't noticed the other's absence until she followed the huntress's confused and horrified stare towards the empty air behind her.

"Shyke! Where'd Wilem go?" she hissed at the younger girl, who seemed totally bewildered by what was going on. She wasn't any source of information at all. He must have fallen behind or else he'd looped around her and headed off in pursuit of their prey alone. If he'd done the latter than she was going to murder him, consequences be damned. As she stood there fuming and trying to decide on a course of action, the boy appeared from the direction they'd just come from holding a water skin. The huntress strode to meet him, all stealth forgotten in her rage. A finger jabbed into the boy's chest, meeting bone so hard that it left the top of the digit throbbing. Her finger drew back an inch and came back for another hard jab as she began to scold him.

"Where were you? What were you doing? What did I tell you about saying close? I told you at the start of this trip that if you got separated from me then there was no guarantee that you wouldn't be eaten by a hungry zynx or something. That if you were eaten it'd be your own fault. How stupid are you?" Azira snarled, her jabbing continuing until the boy retreated and batted her hand away when she tried to pursue him. In the face of her wild anger, he seemed a little less surly and a little more shocked. Perhaps he hadn't realised just how angry she could get. He held the water skin out in front of him, partly using it as a shield and partly offering it to her in placation as he gave a meek explanation.

"Your water skin fell in the stream. I stopped to get it," he explained, wide eyed. Her hands moved to her waist automatically only to find that he was right; her water skin was missing. The one he was holding out must be hers. She reached out to take it, eyeing him suspiciously. "Why did it take you so long to get it then?" Shrug. She tried another question. "Why is it wet?" she asked him, feeling the wet exterior of the skin. If it had fallen into the stream then she would have heard it and she was also sure that it felt heavier than it had earlier. Her eyes widened at the possibility. "You didn't fill it, did you?" she asked, alarmed. He didn't say anything, just shook his head. She eyed the skin suspiciously before securing it at her waist once more. She'd think about it later. For now she'd try to pick up the deer's trail and hope it hadn't been frightened away by their exchange. She gestured for the pair to follow and she set about resuming her previous search.

It was difficult to focus, suspicions still whirling in her mind despite her decision to think about it later. She pushed them away, forcing her mind to list signs so that they'd be at the forefront of her mind for interpreting what she was seeing. Undergrowth mainly, that's what she saw. There were rotting pine needles under foot, oranges and browns. Stones, clay, hard rock, small hardy plants. They all passed beneath her vision as she searched. She had to double back, retracing her steps so as to pick up the trail again in the form of stripped vegetation. Sometimes she would find a depression in soft earth or a displaced stone, its underside exposed and earth still clinging to it from the ground it had rested on. The Avora wasn't even sure if she was still on the right trail, or if she had crossed into the path of some other animal.

As she followed the trail tantalisingly fresh signs seemed to appear, offering hope that the animal was close. Yet she was distracted slightly. Her body offering an annoyingly persistent distraction. Her tongue moved across dry lips, coming from a mouth that felt thick from lack of moisture. She was thirsty. It was an easily dealt with distraction however and she found her hand reaching for the water skin to banish it. Her only thoughts as she unstoppered the skin and took a swig was that she'd rationed it well enough so far, that she could take this drink. She swilled the water around in her mouth before swallowing it. A sigh of satisfaction and relief, even though the taste left much to be desired. It had a metallic taste that seemed to linger behind it, unpleasant but bearable. The huntress stopped abruptly and Aleisa walked into her.

The pair recovered themselves and Azira turned to stare at Wilem in horror. "You filled my water skin! You said you didn't, you lied!" It had hit her suddenly when she realised that the taste was wrong. Water in Wind Reach still wasn't right which was why they'd been bringing in water from elsewhere. Water that did not taste like metal, water that she had put into the skin. That was why it was wet on the outside and why it felt heavier than she remembered. He'd filled it. He'd given her water that they didn't know anything about. There was no guarantee that it was safe. The boy just shrugged like it was nothing. What difference did it make to him? He wouldn't be the one affected if she went nuts and jumped off the mountain thinking that she was a Wind Eagle. How much had she drank? She'd drank maybe two mouthfuls now and some while she was walking. She hadn't even thought about the earlier drink. The water skin was certainly lighter than it had been, a loud sloshing indicating the space the water had to move around in. Maybe it wasn't enough. Maybe she'd need to drink more to hallucinate. But it had only taken one glass to kill in the Inclement Weather.

She could make herself throw up but would it be worth it? Did she have the nerve to do it? The idea of sticking her fingers down her throat was a horrible one and if she threw up how long would it take for her to become dehydrated? She didn't have clean water to drink after all. No, it was probably fine. She wasn't going to start hallucinating and she wasn't going to drink anymore of that water either. "Give me your water skin," she demanded, reaching out to take Wilem's own. The boy tried to pull away, not wanting to relinquish the supply but the Avora grasped his hair, twining her fingers into it and twisted and pulled until he was too distracted to hold onto it anymore. "You contaminated my water so I get yours. Fair's fair," she told the boy, retreating before he could retaliate. There wasn't that much left in the skin for all his protests but it was enough to keep her going until whenever they got back from this hunt.

"If I start throwing up or hallucinating shyke then it's on your head," she grumbled, before turning back to the trail.