[Flashback] Tickled

[Dove Brown]

14 Spring 513

Dove walked along the riverbank as quietly as she could - which wasn't that quietly. Although she put her feet down gently, they landed on twigs that cracked, or pebbles that rolled, or last year's rustling dead leaves. It didn't help that her gaze stayed more on the water and the fish swimming in it than where she actually put her feet. Her hands were empty, like her belly, and stuck out of sleeves that were now too short. Early spring was always a lean time, with last year's harvest depleted over the winter, this year's harvest still growing in the fields, and the wild foods barely sprouted yet.

She saw a fish shadow flicker where an old willow tree's roots made an overhang in the bank and stopped mid-stride. She wobbled on one foot for a moment, arms flailing for balance, and carefully put her other foot down. Her memory recreated her brother's voice talking her through this, and she scrubbed her right sleeve across damp eyes before rolling both sleeves up above the elbow. She bent, undid her laces, and stepped out of her low boots. Her pants also showed short without the boots covering her ankles and she grimaced as she rolled them up to the knee. She couldn't help being thirteen and in a growth spurt, but she couldn't afford to replace her clothes just yet either.

Bare toes splayed in the muddy grass as she looked round and found a fist sized stone. She set it on the bank within reach, then stepped into the cold water and winced at the chill on her bare skin. She bent and slipped her hands into the water as well, her fingers waving - slowly, like weeds, her memory of her brother reminded her - as she eased closer and closer to the resting fish.

[Dove Brown]

Mud squelched between her toes as she moved one foot slowly forward, then the other. She kept her legs wide apart to let the chilly water flow between them and minimise the size of the ripples she caused. The tips of her waving fingers touched the fish's tail, and slid under it to tickle its belly. It was probably fed better than she was - her own belly growled at the thought of fresh fish - and she tried not to flinch. The fish's underside felt cold, as cold as the water trying to numb her hands and feet, slick but not slimy. It felt like a log covered in soaking wet moss, except that it moved. The fins sent little, tickly, ripples against her skin as she slid past them. She took a deep breath and held it, then slid a little further along the fish, feeling for the gills. Movement against her hands told her she was close, and she grabbed hastily, jamming thumb and finger through the gills.

She yanked the fish from the water and threw it high onto the bank before scrambling after it. It thrashed and flailed and slid back towards the water. She fumbled in the muddy grass for the stone she'd left there. Finding it, she snatched it up and hit the fish hard on the head with it. The thrashing stopped. She hit it again for good measure. Held breath exploded from her lips in relief and she sat down beside it with a thump. Now she had to clean it and cook it, but she would have food. And she would stay for a bit, because where one fish rested, another one might too. They liked the same spots over and over, her brother had said. You just had to find those spots. Grief clawed at her throat and she hugged herself tightly. She had to hug herself, to hold herself together. Nobody else would.

[Dove Brown]

It took a while for her to uncurl, but she managed it and picked up the fish. It was a small trout less than a handspan long. With this she was back on more familiar ground, having dealt with her brother's catch growing up. She drew her knife and stabbed upwards through the floor of the trout's mouth, then pulled the knife out and cut along the fish's belly from anus almost to the gills. She cleaned the knife, sheathed it, then hooked two fingers of her left hand into the jaw and out though the first hole she'd made. Putting the fingers of her right hand in through that hole, she gripped firmly and pulled. The guts and innards came free in one piece and she set them aside. She ran her thumbnail down the inside of the spine to remove the pooled blood before it could taint the meat, and rinsed the fish clean in the river. The blood attracted another fish, and she set the cleaned fish and the rock down and watched, hardly daring to breathe as the fish nosed under the overhang and settled itself there.

She slid her feet back into the water and waded upstream towards the overhang again, hands ready to tickle a second fish. She slipped waving fingers under the tail, and up the belly, but she moved too fast. When she started to stretch for the gills, the fish whipped its tail and shot forward. She lunged for it - but too late - and landed full length in the water, empty handed. "Shyke, shyke, shyke," she grumbled, picking herself up and squelching, soaked, back to the bank. The breeze cut through the wet cloth and felt even colder as a result. She ached for the days when Raven would fish and she would keep watch and neither of them fell in, but those days had ended abruptly last spring. They wouldn't be back. She set her mouth stubbornly and blinked back the tears. She was old enough to live alone, old enough to work for her living, old enough to care for herself. She was not going to cry like a child. Instead, she bit her lip, collected some of the longer sticks from the ground, and cut thin withys from the willow. She would try and make a fish trap, since she had seen the fish come back here. She could bait it with the guts and let it work for her while she did her work in the fields.

