Solo Dirty Jobs.

[Medhozic]

34th Day of Winter, 513AV. Maybe it was the fact that they could see him, he thought quietly to himself while brushing away some of the thin needles that were once low-hanging branches. Or that he was too loud, even though he was trying his hardest to avoid the small sticks that could easily break under his feet. He really needed to work on a lot of things; camouflage would have been helpful, and a bit of stealth, his dagger-work and his work with a short-bow, and his tracking and his trapping - especially his hunting.. but there it was, and you lived with what you were given. At least he could be sure of his ability in regards to the fact that he knew enough to at least try; that behind all the failures, behind all the humiliating defeat and crippling meetings with many that were several magnitudes above his skill, he could hunt and kill these animals with much greater ability than at least some others could. The Bronze Woods - around the edges that overlooked the North Kabrin Road specifically. It was the one place where one of those stupid, heavy long-swords that the Syliran Knights would obviously use, would be completely useless - where heavy maces, noisy metal armor and all those other stupid things that the knights would adorn themselves with and the squires that worked alongside them would fawn over would only be a massive disadvantage. And once he had mastered himself, they would be useless whether or not in the forest. Light, flexible; he might not have been all of it, or as least as much as he could have been, but it was something that he desired. And once the knights were below, then it would only be a matter of time before none of them would be able to kill him. He was a survivor, after all. And he was the best hunter around, he thought - regardless of the fact that he was probably making more noise than he could tell, and much more noise than he should have been making. It certainly would have explained why there was absolutely nothing around the forests today. Here he stood with his bow drawn, slanted horizontally underneath his grip and with an arrow stretching the bowstring, pointed tip-down towards the floor. And yet there was nothing that had passed by, nothing that he could find as suitable hunt to bring back to the castle for cooking and selling on the market.. nothing at all. It wasn't like he wasn't being patient, he'd been walking around for a whole petching bell and there was usually much more activity around that he could take advantage of. Today, though, there was hardly anything. Not the gentle calls of the birds, or the sound of deer-hooves through the soil. As far as he could tell - which wasn't anything to go on - there were no tracks to follow. Though that didn't stop him from crouching to take a much closer inspection, moving around discarded leaves and stones with his toes in search of any tracks, a little pile of faeces.. but no, he still couldn't find anything. It was frustrating beyond words, it really was.. to be stuck out in these forests with nothing to put good work to. But still he persevered and continued walking steadily through the undergrowth, stepping over the occasional fallen branch or jumping over a small ravine through which water would be siphoned off the springs that centered the entire wood. Just when he thought he'd never find anything, when he was about to simply surrender himself to the masterminds of the forest, something caught his attention. It was a surprise that he hadn't seen it before because although most of the soil had frozen over from the predictably cold soil, there was one area soggy.. and smelling of something that he'd never smelt before. That didn't matter, it was warm ground. Some animal had made it, and although he wasn't sure what kind of animal, or how long it had been since it had been nearby.. he was willing to take it as a sign, and set off immediately at a light trot. If they heard him coming, he'd be able to hear them running off and follow. Not that he'd manage to keep up, but he'd be able to follow the trail. Hopefully. Whatever the thing was. Finally, something to take back and sell.

[Medhozic]

The trail continued some time further down. They were rather obvious signs - they'd have to be for him to notice them at all, but whatever the creature was, it obviously didn't really mind if anything followed. Or it simply didn't know - he didn't care because either way didn't matter. He had a bow and arrow, they'd have.. something probably not as good. Hopefully. It didn't really matter in the end, he had everything that he needed. He didn't emerge into a clearing, really- but soon he was wandering around the edges of the forest, where the trees were receding and the spaces between them were much larger. Sunlight filtered through the leaves and made the woods behind him seem to be engulfed in a shadow that he naturally moved away from.. which was his first mistake. As soon as he'd begun to move away from the shadows, something spoke up from behind him. Something soft, but obviously curious. "Hey!" A boy - there seemed to be a lot of them, though this ones name he couldn't possibly know - was perched up on the trees, legs swung over the edge and a short-bow in his hands. He might have been the perfect vision of the Ethaefal, if not for the fact that he seemed very human and was covering himself with a camouflage tarp that draped around his shoulders and made him stand out even more than if he would have been wearing the normal shirt underneath. "Careful! You'll set off the trap." "Don't be stupid. There are no traps here." And then he saw it - a very crude trap, but it seemed excellently crafted. A snare, more or less, with a little loop made of rope hanging down from a branch and obviously made to catch any prey that would walk past it. Still, it looked pretty comical to him. "That is not a trap." He steered clear from it anyway, and took a step around it. "Why do you have a trap here, anyway." "I'm a hunter, of course!" "If you're a hunter, then why aren't you out tracking the animals and shooting them down with your arrow." Surely that was how one did such things - they found the animals, then they shot them, and that was the end of that. But no, here he stood, waiting for them, with a trap set out and all. Even though he obviously had everything that he would need to set out, if he so wished, and track down a fresh deer and kill it with an arrow through the back. "That's for idiots. I trap 'em. No need to do anything like that. Just wait 'ere." Interesting. Although the boy was smiling by now, as if what he'd done was an accomplishment. All he'd managed to do was completely ridicule himself by showing that he knew absolutely nothing about hunting, above setting up a little cage and counting on sheer luck that a rabbit would have the stupidity to walk into it.. however. He had at least something in terms of trapping.. and that was enough to prod interest. "Show me how you do it, if you are so good."

