The bear (random excerpt of "Origin", book 1 of the Hunter series)
He even lead a bear to my improvised mini-hut.
He even lead a bear to my improvised mini-hut. Got it to trash it all and eat my hard-earned food.
I almost jumped at the bear’s back in my anger when I came back to that little scene, fingers stretched out like claws, ready to bite and tear, my lucky catch all forgotten for a moment. Never thinking about how little human teeth would do against the thick pelt of that beast, much less those soft nails of my too-little fingers.
I wonder if the bear would’ve even noticed the weight on its back.
Thankfully, I reeled myself back in before I embarrassed myself by trying to ride -or rather throttle- a fucking BEAR of a size where I wouldn’t even get my arms around its neck. The bear suddenly shook itself as if confused about something, then trotted off, dragging most of my food -and destroyed nets that I had made so painstakingly- along in its jaw. And all I could do about that was fuck-all nothing.
.
I KNEW he was around.
.
I couldn’t see him anywhere, well-hidden as he was, but I knew anyway.
Ever since bringing me here, he had barely left for even a few minutes.
The only time I hadn’t noticed anything of him being around at all was... well. While I had been gone just now.
None of this was coincidence. This was another one of his simulations of “what might happen in the real world out there” that I would have to expect and be able to deal with.
.
This was a test.
.
And if it was a test, it couldn’t be about attacking a beast when he hadn’t even yet taught me how to sneak up on one. Not that the bear had seemed like it would notice anything, lost in its bliss of munching down on MY food, scattering what little shelter I had managed for myself in total carelessness - and likely ignorance.
My hand went between my eyebrows, kneading the skin there, in an unconscious gesture I had picked up from other people by now. Likely the hunter himself, no less. The bear... that bear was just some dumb animal.
My mentor hadn’t yet even told me how he decided which one to kill and which one to let go. And I had almost gone and went to recklessly rip his hide for what it had done. Not only would it likely never have stopped to think where the food came from, just happy to find it, it would also not know what it had just demolished nor... I exhaled a deep, slow breath. Then another. Calm yourself. It’s just an animal. It doesn’t know better. Just smelled tasty food and went for it, especially with no owner in sight. And why shouldn’t it? It has as little idea about possessions as a gemba, I bet.
And ‘rip its hide’? my long-lost and very-hard-learned ratio chimed in for the first time during the whole incident. More likely it would’ve skinned you.
.
Yeah. I guess I could see how a little child like me jumping on a big bear like that would seem ridiculous. I’d have made a total ass of myself had I given in to that impulse. *And* surely angered the hunter a great deal, no less. Since he would then likely have had to kill the poor bear for my sake, the beast trying to defend itself and possibly ending up in a rage of its own, annoyed by that fly on its back it wanted to swat away. Assuming I’d even succeed in jumping that high, but...
He’d never have let the bear swipe a paw at me.
This was likely my fault for coming back unexpectedly early. More likely than not he had planned for the bear to be long gone by now - and the bear leaving suddenly like that? Yeah. I knew only one ‘thing’ around here that seemed likely to have caused its abrupt leaving. And that ‘thing’ was a man. A certain hunter, to be precise.
.
Gods, I hated his guts right now. Hated this type of lessons. There was no sense hating the bear, but...
I blew out some more air. Unclenched my fists again. This time a true sigh escaped. I couldn’t even blame him, could I? At the very least, he’d just made one big bear really happy.
That wasn’t something to hate someone for, now was it? Dumb, Lili. Really dumb.
And I had asked him to train me. Badgered him about it, really. Prodded and pestered and pleaded with him to no end. If he judged that this meant I should be doing some more collecting of materials for a new hut — either because he’d been dissatisfied with my construction skills, judged it too flimsy, and thought I should practice or simply just for the practice or even for no reason at all, just because such things happened ‘in real life’?
I had no grounds to complain. He was well within his rights.
And I’d do better to remember that.
.
I’d be lucky if I hadn’t already failed his test by my response -or lack thereof- to this whole incident. What if he had expected me to run away? Or hide? Or... do any of the other myriad of things I could’ve done differently instead of just stare daggers at the beast in a rage, doing nothing at all in reality but stand there, huffing and puffing? Shit.
I’d better hurry to make some new shelter before the rain set in or, more reasonably, find some likely hole or tree to crawl into.
I eyed the surrounding trees with new suspicion under my calculations.
