It's Life

[Behn]

Timestamp: 50th of Winter, AV 510 Behn walked slowly, silently through the thick trees of the Wildlands. He moved with a subtle confidence of experience and skill. He had lived out in the wild for years, only on occasion did Behn dare to move closer to the chaotic settlement of Ravok to the north and east, and rarer still did he enter such a place to exchange goods or pick up necessary equipment. Rhysol was a figure that, though clouded and masked in chaotic visage, scared the life right out of Behn. To linger in a place like Ravok was, in his opinion, foolish. Behn wandered through the wooded regions of the Wildlands until he found his first trap. He had set the cage the previous day, and though something managed to trigger the device, there was nothing to show for it. Behn stared at the trap for a moment, he stroked his sandpapery bearded face for a moment before kneeling down and picking up the snare trap. Examined it for any damage, which he was glad not to find. Behn set the trap back on the ground, opened the hatch, snatched some berries from a nearby bush, which he was not confident enough to eat himself, and hid them inside the snare. Should something be small enough to get caught and favor those berries, he should have something caught when he next checked the trap. Even if it was winter, it was never too cold for a hare or squirrel to be desperate enough to tempt the wilderness. Besides, it's not like it was covered in snow or anything. Behn shrugged as he stepped away from his first trap. He wasn't exactly thrilled it was empty, but knew it wasn't wise to expect a catch every day. Behn turned from the trap and made a B-line towards the second trap, daring not to hope for a catch though. When he saw something, then he would rejoice, in his own way.

[Behn]

[OOC: Go ahead and fix your stuff Labella, I'd like to rp with someone.] And rejoice he would! Behn exhaled slowly, relief flowing over him like a cool rain in the heat of summer. In his second trap, despite the first being empty, was a nice little rabbit waiting for him. Behn almost felt his body physically tugging him towards the creature, anxious to grab it and get it killed and skinned (the first he could do well, the second was a bit more difficult for him to do well). A rabbit, not that it was very large or anything, cursed winter, but it had meat on it, it had skin that, if it wasn't butchered, might get sold for a few coins, which meant, if he was lucky, some rations or tools. Behn set down his bow, quiver, and knife for a moment, freeing both his strong hands for what was about to come. He hand to be quick, and he couldn't be scared. Behn opened the hatch to the small cage trap, one hand reached in swiftly, grabbing the squirming, fighting creature by the neck, then pulling it out, he would grab a hold of its hind leg, extra precaution, to ensure that he had the fluffy monster well under control. 'Sorry friend. It's life. Everyone dies.' Behn held some sort of strange respect for the animal, knowing it had merely tried to live, survive as he did, but he was now the monster, killing so that he might survive. If there truly were gods, he hoped he was more than just some rabbit in their eyes. If Rhysol was real, he preferred not to know what he would see Behn as. Behn lowered the struggling rabbit to the ground, dropping his knee on its body to pin it down, freeing one hand to reclaim his knife. Behn drove the knife through the animal's neck with relative ease. The blood, he knew, was likely to attract predators soon. Hungry ones if his assumptions and memories of winter-starved animals served him right. The rabbit stopped struggling fairly quickly as the life poured out through its neck. Draining. Slowly draining blood. Behn knew better than to ingest blood. Some was okay, but it was never encouraged. That was too animalistic. Animalistic... like the rabbit? Behn shook his head slowly, trying not to distract himself. If he got too busy trying to justify his actions, his methods, then this would all become some nuisance to him in the long run. When he was lying on his cot awaiting sleep to absorb him, then he could question whether he was a man or a beast. Until them, he had to keep going. Once Behn was quite confident that the pool of blood was not going to grow much farther, he took the knife and continued to cut through the rabbit's neck (though was forced to twist until the bones broke apart, crappy knife it was). He left the head lying in the blood, hopefully a suitable distraction to keep any scavengers from following the true prize. He picked up his bow and quiver, hung them over his shoulder. The rabbit was next, with one hand he grabbed the lifeless hind legs, allowing for any more blood to drain to the ground if it had to, and with his free hand took his snare cage. He would have to reset it before the night was upon him. He still had all day, blessed be the morning it was, but still, so much to do. That's how life was though. Busy, always something to do.

