Solo Something From Nothing

[Colt]

3rd of fall, 516 a.v.
late morning

Climbing was one of the more irritating surprises of Lhavit––or “Kalea,” as Colt had been told of the region itself. Going anywhere outside the city was an endless series of ups and downs, scrambling over or scaling alongside, and it wore him to the bone long before he ever got where he was going, nevermind whatever he’d been intending to do once he got there.

The Witch had started his descent down the mountainside just before dawn, and it was almost noon by the time he could even see the bottom over all the jutting cliffs and rocks. The Amaranthine River ran in a dark green strip in between the Shinyama and Sharai peaks, cutting a clean divide between the two; although he wasn’t at a good angle to see the river itself, the thickness of the foliage was enough of an indicator to where he didn’t have to. He was no mountaineer, but water was water no matter where it was.

Snow was handling the trip much better than her partner by virtue of having four legs. She cut a strafing pattern ahead of him, fully aware that they were hunting––Colt had that particular stance in his walk, that vague alertness in his posture, and she was more than happy for it. Seasons had passed since their last hunt, trapped as they were in the rolling hulk of a trade barge, not to mention Lhavit itself––the city of glass and starlight was cramped, cold, sickeningly high up and deafeningly loud. He’d once thought that Endrykas was loud, filled as it was with whuffing horses, barking dogs and talking families, but then he had found himself in Taloba. He’d thought that Taloba was loud, with the neverending screeches of jungle creatures layered over the shouts and songs of the people themselves, but then he’d found himself in Lhavit.

Lhavit was a noise in and of itself. People talked and rushed about, or else they stood in place and did nothing but talk and lounge. There was no personal space; individuals would pass each other on the street close enough to clasp arms and not giving a second thought to it, and that was when it was slow. Colt hadn’t really understood the meaning of the word “crowd” until he’d come to Lhavit and had the misfortune of seeing one firsthand, with hundreds of people locked together shoulder-to-shoulder in a solid mass around a street performer. The Witch had wondered how they weren’t breaking rank and shoving each other away, until he realized with horror that such closeness was normal in this city.

And really, compared to the streets of Lhavit, scaling down a mountain was just shy of paradise.

Colt eased himself down a jagged split of rock, keeping a foot and hand locked in a thin crevasse until he could feel his free foot come stable on solid dirt. Snow had already picked her way down the sheer collection of boulders and was glancing ahead, although knew better than to roam out of Colt’s sight. The past year had changed them both, physically and otherwise; the fat and energy of Snow’s puppyhood had been stripped away as she approached her second year, leaving behind lean muscle and calculating wariness. To Snow, there was no longer such thing as a home or familiar environment; the grasslands were a distant memory, overtaken by the closed-in stink of a ship, the sweltering heat of rainforest and then again the stink of a ship, broken only by the rare day-long trip to unfamiliar shores in quick bids for supplies. And now they were in mountains, which were all the same to her as the rest of them; her home was Colt, and it had been three seasons since either one of them had allowed the other out of their sight.

Snow paused for a moment, perked up, then relaxed; they were almost upon the Amaranthine, veiled as it was by green pines and knee-high grass, and the only creatures already in their purview were mice and rock-birds, all too small to be of any note. Neither of them knew anything helpful about the behaviors and patterns of mountain creatures, not enough to make any sort of predictions about where they might be, and so Colt relied upon the most basic of all knowledge: all things needed water. If he was to start anywhere, there would be no better place than a river.

[Colt]

The forest welcomed them as readily as forests usually did: quietly, impassively and entirely without interest. It was a lively forest––Colt could hear animals chattering at each other in the treetops––which he took as a positive sign. A squirrel would occasionally cast a curious glance down at him, but most things passed him by; his Phylonura, while recognized, was foreign to this land. He had no connection to the heartbeat of what surrounded him, and even less authority over its citizens.

The forest was more open than he had expected. The trees were tall, straight and spread widely, while the forest floor was a patchwork of fallen greens, deadwood and thick clusters of grass that spilled over themselves whenever there was a break in the canopy. Here and there lay the rotting skeletons of fallen trees, and around those skeletons existed small clearings where the light shone unfiltered and birthed tangled carpets of brilliant green.