[Medhozic]

The boy stared for a few more moments, and then scoffed derogatorily. Apparently he had better things to do. "What's in it for me, eh'?" he asked with narrowed eyes, although he leaned a little further on the perch of the tree branch, causing the thing to bend under his weight like a poised bow. His back seemed to almost naturally curl forwards, as if there was some kind of spinal disfigurement. "You keep half of what we catch." The man seemed agreeable, by the way he soon straightened his back again. "Two-thirds." "Are you sure you know how much that will be." "Not a clue, but that doesn't matter." The boy visibly struggled to contain the amusement that nearly bubbled through his expression at the little back-and-forth, and pulled the corners of his mouth down into something that resembled a frown instead. It was good, though, to meet someone that at least had a sense of humour about themselves. Even if it was at his expense. "Fine. Don't expect me to do everything, though." He was quick to retort, but the man was not as well-versed in his emotional control as the Ethaefal. A grin had slowly broken over his face and spread along it, even reaching his eyes with a mischievous glimmer. Even from this distance, it burned like a fire. "How will you learn anything though?" "By watching you. I do not know how to make a trap." "How will you be able to pay your share, then? What use can you be?" "I can pull a bow better than you." Unfortunately, he was proved wrong at the exact same time as he made the assumption. The bow, still notched with an arrow drawn back and pointing at the floor, was lifted and released at almost the same time and sent the arrow hurtling for the tree that he was stood nearest to. No wobbling of the arrow, not even a hint of miscalculation, and even though it'd been a very fast and rough swing of the bow, it still struck near enough to the dead center of the tree with perfect balance. It was.. astonishing. Enough so that he had to make sure to keep his jaw clenched, lest it simply drop. "Yah' think?" All of his hopes had been crushed as fast as they appeared, but he tried not to let it show. He failed this time - there was only so much humiliation one could take before the tears began. He knew that his threshold had been reached because the boy spoke again, but with a tinge of sympathy. "C'mon, let's get started, shall we? While the day is young and there are may fresh kills to be made." He was already descending the tree. Med nodded in agreement, and threw a haphazard glance back to the trap still set, and the arrow buried fairly deep in the tree. Even if he were to try, it would take a significant amount of strength to pull the thing free, with its metal tip. "What about the trap you have already set." "Ah', we can come back to that later. Just in case we do miss out." The boy waved a hand in dismissal and began off into the forest proper, back the way that the Ethaefal had come before this unlikely meeting. And Med followed, shortly behind.

[Medhozic]