The bear had gone quite far up to bring the net down - maybe if I hadn’t placed it where it had hung, right above my shelter for convenience’s sake, it wouldn’t have even thrashed it when dropping down... Another defeated sigh. Let that be a lesson. I should hang the next one further away. And hope he’ll be at least somewhat satisfied by that. I hadn’t known bears could climb that high. At most, I had expected gembas to get to it and take their fair share, but... not some lumbering rock of a beast like that one. Well. Now you learned something, eh?
.
Ugh. Some good that did me. Hanging it high in the trees was still the best idea I could come up with.
I quizzically eyed my former larder tree again.
The deep gouges the bear had left in its bark, not just when climbing up, but even more so when it had dropped down, sliding very unceremoniously down one side in a hurry, dropping the last few feet right to its big butt — and on my not-so-much-hut. Maybe I should just stop trying to make a hut at all. Climb right to the top of one of the grandfather trees instead and make a nest there.
But I just knew the wind up there would likely rip away any attempt at making a roof. It’d be miserable. Could I go somewhere in between? Just use the natural cover of the tree itself, keep close to the trunk, maybe wrap some extra around there to make things a bit more comfy? If only he’d allowed me at least some tools. I was sure I could’ve made some platform, if only I’d had a few good nails. Surely rocks would do in a pinch to pound them in?
Sure, I could try and travel back to Jannai, ask her for some, but... he’d skin my hide for trying, wouldn’t he? This test was about sheltering in wilderness. With nothing at hand. Not about finding one’s way back to a village and begging for help. It was about surviving on my own.
.
My feet finally lead me back to my destroyed camp site. If one could call it that much. Hands sifting through whatever remained, taking stock.
Shredded pieces mostly. The branches I’d used as cover were only good for firewood now, having thoroughly cracked under the bear’s weight. The creeper vines I had braided and knotted en lieu of rope were now only short, frayed pieces running through my hands. It had taken me hours to make them in the first place, even with all my knowledge of nets and it not being hard at all to find them. They grew basically everywhere here. The trick was finding the right ones that wouldn’t tear or break or rip as soon as you put real weight on them. Then the right technique to weave them together once you found those that were both strong but also still flexible.
Actually... that just gave me an idea. My hand tightened over the small remainder of improvised rope.
But my eyes had gone up the trees again. A platform, huh? Whoever said I need nails for that? Silly me.
I just needed a tree with the right size of branches and spread in between, and... likely some finagling with additional branches to lay across, since of course I didn’t have anything to split logs with, much less anything resembling actual boards. But I didn’t need boards either. Branches would do just fine. It would be a horrible amount of work to strip them by hand, but... no. I was thinking about this all wrong.
Why strip them at all? The smaller twigs would actually help stabilize it all. And make it a bit more cozy, if I found some that were softer instead of prickly. I finally dropped the destroyed bit of not-rope and set to work. This would likely take me days of work, and I’d still be miserable throughout again, but it might be worth it.
He’d never said how long he’d let this test run. No time limit. Just a bare-bones task and advice of “I expect you to survive until I fetch you again. Suggest you start with thinking about food and then shelter”.
Food would be a problem again, now that the bear had run off with almost every supply I had managed to stockpile for the hungrier days when I didn’t get lucky. But I needed rope for either, and it wasn’t the most pressing problem since I’d found that one tree bearing edible fruits. Thank you, gembas.
The little apes were still dear friends of mine, little as they seemed to appreciate my intrusion. But they would manage. There was enough for all of us for a while, and they were good at finding more. And in winter, I had vowed, when the trouble was reversed, when it was their thin times, I would make good on what I’d taken from them, leaving out stored fruit for them.
I knew they would appreciate that, liking fruit best of all but usually never finding any in winter. Even if they would likely never remember the why of it, and not just by then, but at most of a few weeks in already. They seemed entirely to unable to remember who I was, even after all these years. Still took me for a predator, even though I hadn’t touched any of them since the last time Armin had me run around after them to shoo them away from the fish.
World.
It felt like ages ago. And yet it could only have been like what... two or three years?
Years. A slight pang ripped through my heart.
I hadn’t seen a single one of my human friends all that time. I refused to even think of my brother, braiding the next vine a little too tight and ending up having to undo it again to take out half of the vines because I’d shredded them, the fibers already fraying. Or more likely not looking closely enough while gathering them, ending up with the wrong vines, if they shredded this easily. Either way, time lost, work done for nothing, since they were unusable for my purposes. Couldn’t trust a rope that frayed before you even hung it anywhere.