The trees themselves were strange to him; they did not rise and split like most he had come across, but instead possessed a single perfectly straight strunk that served as the spine for the entire thing, with branches sweeping out to form a uniform cone of greenery. Most odd of all was the absence of leaves; at the end of each branch was a coat of dark green needles, smooth and slender. Colt paused a few strides into the lowland strip of forest and combed a hand through a set of needles. There was recognition at the touch of a Witch’s fingers, given in the slow, deep thoughts of a tree, but little else; the tree was occupied by its own business of growing and thriving, and Colt asked nothing of it. He simply felt the smoothness of the pine needles, then continued on his way.

He heard the river long before he saw it. The riverbed was rough and rolling, and it made the water roar and froth as it fought its way down to the ocean. There was a wall of light ahead where the trees gave way to shore, beyond which he could just see Syna’s face glinting off the surface of the river. Snow circled back and came into an easy trot at her partner’s hip, having contented herself with their surroundings and satisfied that there was nothing of note. Colt reflexively swooped down to run a hand through her scruff, glad for the closeness.

They emerged to find a thin strip of rocks and sand dividing the forest from the river, peppered with scoured wood that had been stolen, stripped and eventually thrown back onto the sand by the raging water. The river itself was a bellowing beast of a thing, writhing fiercely through the never ending gauntlet of boulders and trees that had managed to dig themselves into the riverbed. Only along the shallows before the shore did the water mellow to the point of safety, and Colt didn’t need to look to know that animals came to the edge regularly to take their drink.

This land was unfamiliar, but the cut or the river did tell him one very important thing: this was not, and would likely never be, a place where animals crossed. The other side of the river looked almost identical to the one upon which he now stood, but they might as well have been two different lands as far as grounded animals were concerned. While a bird would, of course, have no challenge with it, those creatures without wings––squirrels, rabbits, deer and the like––were walled cleanly into their own side.

Colt knew at least that deer existed in the jagged mountains of Kalea. He had seen antlers and hides being haggled over out the back of the Jugged Hare, familiar to him in all but size and coloring. Deer lived in herds, and herds needed to move to find food––inevitably crossing rivers when necessary. With so wild a stretch of water, Colt knew that no herd of deer would be interested in this shore. But if he could find out where deer did dwell, perhaps he could track them to a central pulse of the land. A calm pool perhaps, which would function as a smaller, more manageable ecological centerpoint than the pounding Amaranthine River. If he could find any such place, he could do more than hunt––he could watch, he could see and he could learn. Prey and predator, plant and animal, all were knit together in a tight weave of life and death. If he couldn’t understand this place through Phylonura, then he could try to understand it through every other mundane power he had at his disposal.

Colt closed his eyes and breathed. Five counts inhale, five counts exhale. Thoughts of pulse and places were set aside; the Witch focused entirely on the sounds around him, the scent of foaming water and scudded pines oozing sap, the cold spray of the Amaranthine against his skin.

When he was drowning in sensation, he opened glowing eyes to a world of glowing thread .

It had been a while since he’d last used his djed for pathfinding. The magic prickled behind his sockets uncomfortably, but a moment of careful breathing placed the discomfort with the rest of his thoughts: out of the way until useful.

With his vision focused on the djed around him, the world was alight with thin strands of color; hours old or minutes, the lines of light overlapped and intersected in countless patterns and combinations. The forests of the shore were throbbing with life, threads upon threads of individual creatures leading out from the trees, joining the glorious rope of light at the edge of the shallows where they had all slaked their thirst every day for hundreds of years, before returning to the forest and the business they had there.

Colt had no way of knowing immediately which strand was what, but there was still an easy distinction to make between them all: the size of the maker. Squirrels left smaller trails than deer, for there was indeed a collection of threads too large to be anything else. Ten… no, eleven, twelve deer. They were too faded to be fresh, but all Colt could assume was that it had been some hours since the passage, and nothing more specific. What he could knew, however, was that they had been paused at the edge of the river, then walked very clearly upstream. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was something; the deer knew the land better than he. If he followed them, he would also follow the heartbeat that was compelling them to move.