The boy seemed to have absolutely no clue where he was going - he'd just chosen a random direction and went off as if he knew that there would be something at the end. However, the further they made their way through, the more that the Ethaefal realized that the boy knew perfectly well that there would be game at the end of their walk. Along the way, he pointed to various signs of animals passing by - a tree that had most of its bark scraped off one side, a sign that it had been used by an animal as a scratching-post. Not a feline, though, or there would be claw-marks. And not a canine because the amount of bark lost was fairly high up, much more than even a dire-wolf. There were droppings over the floor, occasionally pointed out and although he did not really prefer the smell as much as the boy seemed to, the shape of them apparently showed what species had produced them. They followed other trails, and they made the occasional mistake. Marks and droppings that had been made by other animals were not of their concern, and any that they passed were soon ignored as they turned in a different direction and headed further into the woods. But, by a mixture of the occasional print left in wet mud and the scraping over the tree, apparently they were closing ground on elk. However, he didn't know what those were. He'd seen deer, and he'd seen rabbits, and squirrels and all other manner of wild game that could be hunted, but elk was a first. Apparently, they were some kind of large deer. The prospect excited him more than it should have. "Y'see these over here, these things on this bush?" In the mild daydream of wandering through the forest for what must have been a bell, the boy roused him with his gestures off to a low branch filled with small red berries. He didn't know what to call them, but apparently the boy did and immediately crouched down to begin explaining what the things were and why he was even telling the Ethaefal this in the first place. "The deer love 'em. Y'can see there's only one, 'cause there's still berries on tha thing. And yah can tell he was 'ere not too long ago, 'cause there's berries gone 'ere." He jabbed a finger at a small patch, quite high up on the bush, that had been stripped clean of the berries and their surrounding leaves. It left a hole in the thing, with just the black branches sticking through like some large burn. "Stalks 're fresh, he got 'em barely few chimes ago." He hadn't taken specific care, but at the mention that the elk could potentially be nearby, he drew his bow and stretched an arrow down along the bowstring until the wooden limbs creaked. When he looked up, he found that the boy had done the same with his composite shortbow, before he walked calmly along the route that they'd been taking before. No crouching, no steady footwork, nothing. And he was making a lot of noise because of it, too - for an expert hunter, he knew next to nothing about stealth. All of his tracking, all of his expert bowmanship and even all of his trapping knowledge would fall to nothing if he didn't get close enough to the elk to shoot it before it could hear and run off into the sunset. "Get down," he hissed at the human with narrowed eyes, causing the boy to turn quickly and give a confused stare before he stopped and crouched down. "The deer will hear you and run before we get close enough. Don't make so much noise." "I know what I'm doing!" came the harsh hissed response, although he turned around and when he continued, he moved deliberately slower and tried to stop the crunching of dried leaves under his feet. It made Medhozic somewhat proud of himself. He had found something to at least attempt to teach the boy, rather than simply remaining the student for this entire endevour. He wasn't a better trapper, or tracker, or hunter, or archer - but he was at least somewhat of a better sneaker. Perhaps the boy could be taught some other things, too, to compensate. Once they caught their meal at least.

[Medhozic]

The tables turned in under a few chimes. Occasionally, now, Medhozic was the one to occasionally whisper pieces of information, sharing what little he had gathered in the ways of making perfectly sure that the least amount of noise possible was made. Somewhere along the way, he moved ahead and instructed the boy to follow his footsteps exactly while he tested the way ahead. The boy obediently complied and soon they were making some very odd conga-dance, or something that certainly would have looked that way to any outside observer. "We should be there shortly," he muttered under his breath to the human, after several more chimes awkwardly stepping over small dips and off trails. "How can yah' tell?" came the quick reply, mostly in disbelief. "There's fresh droppings." The Ethaefal pointed to a small black pile at the edge of the trail that they'd been following, and true to his word, even the faint wisps of steam lifting off its surface proved that it was fresh, and the long and thin shape confirmed it to be - at the very least - whatever it was that they'd been tracking through the forest, most likely based on the information from a few days ago up to the last few chimes. And before them, not in a clearing but quite the opposite, stood an elk. Thicker coat than most deer.. considerably larger horns too. Regardless however, even in the considerable density of the forest and the undergrowth, it made its way through with little trouble and slid easily between the trees. "There it is. Line up your shot. On the count of three, we fire." It wasn't close. Thankfully their quiet and slow approach meant that it hadn't noticed either of them, yet. Two shots at the same time would eliminate the probability that a miss would result in the elk escaping. Or on the off-chance that one hit doesn't manage to damage any vital organs and leaves the deer running off anyway without a fatal attack. Both of them had their bows drawn, both focused on the deer. Medhozic for his part, had the head. The boy was aiming somewhere around the back, or even just the main body. It wasn't much of a small target, even from the distance that they were hoping for. "Are yah ready?" "Of course." "One.. two.. three." Their time spent together had paid off. Two synchronized arrows slid through the air and struck on the elks side and just below the neck, further towards the shoulder. It screamed in a way that nearly made the Ethaefal laugh - it reminded him of a quacking duck or something oddly similar in the way that it called out before shuddering and trying to make a move forwards. Of course it was too late, though. By the time it had registered the pain, assessed the damage and began a run, the boy had already notched and released a second arrow that slammed into its side, puncturing a lung and causing the brute to stumble mid-stride and tumble over. For once, a successful kill. It would be large enough, regardless of the fact that he would be giving up nearly two-thirds of the thing in exchange for finding it in the first place, to compensate for a days hunt. He could see, when they both moved in for a closer inspection, just how large it was and how it had thrived during the winter seasons, regardless of the apparent lack of food - it was no feeble, malnourished thing. Of course, the boy took out his hunting knife and skinned the thing. And the Ethaefal took out his kopis and cut the thing into chunks, even through most of the bone. And they divided it up into the adequate amounts, and the boy made a fire to cook it over before they both sat down and ate their shares, with the remainders being taken into backpacks for later. But while they sat there, eating a hearty lunch - considering that although it had taken considerably long, the sky was still rather bright - they began to talk through full mouths about each-other. "Ahm' guessing yah're an Ethaefal." "And I'm guessing you're a human." He glanced up, and watched as some of the curtain of hair fell down around his face thanks to the horns pushing the locks aside. "Or at least human-based." "And ahm guessing yah're a hunter." "You're not guessing, you're making observations." "But.. I dun't get' it. Aren't yah a son of Leth, or Syna?" He blinked and looked back up again, although this time he forgot the food altogether. The boy was staring - with something of confusion on his face, nearly obscurity. "Shouldn't yah, like, be kind an' gentle tah all nature?" Apparently the boy was just deluded on the matters concerning the gods. "I am a child of Syna. I fell. Now I don't intend to die." He took a large bite out of the venison and chewed for several long seconds, letting the flavour settle over his tastebuds before continuing. "I like nature. I like surviving more. The strong feed from the weak, and there is no point changing that." He looked away from the boy at last, and sighed under his breath. "There is no point trying to change the laws of nature. I am not a god. Only the son of one." After that, they sat and ate in silence, with an eery awkwardness growing between them.