[Behn]

"I can think, therefore I am a man. I kill, therefore I am a hunter. I eat, therefore I continue to live." Typically it wasn't particularly difficult for Behn to keep his sanity, or more so the feeling of humanity, stable. But today, for some reason he couldn't explain, he was mentally preoccupied. His eyes still scanned the forest with the precision and diligence of an eagle. His ears still listened to every chirping bird (or more importantly, the sudden disappearance of said chirping) to make sure everything was normal, safe, or at least as safe as the Wildlands could be. There weren't large flocks of pigeons or small armies of turkeys wobbling around, sadly enough, but there was still traces of a few chirping voices despite the lingering winter-like weather. If there was a wolf, or anything else, stalking him, there should be a noticeable change in the chirping. Still, something was bothering him. Perhaps it was just that he hadn't spoken to another human in so long that he was beginning to actually feel some sort of ache of companionship, or at least a few exchanged words. Companionship wasn't what he needed. What he needed was to focus, get his chores taken care of so that he could prepare for the next day with leisure in his steps. Reaching his home, the small wooden cabin that it was, was already a dramatic improvement on his mood. Behn didn't hesitate to move inside the cabin and dropping his bow, arrows, and the emptied snare on his bunk. With rabbit and knife still in hand, he returned back outside and sat on the ground, which felt somewhat more chilled than the open air itself was. Behn sighed as he looked at the headless rabbit in his hands. Separating the skin from the meat, the organs from the edible, it wasn't something he was particularly good at, never really was, and enjoying it was even harder since it was difficult for him. But it had to be done. Despite being a poor skinner by nature, or perhaps his own reluctance, Behn didn't hesitate to do the necessary. Taking his knife in his hand, he carefully, slowly, and as accurately as possible cut a small sliver in the rabbit's chest, and from there he would drag the knife in the same cautious manner, down towards the lower/hind legs. A single cut was all that was needed to remove the guts, or at least, that's all that was needed to expose said guts so they could indeed be removed with ease. Behn, not particularly thrilled that he forgot to remove the guts and other undesirable portions of the rabbit, stood up and jogged away from his home once again. He didn't go far, but, he hoped, far enough to keep any wandering creatures from becoming too interested in his home. Behn reached into the split chest of the rabbit with his index and middle finger, and in one slow downwards motion, pulled a majority of the guts from the rabbit's carcass, and left them in a pile on the earth. Next the legs were severed and placed by the pile. He considered what he had done, the execution, the bleeding, the decapitation, the removal of guts, the removal of limbs. For the most part, it seemed he was safe to finish up in the safety of his own property (he considered the immediate vicinity to be his). Behn started his brisk walk back, feeling oddly more human knowing that he was actually cleaning and preparing his food, rather than devouring it whole, living, or raw.

[Behn]

Behn returned home shortly after. Wasting no time in entering that cabin, he placed the fresh and gutted kill on the table along with all his gear: the knife, the bow, the spear. He took the snare again, the very one that he used to capture the critter before, and left to set it up. It was fairly often that Behn considered his place in Mizahar. A loner, a wildman. It was difficult, some days, for him to accept he was worthless, useless, doing nothing. For years, this was alright, better than dealing with people, especially after what had happened to him, to his daughter, and his woman. It was cruel, made him nauseous still, bitter to the end. Behn knelt down, finding some inconsistency with the ground, next to a bush seemed to be very faint tracks left in the moist soil. He might have been wrong, but it seemed a small creature made its way through here on occasion, or at least did once. He set up the cage-like snare once again, hoping that another rabbit would be kind enough to wander inside. Then Behn left, he had other snares to check, wood to cut, and a rabbit to either cook or preserve. A long day of work for little reward. The life of a Wildman.

[Dusk]

XP Award! Behn XP Award: Trapping: 2 XP, Wilderness Survival: 3 XP, Tracking: 1 XP, Philosophy: 1 XP Lore Award: Gutting is best done away from home, It's cleaner to snap the neck, Wilderness Survival (poor) Ledger: +1 dead rabbit, -1 rabbit head Additional Note A good little thread! Be careful about overplaying his experience in the wilderness considering he had, before this post, absolutely no points in Wilderness Survival.