[Colt]

Upstream, it turned out, also meant uphill. After a few chimes of walking, the shoreline took a sharp turn skyward, first as a gentle slope and then as an increasingly sheer stretch of fallen rocks and boulders. It distracted Colt the the point that, involuntarily, his eyes relaxed and the magic slipped from his grasp. Blinking hard to force back an oncoming headache, Colt rubbed his temples and concentrated. Breathe. In and out. He didn’t need to know how he would climb the rocks, not now; all he needed was to keep the trail, and to trust that the path would reveal itself to him.

Bit by bit, he returned to the experience of his senses. Sounds. Smells. Spray against his skin. Jagged stones beneath his feet that pricked through his worn, salt-crusted shoes.

Once again, he reached for his djed and brought it up through his eyes. Once again, it strained him––but that strain was tolerable. He opened his eyes, and the world was once again made of threads.

With concentration, it wasn’t too difficult a task to find the trail again. While a single deer might have proved a challenge, but twelve together that moved together were quite bright enough to reorient towards.

Actually following the trail, however, proved a unique challenge. Colt’s concentration was twofold; he had to devote all conscious thought to the action, and then had to remind himself over and over that no, he didn’t need to worry about the climb right now, all he needed to worry about was his magic. He didn’t need to turn and look, he didn’t need to plan a way up, there was nothing that he needed to do––nothing but the single, all-consuming task of pathfinding.

Clinging to his focus like a rock in a storm. Colt picked his way after the threads of his quarry. When they reached the wall of tangled rock, the deer had taken a sharp detour away from the riverbank. In following them, Colt discovered a thin strip of smooth ground that twisted up the incline; the deer had followed the easiest path, and they showed it to him with their footsteps.

Snow, having caught the scent, forged ahead and reached the top of the incline before Colt did. The Amaranthine was just out of sight, but its thundering was endless as it plunged down from however high the incline was. All other sounds were drowned out, which, while loud, was such a steady white noise that Colt didn’t have to deal with the rest of the forest noise.

The noise faded when he reached the top of the incline, but by that time, Colt had found what he was looking for.

The bases of the two mountains retreated from each other for a small ways, broadening the space that the river had to itself and allowing the water to flatten. Perhaps an avalanche had cut away at the walls of the mountains, or perhaps they had simply formed that way; Colt had no idea and no desire to contemplate how or why it had come to be, only that it was. The thing that had been formed was a bit too large to be a pond, and far too small to be a lake; the water had grown shallow as it spread out, and from that shallowness had birthed the first calm water Colt had seen in a very long time. The waterfall that he had passed was somewhat narrow, while the entrywater upstream came through several smaller spouts that had been divided by some ancient rockfall. It was a small stretch of water, but it was serene; here, if anywhere, was a place that Colt could learn from.

The quarter-mile basin that had been formed was bordered on both sides by sheer, uneven cliffs, but the head and foot of the basin were much softer where they joined with the great mountain slopes. When Colt followed the djed trails, he learned that the herd of deer had crossed the river not far ahead, no doubt in search of thicker pastures. He noted their journey, but did not follow it past the water’s edge; it was not the deer he was looking for, and they had given him enough already. He had mouths to feed and tools to make; he couldn’t very well carry a deer back up the mountain.

No, there was action ahead of him, and it was here that he needed to do it.

[Colt]

The exploration of the lakeshore took longer than Colt would have liked; he was entirely unfamiliar with not only the area, but with the very nature of the terrain. The word “shore” could only be applied very loosely, since the sides of the basin more often than not rose in a sharp wall straight out of the water. Traversing the place was its own trial of climbing, jumping and ducking, one that slowed down his actual observance of the place. Snow, as always, had less trouble with the physical aspect of things, and her eagerness to explore ahead did help him somewhat; his dog took the easiest path for them both, saving him the trouble.