[Medhozic]

They finished the meat promptly, packed out the remainders after they'd also been cooked in the small fire, and went out in search of more since the sun was still fairly high in the sky and they had at least a few more bells before they'd both need to head back to Stormhold. Luckily, the paths that the elk had made crossed over with others, and they found something else not too far away - boar. Wild, with tusks and all, and a few younglings trotting around its heels. It was spotted in almost exactly the same way as the elk too - simply following the trails left behind, with the boy constantly taking the lead and occasionally displaying what was needed. However, Medhozic was starting to pick up on some of the smaller details too. An occasional dropping that matched with the others that they had spotted, or a mark on the trees. These were different; they were much lower because of the stouter body of the boar, and more bark had been removed as well. It seemed odd how such slight differences could prove to be such a distinguishing factor between species. Nevertheless, they caught up with it, and once again, a stealthy approach followed quickly by synchronized attacks with their bows, slamming into the adults' head and back. They'd switched sides since before, so the boy took the head, and the thing fell within a shot - straight through the neck so fast that it came out of the other side again; the thing had fallen almost instantly, and the Ethaefal hadn't even needed to loose his second arrow, since the first had hit a thick area of fat that would have done nothing to the beast. The children fled, and they didn't pursue - it was little chance that they would survive anyway, but they were faster than their aim and it would have been useless considering the poor meat that they held. There was too much time consumed in making a second fire and cooking the many different chunks that they could harvest from the body,and before long it was getting late. That said however, it was a considerably worthwhile encounter, since this was apparently much more than the boy had captured on a single day alone, and the same could be same for Medhozic - more food than he had captured in quite a few days combined, and the excess could all be sold off for profit. "I'll keep these." He looked over, and found the boy clutching the pair of tusks from the boar, holding them up to his temples so that they curled back and their sharp tips pointed straight up. It was almost comical, to see the boy imitating an Ethaefal so crudely, with blood dripping from the stubs of the horns where they'd been wrenched free like exceptionally sharp teeth. "As a token of our encounter." The boy would be walking away with as close to two-thirds of the meat as they could both figure out, so he didn't mind if the boy took the horns anyway. Although.. he had nothing as a souvenir. "I don't see why you will need one. I am sure, that we will meet again." "Ah', prob'bly. Still, nice to keep somethin'." He never would understand the sentimentalism that some of these humans had. "I suppose." That was it. He turned and piled up the steady collection of meat that they'd both been lugging around in their sacks, and turned back to the way he supposed that the Stormhold Castle would be. "By the way. I never caught your name." And the boy had never caught his - that wasn't important. "It's Mronah. Yours?" "Medhozic." He nodded his head briefly, in departing. "Goodbye, Mronah. Save travels." For once, oddly, he found himself being sincere with the child that he'd barely known since the beginning of the day. The one that'd nearly shot him in the face with an arrow, and threatened him on more than one occasion. Odd, how these relationships could form so quickly with barely any provocation. These were the thoughts that floated aimlessly through his head on the way back to the Castle.

[Orion Michaels]

Med +1 Negotiation +1 Hunting +1 Weapon: Shortbow +3 Observation +2 Tracking +1 Socialization lore : There's more than one way to hunt Hunting: Signs of a Scratching Post Deer Love Red Berries? The Apperance of an Elk Mronah: Young Hunter notes Thanks for the thread, Medhozic. Just a little note: If you look at the Syliras Calendar, there was tons of snow this season, but the thread doesn't acknowledge it at all. Syliras doesn't normally get snow, so it would have a pretty big effect on any hunting. Try and give a bit more detail on what you're doing when following tracks, especially describing them so I can give you lore. Let me know if you have any questions, and please edit your request in the grading queue.