[Dove Brown]

She made a hoop from one of the withys, tying the ends together with a sturdy grass stem, then took seven straight sticks. She tied the sticks together at one end with the thinnest withy, and then spread the other ends out around the hoop so that she had a cone. She filled the sides in with more withys, going in and out of the sticks like thread going in and out of cloth in a simple stitch. She didn't manage to keep it even though, and her clumsy attempts to reshape it left it lopsided. She set it aside and made a second, shorter, cone the same width. This time she got it a bit rounder, and didn't tie the ends together. Instead, she left a gap so that fish could swim in, but wouldn't be able to swim out again. The second cone sat inside the first cone and she tied them together around the hoops.

She squinted up at the sun which was a good two and a half bells higher than when she'd started on the trap, and drying her clothes on her body. Then she looked down into the water and found another fish had settled there while she worked. She couldn't put the trap down on top of the fish, but she didn't want to fall in again either. She thought for a while, watching the fish, but couldn't remember anything from her brother that helped. In the end she tried lying on the bank above the fish and slipping only one hand into the water. She took it slower this time, and gentler, and got the fish successfully up on the bank. She hit it hard with the stone, then heard a faint noise behind her and turned to see a weasel creeping up to take the first fish. Since she was still holding the rock, she threw that. It only grazed the weasel's flank, but that was enough to make it whip round and vanish.

[Dove Brown]

She snarled after the weasel and hoped it would stay away. Taking out her knife, she repeated the gutting process, and washed the second fish clean. She looked at the two, head on one side, and measured them against her hand and her memory. She rather thought if she cut the heads off, she could fit them in her pan. If so, she could fry them as they were and peel the skeleton out of the soft cooked flesh. That would be much easier and simpler than prising the bones out first and filleting the fish raw. She nodded to herself and cut the heads off, adding them to the piled innards. Then she washed her knife clean, dried it on her pants leg and sheathed it.

She scooped the pile up and dropped it through the hole into the main part of the trap, and then lowered the trap into the water. The trap, being wooden, bobbed up again and started to float away from the shore. Dove grabbed it, pulled it back, and dumped stones through the hole until she felt the buoyancy leave it and it started to sink instead. Before it hit the bottom, she hauled it over to the overhang and tried to wedge it there, with the opening pointed downstream. Whether she'd have fish in it, only tomorrow would say. She'd have to wait and see. For now, she rolled down her shirt sleeves and her pant legs and pulled on her boots. Her wet feet made the leather boots feel cold and clammy, but at least the leather cut out the wind. She scooped up her catch and carried it home, running for warmth. It was harder to run with her arms full but she made it to her cottage, finally, and stumbled inside. She set the fish on the old table and bent to brace her hands on her knees as she caught her breath, but she couldn't keep a smile off her face. Raven, her brother, wasn't the only one who could get food from the wild!

ReceiptBasket, medium, simple (fishtrap): 5 CM

[Sayana]

Don't forget to edit/delete your grade request. If there's anything I may have missed, please PM me and I'll be happy to look into it.

 

Dove

Skills

• Stealth: 3
• Observation: 5
• Acrobatics: 1
• Tactics: 3
• Endurance: 3
• Fishing: 5
• Brawling: 2
• Wilderness Survival: 3
• Cooking: 2
• Trapping: 2
• Running: 1

Lores

• Fishing: Wading quietly in the water to avoid scaring fish
• Fishing: Wacking a fish with a rock
• Fishing: Fish tend to swim in the same areas
• Cooking: Gutting and cleaning a fish
• Trapping: Creating a simple fish trap from sticks and grass
• Fishing technique: Tickling a fish
• Trapping: Baiting a trap

Comments: Great thread. Short but to the point and you're certainly writing like a grader by covering so many skills. However, the first time she 'tickled' the fish was pushing it a little since she doesn't have any points in fishing. The rest seemed much more believable especially since she was getting more practice in.

Your Grader,

Sayana

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