The whole thing was more than enough to break his concentration, though; his eyes lost their grip on the magic and the djed trails faded back into nothingness. Even without the magic of pathfinding, there were certain conclusions he could draw from what lived around him. The cattails, for instance, were a welcome sight, although they only grew around the rare areas where the mountains flattened into something resembling a proper shore. It was too late for pollen, but he could stop by later for roots and stalks, both of which would give his people––he couldn’t quite call them family––more to eat than the tasteless rations they had grown used to during their journey by ship.

More than that, though, the cattails spelled life. They had been common enough in the Sea of Grass, though it was Naiya who had––

––the thought screeched to a halt. Colt stopped, gritted his teeth and swallowed down something hot and burning, something that he didn’t dare think of further. Memories of red hair and gray feathers and black horsehair threatened to strangle him if he looked for more than a single moment.

Lake. Lake cattails life fish liked swimming underneath birds like swimming on top it was where the prey would be thickest. He needed to remain here, with the lake and with his task.

He couldn’t begin a hunt now, though. Not without a weapon.

The pines of Kalea were not like the trees he was used to, but they had their own advantages. They grew straight, and their branches grew straight, which spared him having to find something he could use. He found the largest, healthiest pine he could find––at least, as healthy as he could assume, knowing next to nothing about pines––and drew his cutlass. A sword wouldn’t have been his first choice for… anything really, but it was a long shot better than nothing at all. In his hands, the thing was hardly a weapon at all more than it was a tool; the curve of the blade was something he understood instinctively as something meant to cut and chop, and that was good enough for him. He could use it to chop down a branch quite easily, and then to turn that branch into something that at least resembled a spear. Because he certainly wasn’t going to use a sword to hunt.

The cutlass was more unwieldy than an axe, but it did its job. He knew enough to swing it an an angle, and then an angle opposite, and then at the first angle, back and forth until enough wood had been chipped away that he could manually break the branch with a loud snap. It came away easily, its needles swishing noisily, and he braced the broken end on the ground to hold the branch upright. It was taller than him, which he was glad for; the very end of the thing felt too supple and weak to serve as a killing point, so he would have to cut it down if he wanted to get something he could use.

First, though, came the soft outer branches.

The offshoots were smaller and more easily cut than the bough itself had been. The first task was simply to remove the needles that blocked his vision, and that was over in due time. What was left was a jagged, unseemly pole that had finger-sized protrusions running down the sides. Now that he could see them, cutting the shards off was easier, and they were small enough that a few good blows with the cutlass shaved them off. By the time he was halfway down, Colt had settled into a rhythm of a single blow to each shard.

Once the thing had the illusion of smoothness, he flipped it over to chop off the end in a single, powerful cut. It left the tip solid enough to hold an edge without bending, and another few long cuts turned that end into a honed point. Colt knew that the point wouldn’t last for long, probably not even long enough for two stabs, but it was enough to start with. He didn’t need two stabs to kill an animal.

[Colt]

Animals, Colt knew, all lived by the same principles. Food, water, shelter, survival, reproduction. By continuation, all animals behaved the same no matter if they were from Kalea, Falyndar or the Sea of Grass. Prey was prey. Predator was predator. Water was water. Food was food. All were needed, and all behaved the same no matter where they called home.

With cutlass sheathed and rough-hewn spear in hand, Colt knelt quietly on one of the thin strips of gravelly shoreline and stared intently into a broad stand of cattails. Snow, sensing something important, lingered uncertainly nearby; a firm stay there, be silent kept her from doing anything that might give away his position. More passively, she also served as vanguard; as long as she remained close enough to warn him of any danger, he could go back to giving his full attention to magic.

Breathe. In. Out. Slowly. Remain centered in the surroundings, and in the present moment. Colt closed his eyes and drew once again on the djed in his eyes.

It was becoming easier to access the magic itself, but the strained prickle in his muscles was becoming more poignant. Focusing on specific object took a bit more effort than he was used to, in the same way it would after too long without sleep. All the same, he had to do what he could; pushing his way through the difficulty, Colt looked through the cattails with eyes lit up by pathfinding.

The stand was old enough that the cattails weren’t terribly closed in, as they would have been had they been young. Spaced broadly, he could have walked between them without breaking any, had he the mind to put that much time into the action. That made it easier to see the glimmering threads that wove between the stalks, bright and fresh and alive. Yes, this was a place that many creatures used for shelter, both from the elements and from each other. He could only see the basic size of the threads, but from the way they moved over the water he could assume that they were waterfowl. In watching them, however, he was stunned to realize that he could also see beneath them, into the water itself where the threads of fish and snakes slipped between the roots. Yes, he could see one of them now, not a trail or a thread, but an actual fish; it was a small, brilliant blue knot of light to his magically-enhanced sight, no longer than his little finger, swimming busily underneath a broad-leafed cattail. Not large enough to interest him as a hunter, but more than enough to interest him as a pathfinder.

It was the waterfowl, however, that he knew he needed to remain fixed upon. There were several threads that he could see above the water, but the second-youngest of them was distractingly massive––too large to be a duck, so more likely a goose. Colt’s mouth watered instinctively at the mere thought; fresh meat was a luxury that had long since faded to a memory.

He followed the trail as it hovered at the edge of the shore and then moved lazily back into the cattails. Colt had never known a goose to be cowardly––big, aggressive beasts that they were––so he was almost certain that it had come to the stand in search of the food that gathered in the shallows. The thread was recent, far more so than most he had seen; his gut told him that it had been mere chimes, and he was certain that the animal was still somewhere in the stand.

Colt pulled off his cracked leather boots and signalled for Snow to be alert. For the first time in far, far too long, the Drykas Witch fell into crouch, hefted his weapon and began to hunt.

[Colt]

In hindsight, Colt should have probably expected the water to be ungodly cold on his bare skin. He was disciplined enough to stay silent when his feet entered the lake, but his face contorted in a mixture of pain, surprise and annoyance––weren’t lakes supposed to be frozen before they got this cold?

Snow––again––seemed to barely notice the discomfort. She waded in after him like it was nothing, keeping close and keeping quiet. Her head was held low, and her ears shifted wildly as the noise of the cattail stand surrounded them; smaller songbirds flitted between the stalks, and frogs plopped into the water when the two hunters got too close. Not once, though, did Snow break focus or stance; she was a hunting dog, born and bred, and she had long since moved beyond petty distractions and noises. Her master was hunting something, and she trusted his decision over her own; she would not abandon her focus for any prey that he did not assign to her.

With his feet bare, the Witch felt the thrumming of Phylonura where his soles landed on roots and weeds; recognition brushed against his skin in vague, warm impressions, and more than one curious fish swam up to investigate his skin before darting away from Snow’s much more intimidating paws.

The worst of it, though, was the burning need to go so, so slowly. Stealth was not something that could be rushed, particularly in water; to move too quickly would make splashes, and that would scare off the goose before they even got close enough to see it. And so Colt moved frustratingly slowly, hyperaware of every sound he made as he brought one foot in front of the other without any traitorous bubbles or splashes to announce his intentions.

Having lost his concentration in the surprise of the chill, Colt had to struggle to regain his grasp on his magic. It took twice as long to block the pain from his mind, and then to regain enough tranquility to open his eyes and keep focus on the thread in front of him––a thread that pulsed clear and bright once he’d found it again. The goose was a large one, and the hunter had no desire to know details beyond that––male or female, gray or brown, it didn’t matter.

Discomfort made the few chimes of tracking feel like an age, but it did not last forever. Every step brought him closer to his prey, and the thread continued to grow more and more vibrant. Until, finally, through the veil of the cattail stalks, he could see it.

The light of the bird’s djed body obscured many physical details like color and markings, but those were superficial and unimportant things. It was facing away from them, engrossed by something under the water; no doubt something it thought it could eat.

Snow tensed measurably, and the hunter knew that his partner knew exactly what they were hunting.

The spear didn’t have the same weight or grace as a javelin, but the basic principle was the same. Colt continued to move through the cattails, every muscle in his body aching with anticipation. It was a familiar dance that he had gone too long without dancing; every inch of progress was a mile, every passing moment a lifetime. Their prey remained in place, oblivious; by the grace of the gods, neither dog nor Drykas gave themselves away.

Caiyha, let your mercy be bountiful.

In a single heartbeat, the spear was flying forward with Snow in hot pursuit. At the sound of the dog exploding into a sprint, the goose let out a terrified honk and spread its wings to take flight––but the cattails were too close, too bulky to let the creature go anywhere.

Colt had thrown the spear like a javelin, but it did not fly like a javelin––the thing missed the goose’s back, which was where the Witch had aimed, coming instead to dig a deep line of red across the elbow of a single wing. Continuing its loud chorus of honking, the goose flapped with its remaining good wing and spun at an angle in a desperate bid to escape. The wound was by no means a fatal one, and had Colt been alone, would have surely spelled failure.

But Colt was not alone.

Truer than any spear or javelin, Snow plowed through the water and sank skilled fangs into the goose’s good wing. The bird screamed and turned, beak open and ready to fight, but Colt was already halfway there. The water slowed him down, but Snow stood firm; the goose was still there when he was within reaching distance.

No, not a goose, he realized as his magic left him. The djed faded and he could see white feathers, smooth and unbroken; they hadn’t caught a goose, they’d caught a swan that was just small enough to have fooled them otherwise.

No time to care about the difference; the swan was lashing out at Snow’s exposed hindquarters, in what Colt knew would be a deep, painful bite. Moving on instinct, he grabbed the bird by the neck, just below the head to avoid that vengeful beak, and yanked back.

“Snow, let go!” he commanded as he pulled the struggling swan from her jaws.

Snow obeyed after a few moments, although her entire face was painted red in proof of what she had done. The swan continued to flap and thrash, and Colt thanked whatever god was watching that the bird’s wings were too injured to be of any threat––had they been strong, he had no doubt that a solid blow could have broken his bones.

As it was, though, the dog and Drykas had already won. Wrapping his other hand below his first, Colt turned the swan sideways, twisted in opposite directions and ended the bird’s life in a single, clean snap of its neck.

[Colt]

The swan fell still immediately, and its deafening honking gave way to quiet wind and rippling water. The animals around them had fallen silent at the ruckus, but would soon enough go back to their usual lives; aside from the presence of a possible predator, the death of a single swan did not concern them overmuch.


Colt took a moment to catch his balance, then another to catch his breath. The swan was slung over one shoulder, and Snow licked her bloody lips, tail wagging in excitement for whatever was next; she was as happy as her Drykas to be hunting again.


When Colt pulled on his pathfinding magic, he hadn’t truly expected to find anything. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, a last attempt to see what he could see, but when he opened his eyes to the magic, he found a trail. Blue and bright, just under the surface of the water, in between his feet and towards a bent cluster of cattails. In the shade thrown by the plants, a fish was lingering. Not a fingerling, but a big, strong fish that was nearly the length of his forearm. Enough for a meal and still some besides.


And his makeshift spear still hadn’t struck anything more substantial than feathers.


Wait there, tense. The gravity of his posture put Snow on alert, and she went stock-still.


Colt moved slowly, even more than he had with the swan. He picked up the spear, but kept an eye on his feet as they moved; not splashing wasn’t enough. He walked until there was not even a ripple around him to warn the fish.


At that speed, Colt’s feet blended into the background, becoming little more than scenery to the resting animal. The bent stalks provided shade from sun and shelter from predator; if something came upon it, the fish would rely on the water’s currents to warn it of danger.


Currents that slipped peacefully around Colt’s ankles without a stray ripple.


Patience had been his greatest obstacle when he had hunted the swan. With the swan dead, his patience was no longer agony. A long time ago, patience had been as natural as breathing; his confidence was returning, and patience was returning with it.


Breathe. In. Out. Listen to the wind. His heart slowed down with each long exhale, and he let the magic slip away. He could see the fish with his mundane eyes now, a dark shape beneath gently waving water. It lazed in the shadows easily, unconcerned by the shadow creeping over it.


Because he moved his arms as slowly as his feet, the fish didn’t move when Colt raised the spear and angled it downward. He paused there, watching the distortions of the water lapping through the cattails until he was absolutely certain of his prey’s location.


He brought the spear down, piercing the water with a wet plop and driving the point through his prey’s back.


Through the wood of the shaft, Colt could feel the fish struggling wildly. It had been pinned firmly to the bottom of the lake, and the spear wasn’t something it could just swim away from––it was already dead, whether it knew it or not.


With that in mind, Colt’s first priority was to keep the spear exactly as it was while he leaned down to grasp the fish’s underbelly. Slowly, deliberately, he manually slid the animal farther up the shaft until he had it securely trapped, and only then did he lift the fish out of the water.


Snow perked up the instant she saw the thrashing creature, forgetting the command to stay put––not that it would made much of a difference now.


It took a bit of maneuvering to keep both fish and swan from falling back into the water, but this task, like the ones before, was one Colt went about with deliberate slowness. Better to be thorough than hungry, and he had no pressing cause to hurry. So he took his time, and when he finally reached the shore of the lake, the fish had stopped twitching.

[Colt]

Snow knew that it was almost time to go home, and showed him so with the excited bounding of her steps. Despite it, Colt had one last thing to do before making the ridiculously long walk back up the mountain.

Colt flipped the spear upside down to serve as a walking stick in a way that wouldn’t send the fish tumbling. He put the swan’s neck in the same hand that was holding the stick, leaving his other hand free to draw his cutlass. He swung the thing about experimentally just to remember the feel of it, then moved the the edge of the cattail stand and began to cut.

There were still plenty of green shoots to be had this early in the season, and Colt went for those with the brightest color. He made sure to space himself out, taking only two or three stalks from an area before moving on. The dark green leaves would serve as useful fiber, while the young white inner shoots would be thrown into dinner––hopefully on top of the fish. He’d grown up eating cattails, and the sight of them had given him a small sense of relief; at least one thing was the same on this side of the world.

He cut the stalks at the base, quick and clean, until he had downed twenty of them. He wiped the cutlass off on his trousers and slid it back into the sheath, then sat himself down next to the pile of cattails.

Snow wandered over to sniff at what he was doing, and he grabbed her head playfully before she could even think of snapping at the swan or fish. The dog yipped in return, twisting and taking his wrist gently in her jaws; a show of submission and happiness both. He pulled her close, grabbed her chest and rolled her forcefully onto her back so he could scratch her stomach; she wasn’t going to get at any of that meat unless he said so, and they both knew it.

Snow kicked, twisted and wagged her tail, growling happily until her partner shoved her away to tell her that they were done. She got to her feet, shook herself off and then left to investigate something nearby that was moving between the rocks.

Colt, in the meantime, stripped away some of the darkest cattail leaves and then used them to tie the rest of the stalks together in a tight bundle. Every morsel he could find would be important and necessary in the coming days; Kai, Kyla and himself hadn’t had fresh greens in… seasons. It would be a good addition to the evening meal.

When all was ready, Colt took the swan, fish and spear in one hand, the cattails in the other, and stood. It left him with no hands to sign to Snow, but she was a smart girl; she figured out that it was time to leave the moment he began walking.

The trip up the mountain looked less intimidating now that he had something to show for it. Tonight, the three misplaced Drykas would eat something resembling a decent meal.

For the first time in a long while, Colt allowed himself to hope that things would get better.

- End -

[Ornea]

Awards Colt XP AWARDS Acrobatics +1 Animal husbandry +1 Carpentry +1 Climbing +2 Endurance +2 Fishing +1 Hunting +2 Intelligence +5 Investigation: +5 Pathfinding: +5 Stealth +2 Wilderness survival (mountain, forest) +5 Weapon (wood spear) +2 LORE Animal husbandry: Playing with Snow after the hunt Carpentry: To use a cutlass as an axe and chop down a branch Carpentry: To remove needles and cut of shards to make a pole Carpentry: To cut the end of a pole into a honed point and make a spear Climbing: To hold on to a crevasse Climbing: To find stable foothold Intelligence: To make deductions by observing the sings of nature Intelligence: To make deductions based on pathfinding sight Fishing: To fish by using a spear Fishing: To lift a speared fish out of the water Hunting: To move like in a kind of dance Hunting: To kill a swan by snapping it’s neck Ecology: Lhavit nature, Green pines and high grass Ecology: Lhavit nature, Small mice and rock birds Ecology: Lhavit nature, All living beings need water Ecology: Lhavit nature, The thickness of foliage indicates water Ecology: Lhavit nature, Animals chattering is a positive sign Ecology: Lhavit nature, Occasional curious squirrels Ecology: Lhavit nature, Deer lives in herds in the mountains of Kalea Ecology: Lhavit nature, The cattails have edible roots and stalks Ecology: Lhavit nature, A lake is where the prey is thickest. Ecology: Lhavit nature, Animals all need food, water, shelter, survival, reproduction Foraging: To forage cattails Geography: The hillsides outside Lhavit Geography: The Amaranthine River between Shinyama and Sharai Geography : The lively forest outside Lhavit Lhavit: Crowded streets Lhavit: Ever active city Lhavit: Chatty people Pathfinding: To breathe and immerse in the surroundings Pathfinding: To breathe in order to control and calm the djed Pathfinding: To perceive a world of glowing thread Pathfinding: To get distracted means losing the grasp on the magic Pathfinding: To focus on the djed around you Pathfinding: To discern the world’s thin strands of color and their patterns Pathfinding: To see the threads of life of the forests flora and fauna Pathfinding: To distinguish between strands by the size of the maker Pathfinding: To follow a track by pathfinding Pathfinding: To blink hard to keep oncoming overgiving headache at bay Pathfinding: Twofold concentration, on the task, and on staying focused Pathfinding: To give oneself up to the magic and let it show they way Pathfinding: Foucsing gets harder as overgiving slowly sets in Pathfinding: To use pathfinding to hunt Pathfinding: To recognize the threads of waterfowl Pathfinding: To distinguish between threads of goose and duck Pathfinding: To recognize the threads of fish and snakes Pathfinding: To see a small fish with pathfinding Phylonura: To enter new unfamiliar lands with no previous connection Phylonura: To be recognized by trees Phylonura: To perceive the deep slow thoughts of trees Phylonura: A tree is occupied by its own growing and thriving Phylonura: To search for the ecological centerpoint Phylonura: A wish to understand the ecology through phylonura Phylonura: To feel the impressions of nature under your feet Stealth: Stealth in water can’t be rushed as splashes would scare prey away Terrain: The endless ups and downs of Lhavit’s mountain terrain Terrain: The jutting cliffs and rocks of Lhavit’s mountain terrain Terrain: Open forest, with tall trees spread widely Terrain: The forest floor of fallen greens, deadwood and grass Terrain: Small brilliant green clearings around skeletons of fallen trees Terrain: New strange trees with smooth green needles instead of leaves Terrain: The sound of the river can be heard at a long distance Terrain: The rough riverbed and the roaring water of Amaranthine River Terrain: The thin strip of rocks and sand dividing the forest from the river Terrain: The Amaranthine River is hard to cross for animals without wing Terrain: The sharply rising “shore” of Amaranthine River NPC: Snow, a natural born climber NPC: Snow, lean muscle and calculating wariness NPC: Snow, finding the easiest way in unknown terrain NPC: Snow, serving as vanguard NPC: Snow, a focused and enduring hunter NPC: Snow, reads Colt’s body language and knows what’s up LOOT Swan, fish and cattails to eat. NOTES It was a pleasure to read this thread. The way you wrote about the nature gave a palpable feeling of the wilderness with it's life and death, and Colt being part of it, part of the nature. I gave you investigation for all the exploring. There was an overarching use of wilderness survival thorough the thread so I went ahead and gave points for that as well. Intelligence is for all the conclusions he made. Colt is at mastery level as hunter, so you got the hunting points because I reasoned that the hunt was difficult due to the primitive wood spear he made, the need to stealth in water, the unexpectedly big and dangerous prey. The list of lores is massive, but all this was in your text Feel free to PM me if there's something you want to discuss. I'm not too experienced at grading, and if there's something I should check again I'm totally open for having a new look at it. Please mark your post in the request thread as graded!